The Unfolding Podcast

yvonne wink (00:05.998)

Hello, hello, hello. And welcome back to the Unfolding Podcast. I'm your girl, Yvonne Wink. We're gonna do something different today. well, you know, first of all, I love this title. I knew better, so why didn't I do better?

I just want to reintroduce myself for the new followers, new listeners. Thank you so much. Thank you also to whoever. I'm gonna get into this a little later, but somebody nominated me into this top host, this podcasting. I'm I'll I'll give you some details about that later. But first of all, I just want to say thank you. I'm your girl, Yvonne. We're back. We're doing something different today. No guests.

I I know I've had guests the last few weeks loving it, love what people are bringing to the Unfolding podcast. I love hearing other people's stories. This is my jam. I'm so excited about that. but we're gonna do something a little different today. So there's no one sitting across from me. I'm here all alone by my little old self. Not little old self, just me, just me. Which is actually slightly terrifying because as it turns out.

I'm realizing I'm much better at asking other people to be vulnerable than I am at just simply volunteering myself. So it's funny how that works, but it is. It happens. But something exciting has been happening behind the scenes of the Unfold Unfolding podcast. just a lot of really cool things, a lot of growth and rebirth happening on my own end. I've been a little quiet on social media and I'm just kind of going through this metamorphosis. I can't even explain it, it's just super wild, but

Anyway, back to what I was talking about. I'm competing in a top podcast host competition. And I have made it to the top five. I just remember a few weeks ago, or maybe it was about a month ago, getting this like, hey, there's like 320 people and you're one of them. Good luck. Somebody nominated you for this, had no idea, didn't say who it was, and I just kind of laughed it off. And as the weeks sort of trickled down,

yvonne wink (02:21.938)

it got a little closer and then I found myself in 23rd place and then and then 11th place or 17th place. I think some people that have been on this journey with me know, right? And and as I got a little closer into the double digits, like 10 and right underneath 10, I go, wait, hold on one second. I'm gonna bring my crew into this. I'm gonna bring my friends, my family, people that believe in this work that I'm doing. I'm gonna bring everybody in.

and we're gonna start voting because it's a voting thing. I want you to think American Idol. Okay. Think that because that's what it is. and you have to vote each week. And now I'm in the top five. I've landed and maintained for the last three weeks spot number one. So you're welcome. but I love sitting there at number one. I just love it. I'm super excited. I'm also simultaneously very nervous, which I talk a lot about this.

feeling that right the two things that can exist together. and apparently I've decided that at this stage in my life, what I really needed was another opportunity to put myself out there and just be continuously judged by strangers. Because for whatever reason, it's that's what's happening. And I'm enjoying it. I don't mind. That was a debilitating fear of mine back in the day. I would say even just I'd say at least about a year ago.

Is when it kind of switched over and I thought, you know what? I could give zero craps about what people think about me. I just want to share what's on my heart, what's on my mind. And if I touch one person, then it's all worth it. Turns out I've been t touching lots of people and it's working out. So anyway.

I just figured if I'm asking people to listen to me, to vote for me, and to believe in what I'm doing and to believe in what I'm building, I also want them to know who I am. The good, the bad, the terrible, the awkward. I want them to know all of it. Not just my credentials, not just what what I've studied, not my books that I've written, the one that's coming out.

yvonne wink (04:36.352)

It's actually in production right now. I've been talking about it for so long. But anyway, not just that, not just the woman who gets behind this microphone weekly and talks about psychology and patterns and relationship, not the one fighting on social media with men that jump on and just want to attack because I don't know, maybe the shoe fits. Who knows? But I want you, I want.

Old listeners, new listeners, I want you to know the woman behind all of this, right? And maybe even more importantly, why I started running my mouth in the first place. So today I'm gonna tell you a little of my story. Not even the polished version. I'm just gonna kind of wing it. This one literally have I don't have notes. I don't have anything in front of me. It's just me. I'm just sitting here with this new little suite.

dog I just rescued. I'm trying to find a home. After I get her from her vet appointment today, I'm gonna get some pictures of her up and and get her a little home. She deserves a forever home. And unfortunately I can't do that right now with my schedule and the traveling schedule, but she's a sweetheart and I will soon get her in the spotlight. But today I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my story. Not not not even the version that where everything where I I complete it all and it's come to this perfect

platform, right? not even that it makes sense and then and that every difficult experience that it turned into some beautiful revelation or some beautiful life lesson that I'm like, I get to talk about this now. Nope. That's not how life works. That's not how my life works. Sometimes you learn the lesson and sometimes you repeat the lesson over and over and over.

Sometimes if you're really lucky, you even recognize the lesson and then you kind of you look at it like you usually because I say I always say this, you stare it dead in the eyes, right? And you go, well, hello again. We meet again. Apparently we're doing this again.

yvonne wink (06:55.479)

So

Let me think about how I wanna start this. I was thinking about well, for a long time, I I I for years and years and years I thought I knew who I was. And I'm not gonna talk about like and then I found out who I was. It's not like that. But I did. I thought for years and years I thought I knew who I was. I was very, very secure. I was a I was a mother, I was a wife, I was a daughter, a sister, a friend, I was a student.

I was I l always loved writing, a writer, a a businesswoman. just I've I've been a lifelong student. Spent decades building a a career in the beauty industry. Most people know this about me. a decade as well. Well, that was decades, almost 30 years building a a business in the beauty industry.

and then I switched over about a decade ago and started studying behavioral mental well-be mental health, substance abuse, behavioral health, all that good stuff, psychology basically. and so I was also at the same time raising three daughters, and just doing what so many women do, right? Just taking care of things. I was just on things, right? I was

I was the the cheer coach, I was the cheer mom, I was the room parent, I was the whatever you wanted me to be, the booster club president, the I did all things. I cooked, I cleaned, I ran the house. And and somewhere along the way, I begin to wonder how much of my identity was actually mine. Has anyone else ever

yvonne wink (08:46.892)

Felt this? Has anyone else ever even wondered this? Right? I wondered how much of it was built around the roles that I had played. What did I learn in my childhood? How was I showing up as a friend, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister? All of that was programming from years and years and years past. And I had never even checked in with myself to go, hey, Yvonne, is this still cool? Like, are we still good with this?

The way you believe, what you think, you know, my my belief on religion and politics and all of that, I started questioning. I wondered how much of that was built around all the roles that I had been playing. And where was that foundation? Where did it get started? How much of it was built around who I thought I needed to be, to be loved, to be accepted?

To be successful in people's eyes, right? To be palatable, not cringy, not ew. She's so weird. Even though people did say that.

But I want to be really clear here. I I wouldn't I wouldn't trade any of those roles. I wouldn't trade how I showed up as a wife, how I showed up as a mother, how I showed up as a sister and friend. I learned from all of that. But I wouldn't even trade, I wouldn't trade those roles. I wouldn't trade being a mother for anything. Raising my daughters has been the greatest joy and the most meaningful experience of my life.

I wouldn't trade how I showed up with certain friends and friend groups. because it taught me what I will tolerate and what I will absolutely never tolerate from another human being to be loved and accepted by them. Same thing in my relationships. I don't regret, and and I don't I wouldn't trade being a wife for two decades. And even the demise of it, I don't. Right? But those things.

yvonne wink (10:59.436)

Are just part of who I am. Motherhood is part of who I am. Friendship, being a daughter, being a wife, all of that. It's just a part of who I am. And when our lives begin to change, sometimes we realize we haven't spent very much time at all asking ourselves, the most important people, who are we outside of the roles? We've become so freaking good.

At plane. I gotta turn my fan off. It's cold in here.

When I look back at the woman that I used to be, I think the best way to describe her is I'm gonna just say this. I I've said it before. I'm just you know what? I'm saying it. I was a chameleon. I don't know if anyone else can resonate with this, but I was genuinely a chameleon. I could become whatever anybody needed me to be. I could I could agree with you.

I could disagree with you, change my opinion halfway through a conversation that I felt really strong and passionate about.

yvonne wink (12:18.466)

My dad always told me something. He said, you have to stand for something, because if you don't, you'll fall for everything. And I remember not having a really strong spine back in the day. Right? Because for me, it was about whatever kept the peace, whatever made everyone else comfortable. If it made them smile, I was good. I was in. If it made them like me and accept me and understand me, then I was in.

somewhere along the way, I became so good at accommodating everyone else that I wasn't even sure what I wanted anymore.

I think that's what made me so unhappy, so frustrated, so fussy. But here's the funny thing. See, on top of all that, or coupled with that, I was also a psychopathic perfectionist. Maniacal perfectionist. I was psychopathic. Sounds like a great quality, right?

Except perfectionism can be incredibly paralyzing when it's not when it's not understood. I don't think it's necessarily bad to be a perfectionist, right? To be to clean your house and to have to have great organizational skills and to be really good at what comes in your body, your mouth, right? And to exercise. I love all that. But mine was very unhealthy and it became incredibly paralyzing.

I wanted everything figured out before I could make a decision. I couldn't even decide what I wanted to eat. And I thought for years that it was because I was an Aquarius and those air signs, you know how it is. We don't know. I don't know. Sometimes I'm just I'm just ambivalent. I don't I don't care. It's not that big of a deal to me. But this perfectionism was something different, right? I had to study.

yvonne wink (14:25.662)

every possible outcome that that existed. Every loose end had to be tied up. Everything had to be perfect before I could make a decision. Before I could say yes or no. I couldn't just rip off the band-aid. no. No, no, no. I needed to research the actual entire hell out of band-aids. Read the reviews, consider the consequences.

It maybe even get a second opinion. Hey, what do you think about these band-aids? And most of the times I'd go with the flow. Right? I'd sit there with all this you know, information and I still couldn't make a move, right? I'd sit there with the band-aid on, it's still attached to me. Can't make the move.

yvonne wink (15:15.32)

But underneath all of that was, I think, something so much more difficult for me to admit. Because the truth of it was, I was afraid of disappointing people. I was afraid of looking bad. I was afraid of looking stupid, of looking foolish. I know this sounds crazy. And it is to me. It really is. Because especially if you if you've met me now in this era of my life, you're probably saying,

my God, she always says what she wants. She always speaks her mind. She always speaks her truth. She always says yes, no. and then she gives you 10 facts to why she's not going to do that anymore. so keep laughing. I'm talking about the old me, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the old me I'm talking about. I remember asking for things.

That I needed in friendships, most importantly in my intimate relationships. And and only to be told I was asking for too much. What? What? I do this and this and this for you and you want more?

yvonne wink (16:29.378)

So eventually I stopped asking.

yvonne wink (16:34.648)

But here's what happens when you repeatedly silence your own needs. See, we think that they go away, but they don't. They don't magically just disappear. At least mine didn't. Mine, my unmet needs, my requests for change, right? In behaviors, hey, can you please stop doing that? Or can you start doing this?

as my friend, as my lover, as whatever, right? it started to turn into resentment and I became bitter. I it I didn't choose this. I wasn't trying to be bitter.

But I was living a life where I didn't feel heard. I didn't feel seen. I didn't feel like a person. I wasn't even entirely sure I knew how to see myself anymore. I couldn't even hear, I couldn't find my own voice, let alone hear my own voice. And I think I I think that's the part that makes me saddest when I look back. I spent so much time trying to be the person that everyone else needed.

that I forgot to ask myself who I wanted to be.

yvonne wink (17:58.936)

Here's where my story gets really, really interesting, I think. This is where I start running my mouth because eventually I began studying psychology. I began studying human behavior. I began studying friendships, relationships, interactions, right? Attachments, trauma, emotional patterns, why we do what we do, why we don't do what we do, why we freeze, why we fawn.

why we run, why we freeze, why we fight. I started working with people who were trying to change their lives and become genuinely, you know, I was becoming genuinely fascinated with the psychology of human behavior. I mean, I was becoming a little weird, like obsessed. Nerd, nerdish.

But then I also started becoming very humble because understanding human behavior doesn't automatically mean that you're going to behave differently, or they're going to behave differently. But I'm gonna narrow this in and focus back to me because as I understood it more, as I became more obsessed, more nerdy about it, it didn't automatically change how I behaved or how I showed up. I could recognize unhealthy patterns.

I could see a red flag coming from a mile away. I could explain them away. I could help someone identify their own toxic behaviors. And then I'd go home and find myself struggling with some of the very same things. And honestly, it was a little embarrassing. It's embarrassing now to admit. Especially when you spent years studying this stuff, when you've spent countless hours.

working with humans and watching them, you know, from nothing change their lives and incredibly and step into their power and step into the lives that they had been dreaming of and wanting. But different things were holding them back, substance abuse, trauma, you different things, right? Holding them back. And so I'm watching this and that was what I think became embarrassing for me. Because I'm watching other people transform their lives.

yvonne wink (20:26.988)

Yet I was unable to.

yvonne wink (20:32.888)

But it made me ask myself some really vulnerable questions, right? And that those questions begin to change the way that I started to study myself and look at myself and understand myself better, right? If I know, if I know better, why don't I always do better? And I would do this in my car. Somebody cut me off and I was like, af you honking my horn. And I would say, Yvonne, if.

If you know better, why don't you always do better? Right? You talk about a life of peace, a life of life, of love, of acceptance, of patience, of grace. Yet somebody cuts you off and you immediately honk your horn and flip them off. Yvonne, if you know better, why don't you always do better? I kept asking myself that for a couple of years. Why do we stay in situations that make us unhappy?

Why why do we avoid conversations that we know we need to have? Why can't I say when somebody is speaking about something that I don't believe in, why can't I say, absolutely not, take your BS and hit the road, Jack? Right? Why do we keep hoping something will change when we haven't seen much evidence that we will, but we stick around?

And we just keep hoping.

yvonne wink (22:07.63)

Why are we so why can we sometimes be so much better at extending compassion to other people than we are at being honest with ourselves?

See, I could sit across from someone that I'm working with and say, really? Are you really sorry? Are you really showing up to this meeting under the influence? Really? What's that about? Talk to me.

But I couldn't be honest with myself.

I wanted to help change others, but I wasn't focusing on what needed to change within myself. I knew better. So why didn't I do better?

And and it takes me back to this one particular relationship that I talk about often in the podcast and obviously in the upcoming book, that really forced me to look at myself. And I think the hardest part to admit is that I tried so desperately to make that relationship work. I did it again, right? I jumped into something saying, Well, I want them to feel happy. I want them to be better, I want them to do better. Let me help fix you.

yvonne wink (23:21.08)

That I never stop to ask myself, was I happy?

Think about that for a second. Even if you don't do this work and you're just listening to this episode right now, do you ever stop and ask yourself, am I happy? Am I happy in my career? Am I happy with this degree I'm working towards? Am I doing this for someone else? Am I trying to make someone else happy? Am I staying in this friend group? Because I don't want to rock the boat.

Do I still believe religiously what I was taught?

Do I still believe politically in the powers that be? Right? Because this is what I was born into. So think about that. I think about myself, right? I was so focused on whether this person chose me, right? Whether he loved me, whether he wanted me, whether we could fix things that I wasn't even asking myself if this was the kind of love I wanted.

You ever do that? Have you ever asked yourself, is this the kind of love I want? Is this the kind of life I want? Is this the kind of career and friendship I want?

yvonne wink (24:42.602)

Right. We experience a lot. I know I did. There were betrayals. There were lies. There were times I questioned my own reality. There were moments that I felt completely unchosen, unimportant to this person who was so very important to me.

But what did I do? I tried harder. Of course I did.

Because apparently my solution to someone not loving me the way I needed was to love them even more. That's why I stick around. That's why I stuck around in many of my past relationships. Not that they were bad. I would say that I've this was the bad one. One out of the three main relationships I've ever had. but right, great strategy.

Very groundbreaking stuff. I let's stick around and love this person harder. Because I thought if I could just understand him better, love him harder, coddle him more, forgive him one more time, explain myself a little differently. Come at it with from a different, I don't know, perspective, even a different language. Fine, I'll try anything. That maybe we'd finally get it right. And I did forgive a lot.

over and over again and again. And I don't regret having a heart capable of forgiveness. I don't. And I don't, I don't I don't really put it on myself. I don't shame myself for what I didn't know at the time because that wasn't my doing. That was him. He wasn't a great person. He wasn't a great partner. I was. But I had to learn that that what was that forgiveness, forgiveness doesn't obligate

yvonne wink (26:36.468)

Me to keep giving someone access to my life. And so eventually something shifted. And that's when I began to write the book and talk about what was happening, right? And it wasn't, it wasn't, I didn't think at the time, it was me just journaling. It wasn't some big dramatic moment where I suddenly just stopped loving that person. He was much quieter than that. It was in the silence of travel. It was in on airplanes for hours and hours just scribbling notes.

I started realizing that I didn't want the relationship anymore. And it wasn't, it wasn't because I didn't love him or care anymore. It wasn't about that. But because I realized that I was losing myself trying to make something work. I wasn't happy. I couldn't find joy anymore. I was becoming someone I barely recognized. I mean, when you start to consider medication and even a lobotomy, ha ha.

I was trying to track down a doctor that could perform that procedure. but but it was because I felt so emotionally depleted. I had given everything. I had listened to every excuse, every reason why he couldn't love me, why he couldn't treat me the way I deserved to be treated. I was emotionally depleted.

But wanna make something clear, Rook, before I move on. I I was I talk about the medication and I wanna be careful there because there's absolutely nothing wrong with getting help for depression or taking medications when it's appropriate. That wasn't my situation. So I wanna make sure I make that huge because I'm a huge supporter of medication, of therapy, of doing that hard work, getting the help that you need. but for me it was it was it was a moment that I had to face. It was a

moment that I had to ask myself, was I trying to find a way to feel better so I could keep tolerating a life that was making me unhappy?

yvonne wink (28:42.028)

And that question stopped me. Why? Why was I trying to find a way to feel better? By seeking therapy, medications, lobotomy, all of that, right? And and that's the question that changed my life because I'd spent so much time asking, how do I fix this? What can I do? How do I juggle him and his emotions and his deficits and and and his

toxic patterns and behaviors and childhood wounds and attachment styles. How do I do that? I don't even I I I had to ask myself, how do I

I don't even want this relationship anymore. That was the question. That was my answer.

Instead of how do I fix this? I finally allowed myself to answer honestly, do I want this relationship anymore? And the answer was no.

And that was heartbreaking, but it was also the beginning of something, right? Because for the first time in a long time, I wasn't making a decision based on whether someone else chose me. And it felt so freeing. I say it in the book, I say it over and over. It wasn't the first time, the sixth time, the tenth time. There were many times, but I finally did it.

yvonne wink (30:14.648)

I was asking myself what I wanted to choose, not is someone going to choose me? And I think that's how I'm showing up now in my relationships, in my friendships, in my career. What do I want?

yvonne wink (30:35.212)

One of the things that I've learned is that reinvention isn't always this glamorous, empowering experience. I used to do this when I was in high school and and I used to try to reinvent myself and I would shave my hair on one side, dress super cool, change my entire style that summer and show up completely different. I really loved to reinvent myself, but it is not always

glamorous like that. It's not always empowering, right? It's messy and it's lonely, very, very lonely. Sometimes it means walking away from something or someone that you've spent years building a life with. Sometimes it means admitting, you know, that the life that you were working so hard to create, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't fit you anymore.

To reinvent myself professionally. I've had to rethink relationships and reinvent myself within relationships. I'm still doing it. I think that's the part that I think we should talk about that more. I don't think we talk about that enough. You know, we love a good before and after story, right? The woman who left the bad relationship, the woman who changed careers, the woman who found herself.

cue like this inspirational music. But I love to talk about the middle, the messy. What about the woman who's made progress but still gets scared?

Who knows that she's capable of more, but isn't entirely sure what that more looks like? What about the woman that does say, I'm done, no more?

yvonne wink (32:36.248)

Right? What about the woman who has these incredible moments of confidence, followed by many more moments when she's thinking, What in the entire hell am I doing?

'Cause I know her very, very well.

Actually, she's currently hosting this podcast right now. That's how well I know her. And I think that's something that I love normalizing. I see that I I do this with friends and even loose friends, sometimes clients, and I see their eyeballs crisscrossing because I'm I've gone way too deep for them. But it is something that I do want to continue to normalize, right? You can be proud of how far you've come and still be uncertain about where you're going.

Those two things is exist together.

I remember looking around at my life when I was married. and I I was thinking, you know, this is fine. It's fine. I mean, really, guys, I'm fine. I'm fine. See, it wasn't chaotic. It wasn't abusive. It wasn't toxic.

yvonne wink (33:55.372)

I you know, it wasn't even this tumultuous, fighting, toxic relationship that I would experience later in life after my marriage. It was it was my marriage was actually safe. It was familiar, it was predictable. We had built a life together. We'd been together for over two decades. We had three beautiful daughters, a beautiful home. We lived in a great neighborhood, drove cars, had boats, had had everything.

And there was so there was so much about that life that I loved, that I still love, that I think back and remember the good times, the memories, the families that joined us along our journey, the friends that we made. So much that I love about that life. But there was something missing. And I think it was missing from the very beginning. And I think I knew that going in. But I thought.

Hey, I can change this. I can, I can have someone see me as a person with my own individual thoughts and ideas. And I think he'll be able to meet my needs. He's not meeting them right now, but I think he will as he learns to love me and we grow together. Whew. I didn't feel sane. I didn't feel heard going into it. And somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling like myself. I would say pretty early on.

And I think deep down as we went through into the middle and even the end of our relationship, I knew that he wasn't happy either. We weren't necessarily these two bad figures, right? This mom and dad that were terrible, these bad people doing horrible things to each other. We weren't, it wasn't like that. Ask our kids. They don't remember fighting, yelling, screaming, toxic behaviors. We were just two people who had spent 20 plus years.

Building a life together. And somewhere along the way, we'd lost our connection. I said this in many episodes before. We were in love and then we weren't.

yvonne wink (36:07.544)

There's something that I still believe about that. I think this is just me. I don't know if it's because it's the space I work in, but I think that if we'd gone to therapy together and opened up and talked and and were able to identify emotions and feelings and and then share them with one another, I think we could have had a a good chance to understand what was happening between us, the dynamic that was happening between us.

may maybe we could have repaired things and maybe not. I don't know, I'll never know. he's moved on and I think he believes he's happily married and great for him. but he wasn't someone who was comfortable with therapy. And so we never really explored that possibility together. So what happened was I ended up going by myself. I think for the first time, I think it was maybe, I believe it was actually seven years into that relationship, I started seeing a therapist.

By myself. And it was in it was in that individual talk therapy that I began to understand something that I hadn't been willing to admit all those years. That I wasn't really living my life. I was simply surviving it. I was white knuckling life, guys. I was going, I was just going through the motions, doing what needed to be done. It was fine. We're fine. Everything's fine.

being the wife, the mother, being the person everyone could count on. Where's my lunch? Boom, right here. Where's my bag? Boom, right here. Where are my shoes? Boom, right here. Where are my keys? Right there. Phone right there. I I got your back. I got you. And from the outside, there there wasn't necessarily anything obviously wrong. Which in I think a lot of ways for my kids and even our friends and family around us, that made it more difficult.

Because how do you explain that you're unhappy when your life looks perfectly fine? Look around you. Look at this big home. Look at everything. And there is not one thing I needed or wanted. Not one struggle. Not one bill that I couldn't pay, that I had to stress over, not one need unmet.

yvonne wink (38:30.136)

How do you tell someone you want something different when you can't even articulate exactly what that something is?

And he and I had that conversation later after our divorce. was final. It was a really good conversation, private. I won't talk about it. But we had that. being unable to articulate exactly what that something was that we were both needing, right? But but then during that time, my mom passed away. And that changed something in me. Losing her, it left me feeling completely unmoored. Like the ground beneath me had just shifted. Actually, it wasn't even shifting, it was just

Bloop, wide open, and I was free-falling. And when you lose someone that important, something you know, you start looking at your own life differently. You start thinking about time very differently, about the years that you've already lived, about the years you might have left. I always say I'm on the back end of my life. If you like golf, I'm on the 16th hole.

Right. And whether is s if you like baseball, seventh inning stretch. I'm I'm in the I'm the I'm that the back end of a lot of things in my life. And I don't say this in a negative way or I'm that I'm scared about it. I just I know that I'm starting to think about my time very differently and and the years that I do have left very differently. And whether you're actually, you know, are are we living the life that we want? I think about that almost daily.

I can't say that losing my mom was the only reason I finally found the courage to ask for that separation and eventually we divorced and and parted ways. But I do believe that that played a big part. Because suddenly the idea of spending the rest of my life simply going through the motions, white knuckling and surviving it, started to feel different.

yvonne wink (40:32.482)

And eventually we parted ways and and I don't believe that it was because we hated one another. and it wasn't because our entire marriage was a big, huge mistake. And certainly not because those 20 years meant nothing. They meant a great deal. We built a family, we raised three daughters. We shared an enormous chapter of our lives. I really

really, really do try my hardest not to speak ill of him. I wish that he did the same, but some people have to find the villain in the story so that they can re get the compassion from people surrounding them, right? And and I just felt that if I kept my mouth shut specifically about him and my thoughts on what I felt that he had done, how wrong he was in my book, I felt that eventually people around us would see the truth.

And they did.

But I was I was beginning to understand that a life can be meaningful and still be a life that you outgrow. And I remember vividly, I think it was about two, twenty twenty-four is when I started to realize that.

That my life can be very min meaningful and it still can be a life that I'm outgrowing. So when I asked for that separation, yes, I was terrified. And I still pay a heavy price to this day. because I wasn't just leaving a marriage, I was stepping away from from an identity I'd spent twenty years building. And and I didn't know exactly who I was going to become, and that's still unfolding in my life.

yvonne wink (42:19.532)

I just knew I couldn't keep ignoring the woman I was becoming. She was getting louder and prouder and she was puffing her chest out more. And looking back, I think that was one of the first times I really began to unfold.

Which is why I created the unfolding, right? Because I began realizing that the conversations I was having with friends and clients, with my daughters, and even with myself were all very connected. Different stories, different circumstances, but so many of the same underlying questions. Why do I keep doing this? Why am I afraid to change?

Why do I feel guilty for wanting more? Why do I feel guilty for wanting to take care of myself? Why do I keep putting myself last?

yvonne wink (43:21.546)

And the big one was who am I when I stop being the person everyone expects me to be? I couldn't answer that question.

I wanted to create a place where we could have those conversations. That's what the Unfolding podcast was about. We could talk about psychology without making it feel like a college lecture, right? Where I can spin, where I spoon feed it to you that you go, that's what that meant. Right? Where we could, we could laugh at ourselves. We could, you know, own our own s**t, own it.

Really own it. We can talk about how our ego is not our amigo, right? And how detrimental you know, having your ego drive your life, how detrimental that can be to yourself, to your relationships, to your life. And wanted a place where we could admit we've made some questionable decisions. What are we going to do about it? Right? Where we could recognize that sometimes the person we're trying so hard.

To understand is not out there. It's not pointing fingers at everyone else. That person that we're trying so hard to understand, to fix, to heal, to love, to hug.

is ourselves.

yvonne wink (44:52.174)

Because I I believe this wholeheartedly. We are not finished becoming who we are. Not at 25, I don't believe, not at 35, not at 50, not at 80, not at 90, not 100 plus. And certainly not because we've been married, we've been divorced, we've had failed relationships, we've raised children, they're off and gone, we've built careers, or we've checked off all the boxes.

That society told us we were supposed to. And if we checked all those boxes off, we were guaranteed happiness. You will be happy when you have a relationship, when you find that man, when you get that career, when you buy that house, when you bought you finally get your body in the shape that you want it. You're gonna be happy.

See, we keep changing, we keep learning, we keep unfolding. Shameless plugs, I know, but I don't want this podcast to be about having all the answers because I don't. I screw up a lot. I backtrack a lot. I give advice and I'm scared to take it. Right? I want.

This podcast to be about asking better questions, about challenging our own thoughts and our beliefs. And here's something that I want to admit myself. Lately, I've been questioning my own direction, not just personally, but professionally. What do I want to teach? Who do I want to teach? Who am I really trying to reach? Who's my target audience?

What do people need to hear? What do I've been really questioning my own direction? What do I want people to walk away, you know, with after listening to this podcast? And I'm slowly realizing something. I'm realizing that I don't want to spend the rest of my life only talking about what hurt us. Because I spent a lot of season one doing that. But I want to talk about what we do next. How

yvonne wink (47:03.724)

We rebuild confidence after a breakup, after a betrayal? How do we rebuild self-trust after we lost it to someone else? We we handed it over to someone else, relinquished our power, our instincts, our trust, our gut responses to someone else. How do we learn to trust ourselves again? How do we make decisions that reflect who we are now?

Instead of who we used to be.

And how how we build lives that we actually enjoy living? I just taught a group the other day and I I talked about 2026. And then I had them envision themselves entering 2027 or at the end of 2027, and I said, Would you want to live this exact same year over again? Would you repeat everything over again? If so, why? If not.

How? How do you change it?

Right. I want to actually enjoy this life that I'm living because healing matters. Understanding our patterns matters, right? Understanding our past matters. Our childhood, all of that matters. But at some point, I want us to start talking about the future too. Not just what we're recovering from, what we're moving toward. And that includes me. I'm still figuring things out.

yvonne wink (48:39.608)

Still challenging myself, still making mistakes, still learning how to practice the very things I talk about. But I'm also excited about what's next.

And I want to bring you all along for that ride. It brings me to my final thought today and my point. I'm so excited to share, you know, the details about the Tob Podcast host competition, right? I'm that somebody entered me into that. I'm I'm honored and grateful that somebody cared enough to enter my podcast into this and have come to the top five.

Right? I've made it into the top five. Right now I'm ranked number one. And I've been there for a few weeks. And I'm incredibly, incredibly grateful because when I started the unfolding podcast, I wasn't thinking about competitions or rankings. I was thinking about conversations. I was thinking about connections, about reaching someone who might be sitting alone, questioning their life, their relationship, or their next chapter. Someone who might hear.

something and think, my God, I thought I was the only one. That's why I do this. And now I have this opportunity to take those conversations even further. The prize is is $25,000 a shot to be on Ryan Seacrest's podcast, a six-part episode series on iHeartRadio.

Right. And over the next few weeks there'll be there's gonna be a voting process. I want you to think American Idol, right? But instead of singing, I'm over here just talking about childhood conditioning, attachment patterns, and why we keep dating people who make us question our in s our sanity. Right? Because apparently this is my my talent that I've come to know. but I'm also going to need your help.

yvonne wink (50:41.708)

So if you've enjoyed this podcast and and you've learned something and you've laughed with me or found yourself relating to any one of the episodes or these conversations, I'd be so grateful for your support. I'll keep sharing the official voting details and the links each time a round opens. There'll be a new round in about three days. But mid-November is when it all comes to a head. So if you know anyone

Who might benefit from these conversations or these episodes, please share this episode with them or any one of these episodes. Because whether I win this competition or not, I want to keep growing this community. I love it. I love you guys. I want to become a better storyteller, a better interviewer, a better host. I want to keep creating conversations that make us think and laugh and question ourselves. Maybe, maybe we get to walk away seeing our lives a little differently.

I'm still unfolding too. So if you're new here, welcome. And if you've been here since the beginning, thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for growing with me. Thank you for allowing me to show up as a woman who is still figuring things out. Thank you for letting me mess up. Thank you for letting me trip and fall and get back up and share with you. Because that's really the heart of this podcast. Not perfection, not having all the answers.

Not pretending that because we've learned something, we'll never make the same mistakes again. And as as I'm teaching, I'm learning and I'm growing. But it's about willing to look at ourselves, to tell the truth, to laugh when we can, to change when we need to, and to become to just keep becoming. I'm so excited about this next chapter. I'm excited about the competition. I'm excited to see where this podcast can go, where we all can take it.

but more than anything, I'm excited about the conversations we're going to have along the way. Because I'm not done growing. I'm not done talking and running my mouth. And I hope you're not either. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for being here. And until next time, I'm your girl, Yvonne. Keep unfolding.

yvonne wink (00:01)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (00:06)

Welcome back to the Unfolding Podcast. I'm your girl, Yvonne Wink. And today, this this episode is a very special episode to me. Because sitting across from me is someone I've known her entire life. Literally. I gave her life. I was there when she arrived. let me tell you, she's been making an entrance ever since. Today

yvonne wink (00:35)

I have my wonderful, fabulous, beautiful middle daughter Sydney. She's joining me today. and I want to explain a little bit about Sydney before I turn her loose. Okay, Sid is my middle child. She's also a twin. which I'm sure you would like everyone to know that you are the older twin by 20 minutes. Best 20 minutes of life. Those 20 minutes count. So

yvonne wink (01:04)

But anyway, she also has an older sister and a younger twin sister. And somehow she's managed to develop a personality big enough to compete with the entire family. Sydney is our family comedian. She's our Pisces drama queen. She's our ray of sunshine. And occasionally our entire family's unpaid entertainment department. But don't let that big personality fool you.

yvonne wink (01:35)

This chick is incredibly intelligent, politically passionate, informed, and opinionated. And when she believes something, when she grabs a hold of something, an idea, something that she's passionate about, she takes off. And you're gonna hear all about it. She is the kind of person who can turn a casual family dinner, this happened several times, into a political debate.

yvonne wink (02:05)

Minds me of my mom. but you know, like Nana, she's complete with facts and statistics and a closing argument, and you didn't even know you were participating in it. And all of a sudden everyone's like dropping their forks and cups, like, let's end this call, this this meeting right now or dinner, whatever it is. but the worst part or the best part is that she's usually pretty convincing. So you might not agree with her when the conversation conversation starts, but by the time she's completed.

yvonne wink (02:34)

Complete, she's done. You're questioning all your life's decisions, every thought, everything you thought you knew. She's funny, she's fierce, she's passionate, and she's never been afraid to use her voice. One of the things I'm so, so, so proud of. And as you'll hear today, she's found a way to turn that voice into something so much bigger than herself. But underneath all of that, snarts, the intellect, the humor.

yvonne wink (03:04)

love the passion sh Sydney you're one of the grittiest humans I've ever known ever in my entire life and I'm not just saying that because I'm your mom. I mean admittedly I am wildly biased but whatever that's a different story. The thing that I love about you now I'm talking to you and I'm also talking to our audience is that Sydney didn't have an easy road growing up. She did it. she experienced bullying

yvonne wink (03:33)

she struggled with learning challenges. And there were moments when school was extremely difficult and when life was difficult. And I and when I know she had her work was harder than the people she had to work harder than the people around her. Sorry, my phone's ringing at the same time. but yet somehow this girl took all of that and turned it into something amazing, remarkable.

yvonne wink (04:04)

And on top of that, she's moved away to Hawaii, left her mother. she built a life for herself. She's completed her bachelor's degree studying women's and gender studies and psychology with a minor in queer studies. I'll let you talk a little bit about that later. And now she's pursu pursuing her master's degree all while maintaining a 4.0. 4.0. Ha ha. Meanwhile.

yvonne wink (04:31)

I still occasionally have to Google how to spell words that I've been using for 30 years when we talk. But here's what makes me the proudest. Sid, it's not your grades, it's not the degrees, it's not it's not any of that. It's who you've become. I've loved watching that. Today, Sydney works with women experiencing domestic violence. I'm so proud of you. She helps them navigate

yvonne wink (04:59)

Really frightening situations, confusing, right? They're unsure. and really complicated situations. She accompanies them to court from start to finish, and and I guess it wraps up in court with the win. And you've had a few of those. I'm so proud of you. but she support she supports them through moments when their lives may have felt completely upside down at times. And I think there's something incredibly meaningful about a young woman who's had to fight

yvonne wink (05:28)

to find her own footing, choosing a career dedicated to helping other women find theirs.

yvonne wink (05:37)

My heart. Okay. But before we talk about this amazing woman who you'll meet today and the work she's doing, I want you to meet the little girl that I knew. Because Sydney, we have a few things to discuss. And don't you worry. I promise I will not embarrass you. As long as you promise not to embarrass me. Just kidding. Welcome to the Unfolding podcast. Sydney Isabella Wink.

yvonne wink (06:07)

Yay! Are you happy to be here? Yes, I'm happy to be here. I love you. I'm so happy you asked me. Me too. Okay. Before we get into the really serious stuff here, I want to start with you growing up. And just follow my lead. I'm gonna ask you questions and blab away, and I will I'll keep us on track. So don't you worry. because I have my version of your childhood. So I'm very, very interested to hear yours. And although I'm a

yvonne wink (06:34)

slightly nervous and scared about what you're going to say. Who cares? Let's let it go. Let's go. Lock in. Let's do this. Okay. Sydney. What was it like growing up in our family? Be careful. I have a microphone and a podcast. I feel like in our family growing up, it was chaotic but in the best way possible. It was chaotic in the way of like I remember one time we did a juggling class.

yvonne wink (07:02)

And then you had a whole dinner dedic dedicated to Cuba. I like things. I like things. I really think that it was like modern family, but it was like Jay and Gloria's family. Like we were we were in Jay and Gloria's family with you and our dad. Like it was very similar aspects and we would always come home and you'd be dressed up in some weird outfit, you know?

yvonne wink (07:27)

gosh. Here we go. Here we go. Let's do this. what did you feel like? What was your place like in our home and our family growing up with your show about siblings too? Still just lay off the parents and go with the siblings. Siblings, I feel like it was interesting having an older sister who was significantly older than me and Taylor. So, I feel like that was fun because it's like you look up to somebody.

yvonne wink (07:54)

And you know, you get to watch them do things that you're like, my god, I can't wait to do that as an adult, you know? and I think it was interesting to do that. and we got so excited to show her things. and sometimes she would she wouldn't be excited to see us because she was a teenager and we were like four, you know. But other times like we felt so loved. and I think being a twin, it was it honestly, as I've grown up, I've really been thankful to have a twin. At first I was like, having a twin, like

yvonne wink (08:24)

Always having to share, always having somebody that's like in competition technically because you know, you you can never get away from the comparison. So but now as I've grown up, I really am thankful for my twin because it's been a built in friend for my entire life. Okay. W were you always the funny one, the dramatic one? or did that develop as you got older? I think the most dramatic people are you and my dad.

yvonne wink (08:54)

I think that you guys are dramatic in different ways, but you guys say I'm dramatic, but you guys are just better at hiding your drama. okay. You guys are better at hiding the theatrics, you know? Like I'm outward with the theatrics. You guys are I think Taylor and Mariah are also dramatic. I think we're just all a little Mexican, you know? Yeah. Like Did you did you answer the question? have you were you always the funny one? I guess you did. Yes, yes.

yvonne wink (09:23)

I think I've always been the funny one, you know? Yeah. We're a pretty funny family and I feel like we all have our quirks, so it just added on to everybody. I love that. Do you think being funny ever helped you get through some difficult times and things in your life? Yes, I think I use it as a way to joke about things that are going on in my life to this day, you know? 'Cause sometimes it's easier to make a joke or just like make the room laugh. 'Cause

yvonne wink (09:48)

You know, sometimes you're like you don't know what to say, so you just say a joke and then it's like easy to slide in after that to make friends or just connect with somebody, you know. I feel like everybody wants a funny person in their lives. Yeah. I I this is something I've always remembered since you were little. you'd say, I'm sorry, I talk so much. I'm talking too much, whatever. And or we would tell you, Sid, you're talking a lot. And you'd go, Well, no, who else is gonna carry the conversations in this house or the in a car or in an event at an event.

yvonne wink (10:17)

So you really felt like you were you would take the lead on that and your voice needed to be heard? I'm a yapper, what can I say? I have things to say, you do. People to talk to, you do, you do. okay. One of the things I've always, always loved about you is your ability to make people laugh, to make people you're it being around you, you feel very inclusive, right? When you're with you.

yvonne wink (10:44)

You can you walk into a room and you completely change the energy. 99.999% of the time, it's a very positive experience. And then you have your things, right? and I think that sometimes people see that side of you and they don't realize how much depth there is underneath it because you're very giggly and you're just really s bubbly and sweet. We used to call you wiggies. Lots of people still call you wiggies. Our family calls you wiggies. But do you think that people sometimes underestimate

yvonne wink (11:13)

you and who you are because you are funny and bubbly and kind and sweet all on the outside like that. You show up, you present just very bubbly and and life full of life and and love and comfort. but being funny like that, do you think that sometimes people underestimate you? I think definitely. I think that it's hard for like a young woman to get taken seriously just in this day and age, Gen you know.

yvonne wink (11:42)

The way I talk, I call everybody D.Va and like Queen. You know, and so it's like I I am like, Hey Diva, how are you doing? Like I say hi to all the little aunties that I work with and I be chatting it up and I think that sometimes I look like a personality hire, but you know, I also bring a lot to the table and so I think that a lot of the times it's like I reinforce that idea of like, I'm smart, I still have a like chair at this table, you know, because

yvonne wink (12:10)

Of the things that I I'm so passionate about the things that I wanna do and like the future I wanna have. So it's like as much as I can be giggly and laughy, it that's not that's gonna go away completely when I'm like in it. When it's business time. Ooh, I love that girl. Yes. I love that. okay, for a minute, let's talk a little bit about being a twin because you are technically the older twin.

yvonne wink (12:32)

Right, and I know that's extremely important to you. No, it's not. It's not okay. The only one that brings it up is you. because you always say, Be nice to your little sister. Be nice to your little sister. She's the baby. I say she's the I'm like, she's a little sister by twenty minutes. okay, what was it like growing up with a twin sister? there's a lot of people that don't know what that's like. Yeah, it honestly had its ups and downs. And I feel like growing up

yvonne wink (12:58)

It was funny to look at like baby pictures of us when you used to dress up dress us up the same. I think it's so funny. I wish you never stopped doing that so we would still twin like that. I know. 'Cause I think it's so funny when twins wear the same clothes. I know, I know. And I've seen that as they get older in junior high and high school, they keep doing that, except you two wouldn't. No No, because we have different styles. I think it's interesting because I am a twin, but we're so different. Yeah. And we're different in the way we act, we talk, like

yvonne wink (13:26)

Mm-hmm. The way we dress, the way we do everything in life. I feel like it's so interesting to be a twin, grow up the same way, and we're completely different in the in the values and the things that we do on a day to day. Yeah. Do you think that do you ever feel the pressure to be different from your sisters? Sometimes I think that I've come to terms with my own self. But I think for a couple years, you know, like as you're a teenager and you're trying to figure out life.

yvonne wink (13:54)

I think I wanted to make a point to like be my own human being. Yeah. I saw that. But I think I'm at a point where it's like, okay, like it gets to a point where it's like I have to realize what I want and what was like just me being like, I want to be different, you know? And so I think that that's been a thing to like handle. Yeah. I love that you've handled it well. what do you think being the middle child taught you? I think that

yvonne wink (14:23)

Being the middle child I mean, you're the only one that calls me the middle child still. You are the only one that talks about me being the middle child. So I've never felt like the middle child. I feel like it's always been like us and, you know, not to throw my sisters under the bus, but I am my mom's favorite daughter. So the first one on the pod. The first one on the podcast. Just kidding, guys, don't be mad at me. Did when did you feel

yvonne wink (14:53)

like you had your own identity outside of the sisters and the mom and the dad. when do you can you remember that moment that you knew that? Probably in the past like year and a half. Mm-hmm. After moving and like creating a new life for myself, like I still miss my family so much, but it's also like I'm my own human being. I go home and like there's a home for me waiting in Hawaii and like that's such a crazy concept. And so I think I do trip out sometimes because I think growing up has been so weird.

yvonne wink (15:23)

Like sometimes I like take a step back and I'm like, What the hell? Like when did I get to this point in life? You know? I'm like, when did this happen? Like what the hell? I have to pay like my Wi Fi bill. I'm like, this is horrible. Or like I run out of toilet paper and I can't just text you to go get toilet paper, I have to go get it myself And like things like that, you know, it is a big learning change and I think that as much as you hate that I live in a different state and you miss me so much, it I've grown so much

yvonne wink (15:51)

And I think that it's been fun to explore the world without being like, I have to go home to my family. You know, like I get to just do whatever I want. Mm-hmm. And it's not like I'm like partying and drinking every night. That's not the case. I no my doing whatever I want is going to bed at like nine ten. I know this. The other night you wouldn't even have a drink with me. so okay, let's settle something right here, right here, right now.

yvonne wink (16:19)

Who was actually the most dramatic one growing up?

yvonne wink (16:26)

Some could say me. Some. I think that I am just more vocal with my feelings than the rest of us. So I could be seen as dramatic. Or yes. We're all feeling those emotions. Mm-hmm. But you said Daddy and I are the most dramatic. Yeah. Yeah. I think you guys are dramatic in different ways that aren't the same.

yvonne wink (16:53)

Way I'm dramatic, so I'm seen as more dramatic, but you guys are more dramatic at your core. gosh, here we go. okay, let's do a little shift. cause when I look at you today, I see this confident, educated, independent, living your own life, solo traveling, leaving the country by yourself, just getting on airplanes all by yourself, figuring out things by yourself. Okay.

yvonne wink (17:23)

But I also remember the little girl who had some really, really difficult years. Cause you know, I'm your ride or die, so I've been through all of it with you. But I think it's important for people to understand that the woman sitting right here in front of me today didn't just wake up one morning with all of this confidence, right? And this in this drive and the grit and the understanding and the direction that you have now. there was a journey. Definitely. You know, you love to talk about the incubators.

yvonne wink (17:50)

Yes. That's another that I'm gonna do a podcast on that one because that concept is actually amazing. She wants all of my college essays to be about being in an incubator when I was like not even coherent. I was a baby baby, newborn, and every single essay has to revolve around an incubator. I'm like, mother, I don't remember that. There's more to that one, but I'll get to that later. I wanna hear that journey from your perspective.

yvonne wink (18:19)

When you look back at your childhood, what do you remember as as being the hardest part?

yvonne wink (18:28)

I think that the hardest part was being in a neighborhood like Cota de Casa and being some of the only people that aren't fully white. I think that that's been a big thing that I bring up a lot. Just because like we didn't get representation of who we were growing up, you know? The only people that we saw that looked like us were house cleaners or like service workers, you know? They weren't like living in the community with us and so

yvonne wink (18:56)

You know, when you're little you don't understand that concept of like race and like that no, it's not really a talked about thing. And I never understood why I didn't look like anybody that around me or that our body shapes were different, things like that. Like that was never gonna be we were never gonna look like everybody else. We didn't have blue eyes, we didn't have blonde hair, you know, things like that. And I think also a big thing was like learning disabilities because I was like, dang, everybody was calling me stupid.

yvonne wink (19:26)

Look at me now. You know? Yes. I was like, I'll prove you wrong. You did. And I did. Yeah. So I think those are the two biggest things that I think about when I think about like my childhood being hard. Yeah. So I love that that you touched on that. Just maybe not necessarily fitting in. Yeah. and that's probably part of the bullying that you experienced. not looking like everyone, not not even understanding your own

yvonne wink (19:56)

learning curves and disabilities at the time, right? Everybody was very driven, including your sisters. And so I it and I I think as you were struggling with your learning disabilities, it may have seemed that you weren't driven. But you were just trying to navigate that. So I'm really proud of you. do you think that changed the way you saw yourself? I think so, honestly. Cause I never thought it would it affected me.

yvonne wink (20:24)

But then recently as I've gotten older, I've been like doing my own therapy and also going to school for my masters. And so it's like constantly thinking about like adverse childhood experiences and things like that, which are interesting to think about. And so I've been like trying to think about my childhood and my memories and what led me to think certain things about myself today. And I definitely think that like growing up in the area we grew up in definitely would be one of the reasons why I feel the wa same way about myself. Cause I think if we grew up in Long Beach

yvonne wink (20:54)

Or like in a place like Hawaii, like I don't think I would have the same insecurities about the way I look. Ooh. If I grew up around more body types and more people. Right. You were exposed to more. Yeah. Cause it was like everybody looked the same. Everybody had like blue eyes, lip filler, things like that. Like it was a lot of everybody, but Yeah, most people. Well, okay. So looking back then, what what do you wish

yvonne wink (21:21)

The adults around you had understood about what you were going through.

yvonne wink (21:27)

I don't know, I don't necessarily think it was the adults that needed to understand it. I wish I could have like talked to myself, my younger self, and explain like, hey, Queen, it gets better. you know, because I think that it is a lonely experience growing up in an area like that. But it's also a lonely experience being like, What the hell? Why is my brain not working? Right. And there's a lot going on, yeah. Yeah, like knowing that I wasn't stupid.

yvonne wink (21:52)

Right. And also being like, why can't I get my brain to work? It was like a constant battle. and also like the pressure that was placed on me to like prove everybody wrong too. Right. I think that that's a big thing. And I think that it causes anxiety. You know, like remember I was in fourth grade and I got shingles over my stress levels, you know? Like I have been stressed out since I knew what stress was. I know. Which is so bizarre because Daddy and I didn't place that pressure on you.

yvonne wink (22:20)

No, it's an internal stressor. It really is. I've seen you s you were stressing way before that. I've been stressed since I could stress. Yeah. I remember you waking up one morning and and you had a diaper on and angel wings and you were organizing your drawers, and I think you jumped out of your crib. So you were about two. Two or three. And you had pink cowboy boots on. But Of course I did. Okay, so one of the hardest things about

yvonne wink (22:48)

Being a mother is realizing that you can't protect your children from everything. You you can love them. You can advocate for them, which I did, you know, fiercely, right? You can try to give them all the tools, but you can't walk into every classroom, every friendship, every difficult moment and make it better, even though I often did. I'm going to the school and talking to that teacher or whatever. you still want to do it now. I know.

yvonne wink (23:18)

gosh. But I think that's something that I had to learn too. Because, you know, I think I the ta Mariah and I and even Taylor, right? Maybe we slid in a little bit and and kind of fit in with the crowd. because I don't think that everybody looked a certain way. I think that's how you felt, maybe. which is valid and and you know, completely valid. 'cause 'cause I what I hear you saying is that you just didn't see

yvonne wink (23:47)

People that look like you. Right? Yeah. And that's really important to acknowledge. So, what do you think I understood about what you were going through or even daddy? Like, what do you think we missed? I think you guys did the best you could possibly could. I really think so, because you guys didn't I mean, you were also experiencing the same thing I was as a woman and a person in this society, you know? Like

yvonne wink (24:15)

You guys were you guys were going th through the same thing, finding your place, finding your grounds. I think you guys did an incredible job advocating for me and being like, no, like we got her, you know? but yeah. I love that. Thank you. and and I know that school wasn't always easy for you. I remember just vividly walking into your third grade, I think it was third grade class.

yvonne wink (24:45)

And the teacher and the entire what's the team called? I like a are you talking about wagon wheel? Yes. Yes. Don't say the name. Sorry. Okay, there was the the education team was all was there and they essentially told us, why don't you help guide her into something that she can do with her hands? Because she won't be able to use her mind and her brain as she gets older. there's just so much she's so behind. She can't read, she can't write, she

yvonne wink (25:14)

no one knew at the time what you were experiencing. It wasn't until I pulled you out, homeschooled you, was when I found out, you know, the severity of the deficits that you were struggling with. But I want to talk about that just for a minute because I think there's so many young people who struggle and even a parent that struggle or that are watching their children struggle academically and and start believing that that means you're not intelligent, right? so

yvonne wink (25:42)

If you can't if you can't for just for a minute, what was that experience like? Like did you ever question your own intelligence? Did anybody ever tell you you're stupid? I guess I I know they did, so I'm not even answering it. But were teachers or people, did any any of those make you feel capable or incapable? I mean, all of that. Talk to me about that. I feel like when it clicked in fourth grade, finally, I was like, I am smart.

yvonne wink (26:08)

I do have a lot of things to do. Mind you, that teacher was very scary. she was like mistrenchable. but I think that before then I don't really remember much about school. I was never like I never really cared about school. I was like always I wanted to go to fashion school and I didn't really care about the books or anything. That wasn't really what I wanted to do for a long period of time. Like I have never been into science or anything like that. I liked math, but

yvonne wink (26:37)

I didn't like English, I didn't like reading, which is so funny because now I read so much and I write so many essays. Yeah I would never expect me to be d at the place that I'm at because I also still hate reading and I still hate writing essays. So Well, I think it's you're in the thick of it right now. You're in the thick of it, but you'll get back to reading for fun. but okay, so I had a good question and it's completely gone now. Well I don't even think I answered your question to begin with. yeah, we're we're did you ever question your own intelligence?

yvonne wink (27:09)

I think when I was like younger, no, because I didn't know what it meant for me to be falling behind. Right. But you kind of did. So I have a funny story that I think listeners will find very humorous. so when we when you were struggling with the learning disabilities, is that okay to say that?

yvonne wink (27:32)

I think so. Yeah. Okay. I don't know the correct terms. Deficits or whatever, right? You were struggling. You were on the struggle bus. And so, but but they were trying they were telling us she can't read, she can't write, she can't and I I'm going, yes, she can. She reads she has this fairy series. The it was remember those six books in the fairies. I read them from the Tooth Fairy too, yeah. Yeah, the Tooth Fairy gave them to you a series of books, and they were written or it was through the eyes of a fairy. And you read them. I s I

yvonne wink (28:01)

You would pick them out and read them, you'd take them to school when they'd say, Okay, you can bring your favorite book so that you can read on Friday and you would take your fairy book and you would read it all until we found out that you had just memorized all of the words in all of the books. Do you remember that? Period. I knew what I was doing. You did you were a hustler. A hustler. Even back then. Yes, I had to get by somehow. Yeah. But you knew then, so you didn't you didn't think

yvonne wink (28:31)

Well I must I might I'm not intelligent. You just thought I have to figure out how to go this way because this this this path isn't working for me. So let me try to go through the side window. Yes. And memorize. Wow. Wow. I mean this is this amazes it it amazes me because the little girl who had to work so hard in school, who had to hustle and memorize books as we read them to you, so that you can read them back to us and or later,

yvonne wink (28:59)

So that no one would know that you couldn't read. And I don't even think you knew you couldn't read. It was just something that you had to do to survive. I think so, yeah. Yeah. But I see you, you know, you work so hard in school now. and I I mean maintaining the four point like girl, girl. But honestly, it's just it like at this point with the four point and the degrees and all the minors and I feel like you're just showing off now.

yvonne wink (29:31)

but anyway, okay. When you look back at that younger version of yourself, do you think do you think she'd have some words? What what what what do you think she would say if she could see you today? I think my younger self would be very, very happy to hear that I go to the beach pretty regularly. I remember always, always, always crying when it's time to go out of the beach. Well, I also remember crying because I would always almost drown because Laguna Beach waves

yvonne wink (30:00)

Not friendly for kids. But anyway, I would still go and I would get whipped around in the waves and my hair would be covered in sand. And it's funny because I still am the same exact way. You are. I still bring home mountains of sand into my house. My bed sheets always have sand. My suitcase has sand. Your floors have sand. You know I'm home because I bring sand home from my house to here. so I think my little self would be happy about that and my jewellery.

yvonne wink (30:26)

I think my little self would be very excited about my shell collection. and I think that it would be I don't know, I think my little self would be also excited to know that I get to do whatever I want. You know, like there's nothing off limits now. Yeah. I make I make money enough to have some fun and buy myself groceries and eat ice cream for dinner if I want. I had dino nuggets for dinner the other day. Like I get to just eat little childhood snacks. Yeah.

yvonne wink (30:55)

I love that. and then something happened. You moved to Hawaii. Hawaii. How do you say it? Hawaii. Hawaii. I didn't even say it right that time. You decided to move to Hawaii on me. And as your mother, I definitely had mixed emotions when you first brought it to me. Because on one hand, I was excited for you. And because I we all love the beach. The whole our whole family was a beach family. We love Hawaii too. Like we all love it. Yes, we did. We frequented Hawaii often. But on the other hand, you know, thinking about my baby.

yvonne wink (31:24)

moving to Hawaii across the ocean, like like seriously, you know? we could you can have started with like San Diego and then and then progressed, no? Well San Diego was still more expensive tuition wise. Yeah. Same with Berkeley. Yeah, that's so actually it was more financially responsible to go to Hawaii. True. But I think that that decision, so proud of you by the way, changed your entire life, like the trajectory of your life and I'm so proud.

yvonne wink (31:54)

But what what made you decide to leave home, leave your family, leave your entire support system and all that you ever knew and move to Hawaii? Well like w and were you scared? I was scared, definitely. I was like, what the hell am I doing? Because you know, I'm an LA girl, tried and true. Like the way I c act in the world, the way I am. I love In and Out, I Tritor Joe's, like those things are not available on the tiny island that I live on.

yvonne wink (32:21)

But I knew that I needed a change and I wanted to be by a beach, but I didn't want to be in the same state I grew up in. So the only other option was either Florida or Hawaii. And I didn't want to go to Florida at all. Because I wanted to continue continue studying women's and gender studies and sexuality and stuff. And that wasn't gonna be a possibility there. so I think that Hawaii just made sense to get away from family, but also still have that same like West Coast

yvonne wink (32:49)

beach vibe. Like it's way different. The beaches are way different. And don't get me wrong, I love California beaches, but Hawaii beaches are beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Everyone that's ever been there knows and they will agree with you. okay, but what did you learn about yourself when you were no longer surrounded by your family? That it's hard and I used to rely on like a lot of people. And I still rely on people, but

yvonne wink (33:16)

I think that chosen family is a big thing as well. And I think that, you create it through the years, but it's also been such a beautiful part of my life there. And I think that that's something that like I'll always remember and I can't wait to get married 'cause it's like I'll have my bridesmaids and they'll be like friends I made in Hawaii, you know? Like I'll always remember them and I'll always remember my time there. So I think that it's been a wonderful time. But it

yvonne wink (33:43)

Did take a while to get used to living there. You know, like I did not have fun at first. I was like, this is the worst place ever. I want to come home. But I was like, I didn't want to apply to another school. I was kinda lazy. I had one more year left and I was like, I can stick it out. And you had a psycho roommate. Yes. psycho. I stuck it out. Anyone that knows me has knows the story. So anyways. I'll move on. Because you're sweet. And now I'm having the best time ever and I'm living it up.

yvonne wink (34:12)

That's what I wanted to ask you. Because was was was there a moment when you realized living in Hawaii that you realized I can actually do this. I can actually build a life on my own. Yeah, I would say like April, May, because that's when like it was getting time to remember I came home the last week of April and I felt like that was a really good time in my life. I had just got into into grad school. I was about we were preparing for graduation.

yvonne wink (34:40)

There was all these good things happening and I was like I really had to earn my place in Hawaii. I feel like it's a big thing if you talk to people that are not from Hawaii that move there. Like it takes your you have to pay your dues, you know? That's the only way I can explain. That's the advice. I love it. But it's not for everybody. Not everybody can get through that. But then I finally got through it. Things were settling down. I realized how much more calm my life was in a place where it's not like go, go, go all the time, you know, 'cause I feel like California is go go go all the time.

yvonne wink (35:09)

No matter where you're going, there's so many freeways or so much traffic, there's so many things and it's so cluttered. Yeah, yeah. I love that. I wanna do another little slight shift because this is really important. I love this part. you started studying subjects that I think spoke to your heart and and said a lot about who you are as a human. I mean psychology. Come on.

yvonne wink (35:38)

it runs in the family, obviously. And Nana, me, I mean, just our hearts f the heart that we have for people and humans and understanding human behavior. so you started studying you stu you studied psychology, women's and gender studies, queer studies. There was a lot. It was so amazing watching you graduate with all those accolades and and everything that you were experiencing that day. But what drew you to those fields? So originally I was going to school for culinary arts.

yvonne wink (36:06)

to connect with Nana because she would always that's how I think my genealogy is passed down for my grandmas to me. It's because Grammy and Nana both taught me how to cook. And so that's been such an important part of my life. So I was originally in Culinary Arts and then I worked in the field and I was like, what the hell? I don't want to be the only one woman for the rest of my life and have to like prove my place just because of that. So then I was I took a women's and gender study intro class.

yvonne wink (36:34)

my first year in college and I was like, what the hell is this? This is amazing. I wanna continue doing this. And then something switched. And then I knew exactly what I wanted to do after that. It was literally one women's and gender study class that got me hooked. And then from there it was like I wanna continue studying this. I probably am gonna do my doctorate research in this. Worst case, I'll be a professor in women's and gender studies. Like I cannot express my love for that field. What did studying gender and psychology

yvonne wink (37:04)

teach you about the world? I think that it taught me so many important aspects, like intersectionality, you know, like and the idea of like white women feminism. Because we as like a society, a Western society, we're never gonna fully understand the experiences of all women in day in this day and age. Right. But through research and like hearing people's stories and like if somebody wants to share something with you

yvonne wink (37:32)

I've learned to be like, yeah, share it with me. You stay quiet. You don't have to put your opinion in because at the end of the day, like what I want to do is learn about people. So if somebody's willing to teach me about their culture or about them as a person, I wanna listen because I'm I know that I'll grow as a person if I hear their story. Wow. I have I need some tissue. Did so

yvonne wink (37:56)

In college, did you as you're going through college, you're still in college, but as you're moving through college and learning and studying all this, did anything that you learned challenge your beliefs growing up? Like as you as with the values at that and like core values instilled in you from your family? Does that make sense? I think so. I honestly think so, because I mean like we lived a traditional like life, you know, man, woman, marriage.

yvonne wink (38:26)

kids, things like that. and as I've done more studies and as I've like learned more, I've realized what I want for my life, and I've realized like how I want my life to look. And I think that that's the biggest thing that it's challenged is my own personal beliefs. Not that I was ever not a feminist, but I think that it challenged my ideas of what feminism looks like in my life and what

yvonne wink (38:52)

Gender studies, how it's gonna play a role in my everyday life from going forwards. I you can thank me for the feminist ways because I remember when you would be crying and daddy would scold you in the room and he'd say, stop crying. And then I would say, Sydney, tell him how he's making you feel. And so he'd have to stop and he was great at it. He would stop and let you talk, and you'd say, When you yell at me, this is how I feel.

yvonne wink (39:20)

So I love that. I love that you that you you you do that for a living. And I love that you encourage others to do the same. what so so quickly, just I wanna move past this, but I wanna know if your education changed the way you understood your own experiences. Like as you learned, did you learn more about yourself?

yvonne wink (39:43)

Definitely. I think so. I don't really love psychology. I think psychology is kind of boring sometimes because a lot of it's like research and science. but I enjoy learning about the brain and like the parasympathetic nervous system and how that connects to your stomach. So if you're constantly anxious, most of the time you'll also have a stomachache. And so I think that's an interesting thing because I'll get like a stomach ache when I am studying for a test or I'm stressed out and I'm like

yvonne wink (40:10)

my parasympathetic nervous system is o all out of whack. And I feel like such a nerd. I love it. I love it. what do you wish more people as we close this section, more people understood about these studies and subjects? Because you are a driving force in in at your college for the gender are the additional studies, right? In there? The internship. Yeah. The internship. I think that the patriarchy in feminism

yvonne wink (40:40)

are looked at so down upon by s certain people because they think that feminism is the hatred of men. But that's not what it is. No. Feminism is like equality for all, justice for all. It's what like America says that it is. Right. and I think that if you really go into it, like I feel like everybody should take a gender studies class because you really learn about gender and the world from a whole different point of view. It's not that we hate men. It's that's not it at all.

yvonne wink (41:08)

Yeah. It's there's so many different parts to the patriarchy and how it contributes to like capitalism and things like that, you know, like parts of our lives that like all of these parts make our lives harder. And like the experience of women is never gonna be the same as men. Right. You know? Right. And just trying to say, Hey, these are our experiences. Yes. Sir. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I don't hate men. I know. I don't I will never say I love men and I'm single. I I don't love men, but

yvonne wink (41:37)

I don't hate men. Yes. I just don't want to be in a relationship with one, but that's okay. Okay. You're pursuing your master's degree now and you've continued to maintain a 4.0 through all of this. What changed between the little girl who struggled in school and the young woman who is excelling academically right now? I think I found a passion. And I think that above all the passion comes through in the work that I do because

yvonne wink (42:05)

You know, some days you don't want to do homework or the weather's good and I'm like looking outside and I'm like, I have so much homework. And I'm like, I check the UV, it's nine, and I'm like, I'm missing out on prime tanning time to do homework. And so there are moments where it's like I wanna give up and just be twenty three years old and not have to worry about school and work and fighting the patriarchy. But I have so much passion and it's like I'm so far in this already that it's like I wanna see what it's

yvonne wink (42:33)

what the end's gonna be like and I wanna see what it's like as a therapist to continue helping women, you know, like survivors of all gender actually. But I love that. Specifically women and empowering them and creating autonomy again. Like we as women have the choice to say no, no matter what it is. Consent is always freely given. Mm and it can also be reversed. Mm. Mm mm mm. I gotta have you back on. That'd be great. That'd be a great topic.

yvonne wink (43:00)

Yes, done. Yes, and if you've ever heard of the FRIES acronym from Planned Parenthood, I already forgot all the letters, but But Google it. But yes, because I want to talk about something that I'm especially proud of, right? I I and this is where I think your story becomes so meaningful. And and one of the reasons why I really wanted to have you on this episode or on my podcast in general. because today you're doing work.

yvonne wink (43:27)

that many people don't fully understand. I know oftentimes people ask me, what do you do? I say I work in mental health and addiction and they don't understand what that is. You know, advocating for people, you know, they have this sense of someone who's down and out or you know ha has an addiction to something, right? You're in a terrible, you know, toxic relationship and you support women who are experiencing domestic violence.

yvonne wink (43:56)

And you accompany them to court, you support them, you help them navigate systems that can feel overwhelming and frightening for everybody, anybody. And you are there helping them. And I think a lot of people hear the words domestic violence and they picture only one specific situation. Do you get do you get that too? Definitely. But it's more complicated than that. and so I want to give you an opportunity to explain what this work.

yvonne wink (44:26)

actually looks like. Like so, okay, so first I want to hear about what your role is and what does like a typical day or week look like for you. Okay, so I'm a survivor advocate for survivors of domestic violence. And what that basically means is how I explain it to my clients is I'll help you with whatever will make your life easier in this moment. So sometimes that means going to the beach and having like just a chat.

yvonne wink (44:55)

And then other times it means helping them apply to Snap or Section Eight, which was so interesting because I never grew up learning how to do that. So it's like I'm also learning with them about like SNAP and TANF. I didn't even know what TANF was until like a couple months ago. So it's all a learning experience for me too, because I think that the biggest thing is like community resources and advocating for access to care. and that's a big thing 'cause again, like

yvonne wink (45:23)

doing this type of work on an island, the resources are so limited. and it's so interesting 'cause it's kinda like a puzzle that you play. Like trying to figure out how to help this person. Like what can I do to help the client easiest? And so it's like, I'll call this person, see what they can do. And it's all about making connections. So I think that's the biggest thing is like I make that connection and I'm like, bet I have somebody to call when I need help with like something.

yvonne wink (45:52)

I love that. I love that. What does it mean for people listening that don't know what an an advocate for someone experiencing experiencing domestic violence? What does that mean? So an advocate isn't a therapist, but we do help with like emotional support. But mainly it's somebody on the outside that's like helping you understand policies, laws. Not not laws, we don't do the law part, but we help get them in contact with lawyers. So it technically we do the law part.

yvonne wink (46:22)

Because navigating the system after domestic violence, nobody really knows how to do that. It's really a learning curve. But also if somebody's traumatized after the relationship, the last thing they're g gonna want to do is call a bunch of people and like advocate for themselves. So we as the advocate will call like shelters and be like, Do you have open beds? I'm trying to get a client in. things like that. So I say that we take off a lot of like the load from survivors.

yvonne wink (46:49)

You know, we can't fix the trauma for them, but we can like guide them in the right direction. We can send them resources for therapists, psychiatrists, we can help them figure out like journaling and breath work. Breath work, breaking up the day, things like that. Yeah. What are some of the biggest challenges that women face when they're trying to get help?

yvonne wink (47:14)

Stereotypes. You know, like the whole idea of like welfare princesses, like that's such a horrible concept. Right. Because like, God forbid somebody needs help, you know? and I think that it just demonizes all of the aids that are there and a possibility to be used. So if somebody is in a relationship where they no longer feel safe in its life or death, wouldn't you rather them get social security benefits or welfare? You know, like that makes more sense than them dying from

yvonne wink (47:43)

domestic violence and what do you wish people understood about the systems survivors have to navigate? this is like a loaded question. Definitely. but I think the Remember it's a PG each station, no I'm joking. I think that the world is not really designed for gendered based crimes to get any sort of like justice afterwards. Because I just don't think the way we go about it

yvonne wink (48:12)

Like no other crime is the first question that asked, What were you wearing? No other crime is that. You know, what did you do? Yeah. What were you doing? Why were you out? Why did you drink? Why why why were you out last night? Yeah. Yeah. Or you must have said something to your husband or your wife and that must have pissed them off, you know? And so I think that at the end of the day, like it goes back to I always say it the reason why I chose social work is because I wanted to be an advocate while also being a therapist at the same time.

yvonne wink (48:40)

Because I think that in order for my clients to get the help that they need, it needs to go from the system. So there needs to be like a systematic reset in the sense of like mental health care needs to be more focused on surviv survivors having autonomy again. And police need to be educated on domestic violence a little bit more and trauma informed care. Because if you show up to a scene that somebody called and is like, I'm gonna die tonight if you guys don't show up, they're gonna be in a heightened state

yvonne wink (49:08)

point of view. But if you're not trauma informed, you're gonna think, they're on drugs or something's going on with them. Right. Or they're very dramatic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think that it it goes like that's why we do outreaches and community education as well, because it needs to happen. People need to understand that this is a real thing and people are like in situations like this on a daily basis. What do you think that people misunderstand the most about domestic violence?

yvonne wink (49:37)

That it's not as simple a as just leaving. Mm-hmm. You know, like You hear that a lot. Why didn't why didn't she just leave? She's been beaten up once or twice already. You should have just left the first time. Or it's like the survivor feels stupid. They're like, Why would I let myself do that? And I'm like, babe, you didn't let yourself do that. You didn't put yourself in that situation. You thought you were getting into a relationship with somebody who you loved and you created a family with. You didn't know that they were gonna turn evil like this, you know? Yeah. and I think that

yvonne wink (50:07)

That's the biggest thing is that it's not just walking away. Because walking away is the hardest part. Because now you have to figure out life without the person who made it seem like all you had was them. Right. They I Especially when they set it up like that. I know from my own work that this question can completely overlook the complexity of someone's situation, right? Why didn't you just leave? Why why did you you knew he w had a temper, you know, so what, grab the kids and run? And you're saying it's not that easy.

yvonne wink (50:37)

how do you respond to people when someone asks you that?

yvonne wink (50:46)

In a PG kind of way. I really try to

yvonne wink (50:52)

Educate people. I love that. I really try. And I've been trying to do it in less of like an intense way. Because I think that when I first started this whole process, like the way that I would tell people about the work that I wanted to do, it was very off putting. Right. Not because of the things I was saying, but because people are so shy to talk about gender based violence. Right. You know, it's such like a taboo topic that when you talk about it and you want some change, some like

yvonne wink (51:19)

systemic change. It's like, my God, crazy girl, crazy girl, crazy girl, you know? Like that's never gonna happen. Why are you bringing up this? You know? Right. And so I think that I've learned over the years how to explain it to people in a way that doesn't make them go cross eyed. I love that. I love that. That's the education. would you say that fear finances children andor isolation is is at the top of someone's that it affects them about their options.

yvonne wink (51:49)

Yeah, and I think housing is a big issue as well. specifically in Honolulu, it's really bad. Housing is like the number one hardest thing to find for our clients and also help our clients navigate because there's no affordable options. Yeah. You know? Why would why can leaving be a particularly dangerous or even complicated time for someone in a domestic violence situation? I was gonna say woman, but you're right.

yvonne wink (52:18)

Across the board. Because you never know if the abuser's gonna find them at their new house when like get so angry that that's where they finally snap, you know? And I think that that's 'cause I read a statistic, I don't actually know what the actual numbers off my heart, but I think what the the part where it's the scariest and the most violent is when the person's getting ready to leave. Right. Right. Which is why that question is just

yvonne wink (52:47)

Like you said, it's fueled because why didn't you just leave? Yeah. It's the actually the scariest time for someone leaving a situation like that. Wow. Because you never know with the kids either. And it's like you don't want to displace the kids if it's just like a not saying a one time thing, but like I know what you're saying. She's he or th she is thinking it's a one time thing. Yeah. And they're like holding out hope that it is a one time thing and then it turns out to not be a one time thing. Yeah.

yvonne wink (53:17)

If you can answer this quickly so we can keep going, because we are you there's that we could do two of these back to back. But when you're sitting beside a woman in court, what do you think she needs most from you in that moment?

yvonne wink (53:33)

Empowerment. I always remind them so remind them that like they did this work for themselves. And then I try to like be like, okay, think about what you want your life to look like. And does your life include fighting with this person for the rest of your life? And they're always like, No. And then I'm like, exactly my point. You're mak you're making the step forward. I know it's like the hardest part right now, but you are only gonna have to do this in six months if you don't do it right now.

yvonne wink (54:01)

You know? and so I I remind them of how far they've come and I remind them that they're like they're gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay. And I always say like you're not alone in this. You have somebody fighting for you in the corner. I always call myself like a little cheetah in the corner because like you I'm always wearing cheetah. Yeah, I'm also always wearing cheetah. And you do have some claws. Yes. So, but I think about as you and I talk.

yvonne wink (54:27)

you know, throughout the week when we talk, and I you get to tell me about your work. and I'm so proud of you. But I think about how frightening it must be to walk into a courtroom when your life is already in turmoil, right? And and you're displaced and you maybe you're losing you know, custody of your children or you don't know where they're going to be, right? And then I think about you, my little baby, my girl, the one who used to make everyone smile and laugh and feel included and and

yvonne wink (54:55)

That bubbly sense, that warmness, that that like when I hug you, it just feels like home. and so now sitting beside another woman helping her through one of the most hardest moments in her life, I can't help but wonder what that feels like for you.

yvonne wink (55:16)

I think that it's really rewarding because I think that I've always said like I wanna be the advocate that I wish I would have had to navigate this system, you know? 'Cause it's such a lonely process. And it's also like you really have to be patient because these things do not work fast. And I wish I could have had somebody explain that to me in a way that felt like they still cared, you know, and not just like I was another

yvonne wink (55:43)

per client or another statistic, another person who got in this system, you know? and so I try to really take individual care of every single person that I talk to. And I think that it helps heal a part of myself that never got that. I love that. Yeah. I love you. I love you. what would you say that this work has taught you about women, about courage, about resilience, this work in particular.

yvonne wink (56:12)

What does it taught you? I think it's taught me to just on the days where it's like I can't do this anymore, it's like, yeah, you can. You know? Like the worst has passed and then it sometimes it gets worse, but normally it gets better. but I think that also community is a big thing. And I think that with my work in this the field, I've learned how important it is to instill a community in myself, but also

yvonne wink (56:42)

instill a community with my clients and let them know that like they can build that for themselves and like give them options like bumble like things like that, you know? Yeah. Like putting themselves out there. I love that. I love that. I wanna bring this conversation back to people listening. because I know some of them may be in relationships that don't feel healthy. I know I draw in many women and men actually

yvonne wink (57:12)

going through that. They're in an unhealthy relationship. Not necessarily domestic violence, but I want to bring it back to anyone listening. and any others that may have a daughter, a sister, a friend, someone they love who's going through something difficult, like what you were talking about, right? Sometimes we want so badly to help that we don't even know what to say. Or we say exactly the wrong thing, what we shouldn't say. So I want to ask you just a few

yvonne wink (57:41)

Let's do like a rapid fire here. Just a few practical questions, right? what are some warning signs of an unhealthy or abusive relationship that people may overlook?

yvonne wink (57:52)

financial abuse I feel like is a big one. and most of the time like people overlook that one. Like having a shared bank account but not having access to the the money without the person's permission. Yeah. You know, get separate bank accounts. Right. You said some things earlier, you talked about isolation. I love that. Yes, I'm sorry, I'm like forgetting what I I know.

yvonne wink (58:20)

you're the s you have my same brain. But yes, isolation is a big one as well. just because if you are in a unhealthy relationship, they want you to be like, don't talk to that person. I'm your only person that you can talk to And it's in a way where they like manipulate you into thinking that like they're gonna save you and they're the best person out there for you while they're actively destroying you and your spirit. Yeah.

yvonne wink (58:45)

If someone suspects that a friend or family member is experiencing domestic violence, what's the most helpful way that one could approach them?

yvonne wink (58:57)

Like is there anything that we should avoid saying? I don't necessarily feel like every survivor is gonna say, Yes, I'm in a domestic r violence relationship. Because I don't think that everybody knows that domestic violence isn't just hitting and that it isn't like there's a whole emotional abuse aspect and I don't think people really recognize that as domestic violence. Right. I think we're hearing more about it now, but we we weren't we

yvonne wink (59:26)

We're normalizing the conversation now. Yes. But we didn't talk about that before. what what would you want someone who's currently experiencing abuse to know? That they're not alone and to reach out for support because there's people all over the world that do the job that I do in every single state. And there's never a point where you should do this alone. Because you don't have to. Like there's non profits for a reason and there's people that do this work for a reason. And all of the services that we provide are free.

yvonne wink (59:56)

So it's like there's options. There's Planned Parenthood. There's like like worst case scenario, Planned Parenthood. Not worst case scenario. I love Planned Parenthood. But like that's like if you don't know who to call, but there's also like the national lines that you can call that will get you connected to people in the in your state. even like l doing a quick Google search or Instagram, TikTok, like all of these things are now used as promotional things. So

yvonne wink (01:00:25)

Know that you're never alone and that you have a voice and that you can build that sense of autonomy back. You didn't lose everything. Right. So what would you say to the woman that is sitting there, the person that's sitting there and doesn't know where to start? Would you say that it's about just Googling, calling a hotline, things like that? Reaching out to support, reaching out to family if a trusted friend or family member. Trusted family,

yvonne wink (01:00:53)

Getting to a place where if you were to make that call it's not gonna be a detriment to your safety. You know, like it if your abuser is at work, like that's a perfect time to make that call because you don't have to worry about them coming home in the middle of the call. just making sure you're safe every part of the way. but also knowing that you can reach out for that support at the end of the day at the same time. Yeah. I love that. I love you. Thank you so much. I love you. I wanna put my professional questioning

yvonne wink (01:01:22)

aside for a minute because I want to talk to you as your mom. I've spent your entire life watching you become who you are and I've seen the hard parts. I've seen you struggle. I've seen you get knocked down I've seen you question yourself, doubt yourself. I've held you when you felt broken, you know, when the world broke you. and I've watched you get back up over and over again. But what I admire most

yvonne wink (01:01:50)

isn't that you've accomplished so much and that I keep talking about your four point and and your accolades. I'm just proud of you and that's but that's nothing compared to the human that you've become. And I love that. You know, I admire most that you haven't lost parts of yourself that make you you. Yeah. you're still funny. You're still our family Pisces drama queen. still capable of turning a completely

yvonne wink (01:02:19)

ordinary family Thanksgiving dinner into like a full theatrical production. But you're also compassionate, determined. and you're doing something meaningful with your life. I love that. I hope you understand forever how proud I am of you. Of course. and I'm I'm proud of the person that you are when nobody's watching because I can't always see you. So I want to ask you a couple more things as we as we come to a close.

yvonne wink (01:02:47)

When you think about the little girl you used to be, what do you wish you could go back and tell her?

yvonne wink (01:02:55)

That she's beautiful and that things are gonna work out and that to stay positive. Mm-hmm. And don't don't let the world jade you for a little bit. You know, 'cause I was jaded for a minute, so I think that I never want to get back to that point where I'm like closed off like that. Yeah. okay, before I start crying and ruining my lash clusters, what's one thing that you still what's what's one thing that you how should I ask this?

yvonne wink (01:03:24)

one thing you think I still don't understand about you. Mmm. That I'm okay with being weird. I love that you're weird. I've been telling you your whole life. Wave wave that freak flag. Do it, girls. Uh-huh. Since you were little. is there anything that you've ever wanted to tell me or or ask me as your mom that you would never have asked before, but now that we're live on my

yvonne wink (01:03:54)

podcast. No, I feel like I'm pretty open about asking you questions. Mm-hmm. You know? I I feel like we have a pretty good relationship when it comes to like honesty and me telling you things and you being honest with me. Mm-hmm. I love that. I love that. one of the greatest privileges of being a mother is getting to meet your children over and over again. Nana used to tell me this all the time. You get to meet them as babies and then as little kids.

yvonne wink (01:04:23)

with these enormous personalities, some of my favorite years as when you guys were growing up. But then as teenagers, when you start to become people that you don't entirely recognize, right? You don't even recognize yourself. And I don't recognize the little baby that was just in my arms, you know? And sometimes if you're lucky, you get to meet them again as adults. and they're not just your children, but as people with their own ideas and values and paths and dreams, their own lives.

yvonne wink (01:04:50)

And that's what this stage of motherhood has been teaching me. Yeah. My job isn't to tell you who to become anymore. It's to get to know who you've become. And I've loved that. and I really like the woman that I continuously get to know. Yeah. I love your humor, your heart, your d determination. I love that you've taken things that would have made any that could have broken people, right? Taken them out, wipe them out, make them feel small.

yvonne wink (01:05:21)

And you refuse to let that define the size of your life. You still live very grand, very big, very loud. and so I love that. And and as you sit here today, I'm reminded of exactly why I created the unfolding. The the method, the concept, the podcast, the Instagrams, all of that, right? Because I've had the privilege of watching you unfold your entire life.

yvonne wink (01:05:47)

that's a good one. There you go, girl. Yes, you're killing it. No, but I've been killing it with your podcast. Thanks, girl. Gah. but I've watched you struggle as your mama. I've watched you struggle. I've watched you watched you question yourself. I find your voice, lose your voice, find confidence, lose confidence, and then you find it again, and you just keep unfolding. I've watched you grow into many versions of yourself that neither one of us could have imagined when you were little, when they when I was being told.

yvonne wink (01:06:17)

Let's just have her do something with her hands. Not her. She's not gonna be able to read or write or she's not very smart. But that's what the unfolding has always meant to me. And it's just ironic that I'm watching you unfold. But, you know, because we're not meant to stay the same people who we were when our stories began, right? we grow, we change, we discover things about ourselves that we never knew were there. and sometimes the most beautiful parts of who we become are the parts we never could have.

yvonne wink (01:06:46)

Planned. So I want to know as we end, what does the future hold for you?

yvonne wink (01:06:56)

the future holds for me some time to just chill out. And also the future holds a lot of future education and hopefully getting to a point where I can travel more and learn more from everybody around me and also graduate with my masters and go to get my sex therapy license.

yvonne wink (01:07:25)

And just learn all about that and get to nerd out on that. You know, I love I love learning and I can't wait to continue doing it. I love it. Can you imagine if we listen to those that education team that wagon wheel? Right? We should we should name drop. Yeah. No, your dad and I walked out, ripped the papers. that was r that were referring you to some I don't know where, but it wasn't school. It wasn't mainstream school and I ripped the paper in front of them as I stared and

yvonne wink (01:07:54)

Daddy grabbed it, crumbled it up, threw it in there, and we took you and we homeschooled you or I homeschooled you and look at you now. Look at me now. But whatever comes next, I know that you're going to always meet it with the same grit that got you here. And so I'm not worried about you at all. I hope that you never stop being curious. I hope you never lose your sunshine. I hope you never stop laughing and making people laugh.

yvonne wink (01:08:20)

And I hope you always remember that you don't have to accomplish one more thing to make me proud. Because I already am. Yeah. And I'm sure everyone listening, any parent listening is feeling proud right now. Right? Any one of your friends listening is proud to know you as a friend. And so I hope today's conversation reminds you that the challenges we experience early in life never have to determine the rest of our story. You've proved that. You have proved that. Right?

yvonne wink (01:08:50)

So I want to thank you so much for coming home for the weekend. Yes. thank you for sitting down with me. And thank you for letting everyone meet a little more of my little angel baby, Wiggy's Sidney Isabella. this extraordinary woman that I get to call my daughter, and now my really, really, really good friend. Yes. Aww. I love you, Bubba. I love you. And to everyone listening, thank you for being here. I'm your friend, your girl. And until next time.

yvonne wink (01:09:20)

Keep unfolding. Period. Thank you for having me, Mwa. Mwa. I love you. I love you.

yvonne wink (00:03)

Hello and welcome back to the Unfolding Podcast. I'm your girl. I'm your friend. All of the above. Yvonne Wink. I'm a host too, right? I'm all that stuff. So apparently, as I yawn, as I'm just getting started, apparently I hate men. Yup. News to me, right?

yvonne wink (00:31)

I think many people that listen know that that's not true, but we're gonna address it today. Here's why. I think it's silly. it and and I say that like it's particularly concerning considering how much of my adult life I've spent trying to get someone to love me and or love someone, right? So I mean, if I hated men.

yvonne wink (01:00)

I've been going about it in a really strange way. I think I need an intervention. I probably should request a like a refund or something from God or the universe. But seriously, it got me thinking because at the same time I ran across this this video.

yvonne wink (01:25)

Right, and it's this man and he's explaining. He's he's just laying into women. You women just hate men and you're destroying everything. just love us, right? Because what you're doing is you're making us hate you. You're making men hate women.

yvonne wink (01:45)

And I thought, amazing. Actually, I said amaze balls to myself. Another gender war. Just what the world needs. Right? It was also interesting because earlier this year, I I had I was in a little scuffle with a man that I'd spent years trying to build a relationship with. And somewhere in that argument.

yvonne wink (02:14)

You know, he said, I listened to one of your podcasts, one of your the episodes, and it all s and what I'm hearing is you it sounds like you just hate men. You're bashing them, you hate them. He went pretty low, too. he used he weaponized painful experiences that I had shared with him and used that to as evidence, you know, to prove that I hated men, right? but here's where it got interesting.

yvonne wink (02:45)

He didn't say that I hated men because that I had I declared this some lifelong vendetta against the male population, because there's no evidence for that. He said it during an argument about the way the the way I spoke of how he treated me. And somewhere, somehow, between me saying, Hey, I don't like the way you talk to me or I deserve better.

yvonne wink (03:12)

And him defending his own behavior. We ended up discussing my childhood trauma, my relationship with my father, and why I supposedly hate men. And I'm going, I'm sorry, huh? What? How did we get from, hey, please don't disrespect me in that way, the way you talk to me? Don't yell, stop yelling, to a psychological evaluation of my entire childhood. I mean, like I it's it's like mind

yvonne wink (03:42)

Boggling. Did I miss an exit somewhere? Because I don't remember signing up for this particular field trip. And I went off. Something this is this really got to me, right? It he brought up something that was deeply personal that I had trusted him with. Something that was traumatic and that happened to me as an innocent child. And he used it in an argument not to not to understand me.

yvonne wink (04:12)

Not to comfort me and support me, understand ways in which he could, you know, navigate that trigger if it was for me, right? No. He used it to make a point about what was supposedly wrong with me, right? Because because God forbid any anything was wrong with him, but it was about me.

yvonne wink (04:35)

And I remember thinking, I was thinking, isn't it fascinating how quickly I don't know if anyone has has ever experienced this before, but how quickly a conversation about someone's behavior can become a conversation about what's supposedly wrong with the person that's actually speaking up.

yvonne wink (04:56)

And that's what I want to talk about today. Not whether I hate men. I don't. And frankly, I'm not auditioning for the position of me proving that I do love men. I think anybody that knows me and has been around me for any length of time, especially my girlfriends, y'all know that I love men. And even my male friends know how good I am to them. So I want to talk about something much bigger. I want to talk about what happens when the person hurting you.

yvonne wink (05:26)

Convinces you that your reaction to being hurt is the actual problem. Like you're the real problem. And even shed a little light on why so many intelligent, self-reflective, self-aware people spend years trying to explain themselves to someone who keeps changing the argument.

yvonne wink (05:53)

Cause I did I did that exact thing for years.

yvonne wink (06:00)

And somewhere along that journey, I became so busy defending who I was that I almost forgot to ask myself what I think is a bigger and more important question. Why the heck am I still here?

yvonne wink (06:21)

Right. And here's what makes the this whole accusation I'd say right, or the I guess, yeah, accusation particularly ridiculous. Okay. Because I've had good relationships with men, really good relationships, long ones too. I have some a few best friends that are men married, you know, in love with their wives and family, and we just happen to connect on a different level.

yvonne wink (06:49)

Right. I've had really, really long relationships with men that I've loved. Right. I've I've known wonderful men, wonderful men. I've loved them. I've been loved by them. I I know I I still to this day know my brothers, my dad, I've known wonderful men who were kind and thoughtful and generous and funny and emotionally available.

yvonne wink (07:18)

And I've had relationships that ended without either person needing to become like the villain in the story.

yvonne wink (07:30)

Sometimes two perfectly decent humans simply aren't right for each other. Imagine that, right? An entire breakup without a psychological crime scene.

yvonne wink (07:47)

Yeah, no. We're just like we were in love and then we weren't. Bye. Right? So, so no, I I didn't spend my entire adult life having terrible experiences with men. You know. but I did have this one relationship that I'd say was particularly painful. One I think that challenged just about every single thing.

yvonne wink (08:17)

I thought I understood about love, relationships, men, and including myself. And when I started examining that particular relationship, something trippy happened, right? I started looking backward. Trippy is a weird word. I think I totally just dated myself. But anyway, okay. So I'm tripped out.

yvonne wink (08:43)

And because I'm examining this relationship, right? I'm diagnosing this whole thing. I have it laid out on my bed. Okay. And so it started looking backward at other relationships, right? And at other men that I'd chosen. At the things that I had tolerated, at the way I responded when someone pulled away, at how hard I worked when something wasn't working, and I was like, this is gonna work. I'm gonna make it work.

yvonne wink (09:14)

And I started noticing these little things, little bits and pieces. Not necessarily the same men, not necessarily the same behavior. Certainly not the same degree of hurt, right? But but familiar patterns. And I remember thinking, well s**t.

yvonne wink (09:37)

Because here I was trying to understand one man, and suddenly I was uncovering things about myself, which was at the time incredibly inconvenient. Because I was like, I need to nail this man to the cross. Right? You spend this, I you I had spent all this time studying someone else's behavior. And somehow I ended up with homework. I wanted answers about him.

yvonne wink (10:06)

I wanted a psych evil on him. I didn't realize that I was signing up for an independent study on my entire romantic history.

yvonne wink (10:18)

That's actually what happened to me. The more I looked, the more I began to recognize something. Sometimes I wasn't responding to the actual relationship that was in front of me, both friendships and romantic relationships. But I was responding to what I had hoped the relationship could become. What I'd hoped that person would become.

yvonne wink (10:47)

they'd step up into their higher self, right? The better version of them.

yvonne wink (10:54)

And it brings me to this story that I think some of you will remember. I I can't exactly remember which season it was. Maybe it was last season actually.

yvonne wink (11:07)

that you know, I I got a lot of people reached out to me regarding this particular story that I told. I told it I think it was last season, maybe episode six.

yvonne wink (11:22)

Imagine this woman, okay, who's hoping to build something with a man. Okay. Just I want you to picture that in your head. This or there's a woman. She's hoping to build something with a man. And and he I think he wants to build something too. Okay. One day he shows up at her door and he's holding an egg. Just an egg. One egg. And she's delighted. She's so excited. Because she thinks, we're gonna make a cake together.

yvonne wink (11:53)

Right. Now remember, i the man just showed up with an egg, a an egg. He never said he was making a cake. He just brought an egg. And she already went down the rabbit hole of imagining the cake, the frosting, the candles, how beautiful it was gonna look. She even went as far as like the the little kitchen, right? That that they're gonna have together. I I bet you anything, she was registered at Target or Williams Sonoma, right?

yvonne wink (12:23)

But then the next time he comes over, he brings a whisk. That's it. That's it, folks, just a whisk. my God, she says. Progress. We're really doing this. He's really showing up. And so she starts telling all her girlfriends. You know, I think things are getting really serious between us because this time, he brought a whisk.

yvonne wink (12:49)

And I can only imagine her girlfriends, if they're anything like mine, right? They're saying, okay, sis, but where's the flower? Where where's all the other stuff, right? And and she's like, you girls are so negative. Keep your energy to yourself.

yvonne wink (13:06)

Because she's not looking at what's actually happening. She's looking at what she believes all these little gestures mean. He brings a bowl, a little attention, a promise, and then maybe another little egg. And every time he shows up, she gets excited because she thinks they're getting closer to making that cake.

yvonne wink (13:32)

Except they never make the cake. And she's got a drawer full of utensils and her refriger refrigerator's probably full of hope, right? An absolutely zero cake in the oven.

yvonne wink (13:50)

And that part gets me. That part of the story always gets me. And I talk about it a lot, but see, because he doesn't even have to promise her the cake anymore. She's doing all of the imagining for both of them.

yvonne wink (14:07)

I love this story. I'll probably talk about it again. but I number one, I think it's funny, until of course you recognize yourself in it. And you're standing there like, huh, I got a lot of utensils and an egg. But how many times have we taken a little bit of someone's attention and turned it into evidence of a future? Right? He remembered my coffee order.

yvonne wink (14:36)

He called me on his way home. He said he missed me. He brought an egg and

yvonne wink (14:45)

And I I'm not trying to be cynical here, right? Because those things can be lovely. I enjoy that when someone does that for me. So there's nothing wrong with appreciating these smaller gestures. Okay. But my point is that a small gesture isn't the same thing as a as a consistently loving relationship. An egg is not a cake, no matter how much you slice it and dice it. And potential.

yvonne wink (15:15)

Is not commitment.

yvonne wink (15:20)

I think one of the most uncomfortable things I've learned about myself is that I can be incredibly patient with someone's potential. I'm not bragging either. Right? I can see the good. I can see what humans are capable of. I could imagine what the relationship can look like if we just worked through this one issue, just this one. Right? Because I believe in tiny little

yvonne wink (15:50)

Shifts in our daily lives. That's what creates the big large change, right? It's not this big grandiose gesture one day. It's the tiny small little shifts that you choose to make every single day.

yvonne wink (16:06)

Right.

yvonne wink (16:09)

I have this great ability to imagine what the relationship could look like, right? If we were on the same page, fighting the problem together and not one another.

yvonne wink (16:24)

And then the next issue and the next. And at some point, I had to ask myself, am I in a relationship with this person? Or am I in a relationship with my imagination of this person? Has anybody ever been there?

yvonne wink (16:42)

I'm I'm nodding my head. I have.

yvonne wink (16:46)

Because those are two very different relationships. And I know that I've spent way too much time confusing the two of them. And the thing is, there were good moments. There are great moments in just about every single relationship I've ever had.

yvonne wink (17:11)

And I do believe that there was a lot of love in those relationships as well. I know for me it was. But because I kept believing that the relationship was on its way to becoming something that in reality we weren't consistently building together. I've explained it like this. You've ever been in an ongoing argument with someone and it you're going in circles. You're not moving forward. You're not even going backwards.

yvonne wink (17:41)

You're just arguing in circles. It's very stagnant.

yvonne wink (17:47)

And and realizing that I was in a relationship where we weren't consistently building together, that realization hurt. It hurt deep. Because you aren't just grieving the person. You're grieving the the cake. The whole beautiful cake. Three tears. Fondant. Fondant, whatever it's called. Fondant.

yvonne wink (18:13)

The decorations, the candles, the beauty of it, the life that you imagined, the future you thought was just around the corner. Because he kept promising it.

yvonne wink (18:29)

And suddenly you realize you've been standing in the kitchen for years.

yvonne wink (18:37)

Holding a whisk, waiting patiently.

yvonne wink (18:45)

I really like that story. there was another one, another story that I told in maybe season two that really resonated with people. And that was the snake bite, right? Everything's gonna tie in, I promise you, right now. back to does Yvonne hate men? I'm bringing these stories up because I'm I'm explaining human behavior, right? And so if you remember the snake bite, great. If not, I'm gonna give you a little snippet of it.

yvonne wink (19:14)

Right? again, I want you to imagine this, right? Just you're you're walking along, just minding your own business, enjoying your day, and suddenly a snake bites you. Ouch! Right? You scream, jump up. And now a reasonable person would probably get as far away from the snake and seek medical attention stat, A-S-A-P, right?

yvonne wink (19:44)

Not some of us no no no some of us turn around and we chase the snake Excuse me Hey, why'd you bite me?

yvonne wink (19:59)

And the snake is slithering away, like, get out of here. But we keep chasing it. We keep running after it. Hey, hey, hey, Snaky, was it something that I said? Did I hurt your feelings? Did I step on your feelings? Because if I did, I'm so willing to own it and take accountability. You know, hey, Snake, I think I think we should just have a conversation about what happened. Let me explain it to you in multiple different languages.

yvonne wink (20:31)

Meanwhile, you're losing your leg, the venom is spreading everywhere. We're not tending to our wound. We're trying to get the snake to explain itself. And honestly, if the snake could talk, some of us, I I some of us could probably end up apologizing to it. I'm so sorry I approached you while you were emotionally unavailable. Sir, please forgive me.

yvonne wink (21:01)

It's ridiculous. And yet, how often do we do exactly that in relationships? Someone says something cruel, awful, and we feel it at our core. We're hurt. We try to explain why. Hey, let me share. When you said and did this, it hurt me. And they get defensive. We explain it another way.

yvonne wink (21:30)

And they argue. We clarify. And they bring something up unrelated. So we jump on the bandwagon and we defend ourselves. And suddenly we're 45 minutes into a conversation about something that happened in 2016.

yvonne wink (21:51)

And guess what? The original pain, the original hurt, pain that was caused, it's still sitting there, untouched.

yvonne wink (22:03)

I want it I want this part to be more talked about, right? Because do you know how exhausting it is to keep trying to make yourself understood by someone who seems committed, dead set and committed to misunderstanding you?

yvonne wink (22:23)

I mean, really, really think about what that looks like. You start a simple sentence. Hey, that hurt my feelings. And somehow, 75 minutes later, you're presenting evidence, right? You're explaining your tone. You're clarifying what you meant by by the word always, right?

yvonne wink (22:46)

little tiny things that you're being picked at, right? You're pulling you're pulling up text messages and like, look, look, look, right here. This is what you said. You're establishing timelines. You're practically asking the court reporter to read back the transcripts. Give it back to me.

yvonne wink (23:04)

And the person across from you is arguing with every single thing you say. Everything. Every single effing thing that you say. That's not what I meant, right? They say, well, that's what you said. And you say, okay, well, can let me can I explain it differently? Maybe you we're trying anything, right? They say, you're changing the story. And you say,

yvonne wink (23:33)

Can we please just talk about how I feel, about that original pain I started with? And somehow, now it's this accusation against them. They are in full battle gear and ready to chop our heads off. And before you know it, you're no longer having a conversation. You're defending your right to have a feeling.

yvonne wink (24:00)

And I wanted to talk about that because here's what happens over time, right? You start preparing for conversations before they even happen. We rehearse words, we we anticipate their reactions, you know, we think about how to phrase things so they won't be upset. We edit ourselves, soften our feelings. We leave certain things out that happened, but we don't want to upset them.

yvonne wink (24:30)

And eventually you start wondering whether it's even worth bringing anything up. And certainly the problem hasn't gone away.

yvonne wink (24:41)

Conversation has become more painful than the original problem.

yvonne wink (24:47)

That was my last relationship. That you hurt me. It was that simple. Hey, that hurt. Boom. The lowest of low blows. You can get any lower. You get lower than that snake. That's where he went. And you just you stop having the conversation because that conversation now has become more painful. And truly, it's a really lonely place to be when you're, especially when you're in a relationship.

yvonne wink (25:18)

Because you're not just losing the argument that you brought to the table. You're losing the the total and complete freedom to be yourself.

yvonne wink (25:32)

Your ability to speak without rehearsing, just that raw essence of who you are, your confidence in your own perceptions, right? When someone's trying to rewrite everything that they've done and said, oftentimes our confidence, it takes a hit. Sometimes even our desire to connect with them.

yvonne wink (25:57)

Right. And I can't tell you what's happening inside another person's mind. I would never try to do that. Maybe they maybe they're defensive. Maybe they had a bad day. They're overwhelmed. Maybe they genuinely see things vastly differently.

yvonne wink (26:14)

But regardless of their intentions, when every attempt to be heard turns into another fight, the impact on you is real.

yvonne wink (26:27)

And what's even worse, sometimes they just shut down and say nothing because they're overwhelmed.

yvonne wink (26:38)

But regardless of their intentions? What

yvonne wink (26:44)

You know, I think that some of us, some of us keep chasing the snake, trying to find out what exactly were your intentions? What exactly did you mean by that? Why was why did you bite me? Explain it to me. Right? We're not just looking for explanations anymore. Sometimes we're looking for acknowledgement. We want someone to say, I understand why that bite hurts you.

yvonne wink (27:16)

And when they won't, we try harder. We explain more. We become more emotional, more passionate. And eventually our reaction becomes the entire conversation. Right? They light the match, throw it on you, you catch on fire, and they point. And they're pissed because you're on fire.

yvonne wink (27:39)

It's incredibly convenient for the original issue. Because because guess what's happening? No now no one no one's talking about the bite. They're talking about how loudly you screamed, your tone, your attitude.

yvonne wink (27:58)

And that's when I had to start asking myself something.

yvonne wink (28:05)

I asked myself that a game changer question. What is it costing me to keep trying to be understood by someone who isn't meeting me, not even halfway?

yvonne wink (28:20)

See, because if I think about it like this in the context of the snake, you know, the bite already happened, okay? And understanding the snake and its intentions, that doesn't remove the venom. It doesn't remove the pain.

yvonne wink (28:39)

People can have good intentions and still cause real damage. People can struggle with their own emotions and take those struggles out on people closest to them. But I've also learned this. I don't need to prove, I don't need to prove someone intended to hurt me before I'm allowed to acknowledge that I'm hurt. And let me tell you.

yvonne wink (29:09)

Friends, it is lonely. It is lonely. Because I don't need to keep returning to the same painful conversation just because I haven't received the explanation I wanted.

yvonne wink (29:25)

I can care about someone and still protect myself. It's been a really difficult lesson for me, but it's something that I'm practicing regularly.

yvonne wink (29:37)

Okay. And this is where I have to laugh at myself. Just a little. Because ironically, right, I I work in behavioral health. I've studied psychology. I talk about patterns for a living. Talk go on any one of my social medias. You'll see it's all there. I've written a book about a painful relationship. Actually, a few painful relationships are in there. and yet there I was.

yvonne wink (30:06)

Standing in the kitchen holding my whisk with a snake bite.

yvonne wink (30:17)

And I thought about it, was fascinating to me because we live in a world where we're constantly being encouraged to understand ourselves. And I have to say this about myself because I do teach that, right? Understand your attachment style. I teach that. Understand your childhood. I teach that. Understand your triggers, your nervous system. Understand why you're attracted to certain people. Why you stay, why you stay too long.

yvonne wink (30:46)

Why you leave? Why you keep running? Understand why you can't stop thinking about someone who doesn't even make you particularly happy anymore.

yvonne wink (30:59)

Right? I'm not against any of this. Listen, I am for, I am all for self-awareness. Clearly. It's my passion. Made an entire career out of talking about it. But I think there's a point where we can become so busy analyzing our lives that we forget to actually live, to live in it, live in our life.

yvonne wink (31:27)

And I started wondering whether I'd crossed that line.

yvonne wink (31:32)

Because I started doing something that even annoyed me. And I'm sure probably annoyed him, right? I could explain what was happening psychologically. I could recognize the patterns. I could call them out silently in my head. I could identify all the behaviors. I don't even think you need training for this. I think us women are very intuitive, right? We could practically narrate the argument while it was happening. I could even tell you what the outcome was going to be.

yvonne wink (32:03)

And I'd say to myself, secretly to myself, interesting. We're deflecting now, huh? and there's the defensiveness. we've moved now into what character assassination? Brilliant. Brilliant. Slow clap.

yvonne wink (32:25)

And somehow recognizing the pattern didn't automatically make me stop participating in it. But I did notice something. The more time I spent trying to get someone else to understand me, the less time I spent asking myself what I actually needed.

yvonne wink (32:47)

I was so focused on getting my point across that I wasn't stopping to consider whether the conversation was even productive. Do I even want to be a part of this anymore?

yvonne wink (32:58)

Was trying to find the perfect words, the perfect tone, the perfect timing, the moment where he wasn't sick, where he wasn't stressed, where he wasn't some kind of ailment, some stressor.

yvonne wink (33:11)

Perfect moment, as though there were some magical combination of sentences that would suddenly make everything click for him.

yvonne wink (33:23)

Listen, I am a huge communicator. I love communication. I teach it. I'm passionate about it. I know how vital and important it is for healthy relationships. And I also know communication requires two people who are willing to participate. You can't do both sides of a conversation, no matter how good you are at explaining yourself. I mean, I'm pretty damn good at this, and even I can't pull that off.

yvonne wink (33:55)

And I think that's where self-awareness has to become something more, right? Because just recognizing the pattern, that's just one thing. Recognizing when it's time to stop participating in it, that, my friends, that's self-trust. And those aren't the same skill.

yvonne wink (34:19)

I could recognize a relationship wasn't meeting my needs. I'm really good at that.

yvonne wink (34:26)

Could I trust myself to walk away from it?

yvonne wink (34:30)

Oof.

yvonne wink (34:33)

I could recognize when a conversation was going nowhere.

yvonne wink (34:39)

But could I stop trying to win it?

yvonne wink (34:48)

I could understand why someone behaved a certain way.

yvonne wink (34:54)

But could I accept that understanding them didn't obligate me to stay there?

yvonne wink (35:01)

I started when everything got quieter in my world, that those were much harder questions I started to ask myself. I think this is where a lot of us that are stuck, this is where we get stuck, right? We think, we think that the next book will give us the answer. We think you this new year coming up is the answer. The next podcast, maybe our next therapy session. I know, I know, the next conversation.

yvonne wink (35:29)

Because I'm gonna explain it so much better this time, right? And sometimes those things are exactly what we need and they do work. But sometimes we already know we're just not ready to act on what we know. And I want you to hear me, that's not a character flaw. If you're seeing yourself in this scenario right now, this is not a character flaw. Changing a familiar pattern can be emotionally difficult, even when the pattern is painful.

yvonne wink (36:01)

But I was, I was digging, I was asking myself questions daily. I used to write questions on my mirror and then just focus on that question, sometimes for a day or a few days. and I asked myself something that was the biggest game changer. Am I using all of my understanding to move forward? Or am I using it to keep myself in the same story?

yvonne wink (36:31)

'Cause I don't want to become an expert in a life I'm not even freaking enjoying.

yvonne wink (36:37)

Wanna actually enjoy my life. I wanna live and laugh and have fun and it have experiences.

yvonne wink (36:46)

And all of that brings me back to the original accusation that started that prompted this entire conversation.

yvonne wink (36:56)

So, do I hate men? Hmm. No. And I think I've established that. I've had wonderful relationships with men. You know though, to be honest, I've had I've had a few painful experiences as well. So so if you think about it like that, both are part of my story. And one doesn't cancel out the other.

yvonne wink (37:24)

But here's something I found very, very fascinating. Okay, stay with me. I'm gonna try to make s this make sense right now. Okay.

yvonne wink (37:36)

Sitting up. Okay, hear me. When a woman talks about being hurt by a man, sometimes the conversation immediately becomes about whether she's being fair to men. Boom. I said what I said. Right? And when a man talks about being hurt by a woman, he can face a different kind of dismissal.

yvonne wink (38:06)

I get it, right? As though men aren't supposed to experience emotional pain and and as though admitting that they've been hurt somehow makes them less masculine or what I you know what I'm saying here, right? I think both responses are missing the point. I don't know if anybody listened to my last episode with Colby on it. I had Colby on last week's podcast, and we talked about his experience in a long-term marriage, right? And what struck me was how familiar some of his feelings sounded.

yvonne wink (38:36)

The confusion, the self doubt, the emotional exhaustion. And I thought

yvonne wink (38:45)

This is why these conversations matter. Because pain doesn't belong to one gender. And neither does accountability. And that doesn't mean that we ignore the fact that women experience disproportionately high rates of certain forms of violence emotional, sexual, verbal, all of it, right? Those and and those realities matter too. They're very important for us to acknowledge. But acknowledging

yvonne wink (39:15)

One person's suffering? That shouldn't require dismissing someone else's.

yvonne wink (39:23)

Having compassion, it's not a competition thing, guys.

yvonne wink (39:28)

And I think we'd we'd all be better off if we spent less time defending entire genders and more time examining how we treat the people right in front of us, family, friends, coworkers, you know, partnerships.

yvonne wink (39:45)

'Cause I don't want to spend my life arguing about whether men or women are worse. That doesn't do any of us j justice, happiness, joy. It doesn't.

yvonne wink (39:59)

But I I want to talk about what makes relationships better. And I've learned this in the, I don't know, thirty-five plus years I've been experiencing relationships and then the last five years studying it. this is important. What I I because I think when I think about the accusation of me hating men, I think about the word for me that comes up is respect, right? And so

yvonne wink (40:28)

What does respect actually look like? Right? And accountability. What does that look like? What happens when someone tells you you've hurt them? Can you listen? Can you take responsibility? Can you shut your mouth and just listen to the pain of the person that you love or like or respect or value that's sitting right in front of you?

yvonne wink (40:59)

Can you disagree with them without becoming cruel and low like that snake?

yvonne wink (41:08)

Can you repair what you ruptured? Can you repair something without turning it into courtroom drama?

yvonne wink (41:17)

Those are the conversations to me that are worth having. I'll have those all damn day long on social media. I'm always fighting on social media because men are trying to turn it into not all men, certain men with their pages are trying to create this narrative that women now hate men and that we better stop because they're starting to hate us. And I'm thinking, hmm. Whatever. I'm not gonna go there.

yvonne wink (41:47)

That's gonna be another podcast. But these conversations are worth having, right? but I want to wrap this up. I think I've talked too much. I don't even know if I'm making all my points, but hopefully I am. But the one final realization is, and I thought about this because people ask me this a ton in my DMs, in person.

yvonne wink (42:14)

In groups, when I'm working one-on-one with people, hey, is this person right for me? They give me some facts, they spew out some things, they go, should I stay or should I go? Right? Is this relationship, is this person killing me slowly? What do I do? And it's a question that I wish I'd asked myself a long time ago, right? Because I asked myself that same question. And I want to leave you.

yvonne wink (42:44)

With a question. And I want you to really think about this one. Okay? I'm telling you, this was life. The question is.

yvonne wink (42:57)

What if you met this person today? Not the person you met years ago, not the one you went to high school with or college with or met at a bar and fell in love with. What if the person right in front of you today you met?

yvonne wink (43:17)

What would you think? What would you feel?

yvonne wink (43:21)

Right? Not the person you fell in love with and certainly not the person that you've been mentally renovating for the last four years. I I mean, think about it. Some of us have been running this full blown H G T V reno project on human beings. I know I have.

yvonne wink (43:38)

What if you met this person today? Ask yourself that. Is this what I'm looking for? Does this person align with my values, my ethics, my code, standards of living?

yvonne wink (43:54)

Right? The person standing in front of you today, knowing everything you know about them now.

yvonne wink (44:03)

How they communicate. How they handle conflict. How they make you feel.

yvonne wink (44:11)

Would you choose to begin that relationship again?

yvonne wink (44:18)

That's a very different question from whether you love someone or you're loyal. You've been together since seventy-six years, thirty-five years, twenty years, four years.

yvonne wink (44:36)

It's a very different question from whether you love someone. And asking it, it doesn't mean that you hate men. Because I propose that question and solution to you, right? I don't know if you should leave or not. I would never tell anyone what to do. I don't never tell a grown adult what to do, ever. Not in my work, not in my life, never. I would say, would you choose to begin that relationship again today? It doesn't mean that I hate men.

yvonne wink (45:07)

It doesn't mean that you hate your ex, right? Your ex husband, ex-boyfriend, or whoever you're thinking about right now.

yvonne wink (45:16)

It means you're finally evaluating the relationship you're actually in instead of the one that you've been hoping for. That hope was slowly killing my soul.

yvonne wink (45:29)

I think I talked about this in a in a podcast before. The the psychological concept is called the sunk cost fallacy, right? So basically it's when we keep in investing in something because, well, we've already invested so much. Right. And and in relationships, in relationships it can sound like, well, we've been together for years, right? We just have look at everything we have. We've built all this together.

yvonne wink (45:55)

Right? We've been through so much. But I've already put so much into this.

yvonne wink (46:03)

Friends, that's not a reason to stay. It's not a reason to leave, but it's it's a good time to ask yourself that question. If this person showed up today, would we be in alignment? Is this person for me? Right? That's the same logic that keeps us sitting through a terrible movie because we already paid for the ticket, eating a terrible meal because.

yvonne wink (46:32)

We already paid for it. Right? Except this movie is four years long, the popcorn's stale, and nobody's enjoying themselves. The meal sucks.

yvonne wink (46:45)

Okay, you know, I like to leave you with a little nugget. If you walk away with nothing, walk away with this. The years you've already spent are not a down payment on the years you still have left. And recognizing that it doesn't make you bitter. It doesn't make you anti-men. It doesn't make you it doesn't mean that you're incapable of love. It means that you're finally paying attention.

yvonne wink (47:15)

Because I think one of the most expensive things that we give away in unhealthy, toxic relationships is our it it's it's not our love.

yvonne wink (47:28)

It's super expensive. It's our attention. Think about it. The hours spent replaying arguments, explaining things over and over and over, just moving in circles. Nowhere in particular, just circles. Think about it. The morning's waking up upset about something that was said the night before, that you said that hurt my feelings, and all of a sudden you it's a big blowout, and nothing was repaired.

yvonne wink (47:59)

The dinners, think about this. That I think about this. This really changed a lot for me and helped me propel forward. when I thought about the times I was physically sitting with my babies, my girls, my friends. But mentally, I'm I'm defending myself. Right? I'm I'm playing over and over the argument, the hurt that still has zero solution.

yvonne wink (48:36)

I started wondering how much of my life am I spending trying to be understood by someone who isn't willing to understand me? And it wasn't a fair fight anymore. Because that's actually the real cost. Not just the arguments, even though that takes a toll on our health, but it's everything you miss while you're still having them in your head.

yvonne wink (49:03)

And I think that's where the shift happens, that small shift that I was talking about earlier, right? You stop asking, well, how how can I make this person understand me?

yvonne wink (49:17)

And you start saying, or I guess, I guess you'd be asking yourself a different question, right? And that question would be: do why do I need their agreement before I trust what I'm experiencing? Why do I need their validation, their words, their apology, their their acknowledgement, their agreement, right? Because someone can disagree with me, someone can misunderstand me.

yvonne wink (49:44)

Someone can have a completely different version, right? Their lens, their perspective of what happened. And I can still trust myself. And that is not hating men, my friends. That's recognizing that love shouldn't require you to consistently defend your reality. And it's also recognizing something else, right? Like I can believe that there are wonderful men in this world.

yvonne wink (50:11)

without continuing to make excuses for one relationship that didn't work or isn't working.

yvonne wink (50:19)

I can appreciate what I've learned without spending another year trying to freaking explain it. Because I've spent enough time trying to get someone else to hear me.

yvonne wink (50:32)

And I knew it was time for me to start listening to myself.

yvonne wink (50:37)

So that was my biggest realization, I would say this year, that I don't need someone to agree with my experience in order to trust it. It happened to me and it was my experience. I don't need to keep explaining myself until someone finally goes, okay, now I understand what you're saying, right? And I certainly don't need to turn someone into a terrible person just to justify deciding that, you know, that a relationship isn't right for me.

yvonne wink (51:06)

You don't have to be the villain in my story. Right? And so that and that brings me back to where I started. Apparently, I hate men.

yvonne wink (51:17)

And after everything that we talked about, it honestly it makes me chuckle. Because I've had some real fights on social media, guys, with these people. You hate men. And then hearing my ex tell me that. You know, because I look at it like this. See, apparently, having standards, expecting respect, and wanting someone to take accountability for their behavior now qualifies as hating.

yvonne wink (51:47)

An entire gender.

yvonne wink (51:52)

I mean that think about that. That's gonna make dating with me very interesting.

yvonne wink (52:00)

But I do, I want to leave you with this. I don't hate men. I hate the idea though. Here's what I do hate, right? I don't hate men. I hate the idea that loving someone means I have to tolerate behavior that hurts me continuously. There's a difference. There's a big difference. So when I call out behavior that I experienced as a woman, it's not me saying I hate men.

yvonne wink (52:22)

When I talk about emotional immaturity, avoidance, manipulation, or ways that that people hurt each other, I'm not declaring war on the male population. Calm down. I'm talking about behaviors, human behaviors, patterns. And guess what? Women have them too, including me. I mean, have you listened to this episode, just alone this one?

yvonne wink (52:50)

I spent half of it explaining how I stood in the kitchen holding a whisk, waiting for a cake that nobody actually promised to bake with me. I fell in love, I fell in love with potential. Yeah, I'm not exactly giving myself a glowing performance review here, right? You're not gonna find me on Yelp with five stars in relationships. I have stayed too long. I have overexplained. I have reacted emotionally. I've been embarrassed by my reactions.

yvonne wink (53:18)

I've made things right when I was wrong. I've tried to make someone understand me when I should have been listening to myself, when I should have walked away.

yvonne wink (53:29)

And I've had to take a good, really, really good and very uncomfortable look at all of it.

yvonne wink (53:39)

Because accountability isn't something I expect only from other people. I have high standards too. It's something I expect from myself.

yvonne wink (53:51)

And I hope that we can, I hope this podcast gains traction and we can learn to have these conversations and make them not about like we're not blaming men, we're not blaming women. Not deciding which gender is responsible for the downfall of civil civilization, right? I mean, but if you think about like just judging by social media, apparently like we're all one podcast away from complete societal collapse. So make sure your bunker is prepared this weekend.

yvonne wink (54:21)

But I'm not. I'm interested in understanding why we do what we do, why we repeat patterns, why we struggle to communicate, why we hurt people we care about, why we explode and yell at people that we care about, why we can't sit in the uncomfortableness of hey, that hurt me. Your behavior.

yvonne wink (54:48)

What you do continuously hurts me every single time you do it. And you say sorry, but you don't mean sorry, right? Sorry is who you want to be, and changed behavior is who you actually are. And you keep repeating it.

yvonne wink (55:07)

I I I want to know why why even when we know better, we don't always do better. I'm always curious about that. Like what happens in our brains? I'm going on off on a tangent here, but I was thinking about that. What happens in our brains when we know better, but we choose not to do better?

yvonne wink (55:28)

To me, that's psychology. That's human behavior. And that's what the Unfolding podcast is about. And I tell these stories from a woman's perspective because, well, what do you know? Surprise, surprise, I'm a woman. That's generally how it works, right? But the the behaviors I'm talking about aren't exclusive to men. I'm not, and and I'm calling out right, calling me calling out someone's behavior is not the same thing as condemning their character.

yvonne wink (55:57)

If I tell someone the way you spoke to me was hurtful, don't do it again. I'm not saying you're an awful human being, you should go jump off a bridge. I'm saying their behavior hurt me. And if the response isn't, you know, if if the response is that I hate men, well, then we've officially left the original conversation once again. And that is my point. That's the exact

yvonne wink (56:26)

That's the pattern that I'm talking about. The pattern I'm interested in understanding. In men, obviously. I mean, I do in women, but in men because I'm a woman and that's who I date. but like everyone, I've said things I regret, I've been defensive, I've misunderstood people. And the question isn't whether we're perfect or we're striving for perfection, right? It's whether we're willing to take responsibility when we're not, when we do hurt people. Can we listen? Can we apologize?

yvonne wink (56:55)

Can we repair after rupture?

yvonne wink (57:01)

I mean, it'd be great without a 20-minute 20-minute explanation of why the apology is actually the other person's fault. That would be nice. Because that's not an apology, guys. That's a plot twist. Okay. And I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted just thinking about it. So no. I don't hate men. I love men. I enjoy men. And I've known and know wonderful men. So if you're single, I know a few of them.

yvonne wink (57:31)

But I believe there are plenty more out there. And I'm not going to let one painful relationship convince me otherwise. I'm not against men. I'm against the idea that we should have to abandon ourselves to keep a relationship. And that, friends, applies to everybody. Hopefully, somewhere between the egg, the whisk, the snake, and my own questionable decisions, I think I've made my position pretty clear today.

yvonne wink (58:01)

I'm still open to love. I'm still optimistic. I still love men.

yvonne wink (58:07)

Just, I'm just now more interested in what someone consistently brings to a relationship than what I can imagine building with them.

yvonne wink (58:17)

So here's the thing, my girlfriends and I laugh about this all the time. Because if another man ever shows up at our door holding one egg, we're gonna smile. We'll thank him and ask if he brought the rest of the ingredients. Because friends, we're not spending another four years waiting for a cake. Thank you so much. It's been my pleasure explaining that I don't hate men.

yvonne wink (58:46)

Thank you for being here. And until next time, keep unfolding.

yvonne wink (00:01)

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Unfolding Podcast. I'm your host, Yvonne Wink. And you know, when I first started this podcast, I really thought that I was creating a space primarily for women. So, like just women navigating the things that we go through relationships and heartbreak, healing, life after divorce, and when an empty nesting and

yvonne wink (00:27)

All of those wonderful little patterns that we keep repeating even when we know better. And so if you've been listening for a while, you know that I've spent a lot of time talking about everything from emotional abuse, narcissistic behaviors, trauma bonds, and the psychology behind why we stay in relationships that are quite frankly hurting us, even when we know it.

yvonne wink (00:58)

And something interesting started to happen when I started to put myself out there on social media, which everyone knows that I was completely protesting and then decided one day, why not? But I started to notice that men s were reaching out to me all over the place. And they were, there was some interesting things, funny, good, bad, all of the above, right? But men who were listening to these conversations and they were saying, wait a minute, this happened to me too.

Kolby Fisher (01:27)

you

yvonne wink (01:28)

What you're saying, what you're explaining about your experience, that happened to me too. And so I I I'll admit it, when you know, it made me realize something that while our experiences can look different, the emotional and psychological impact of unhealthy relationships, it doesn't discriminate by gender. So men can experience

yvonne wink (01:54)

let's see that men can experience a variety of things, but let's go with confusion, right? it looks different, but it looks it it can you can ex men can experience manipulation, betrayal, and what I call the slow erosion of their sense of self. And they experience that too. And we don't we don't hear nearly enough.

Kolby Fisher (02:00)

you

Kolby Fisher (02:07)

Okay.

yvonne wink (02:23)

Of their stories, and I'm not sure why, but I've got one for you today. Because I met Colby, who you'll be introduced to in just a second here. And Colby reached out to me on Instagram and shared pieces of his experience. And I remember for the first time reading his message, and I was thinking, wow, I I I recognize so much of this, right? Not because

Kolby Fisher (02:32)

you

yvonne wink (02:51)

our stories were identical because they're not. But I I recognized because some of the feelings that Colby was describing were so familiar. And it felt strange to hear it coming from a male perspective. Right? The confusion, the constant questioning of yourself, right? The feeling that no matter what you do, somehow you're always getting it wrong. And what really struck me

Kolby Fisher (02:56)

So, thank you.

yvonne wink (03:18)

Was that Colby had spent 21 years in a marriage trying to make sense of what was happening around him? You know those good guys that just they're sticking it out, right? They got they have kids and they're committed to this relationship. And I'm talking 20 plus years. And so today we're going to explore Colby's experience through a perspective that we don't often hear enough about. And that's a man's perspective.

Kolby Fisher (03:31)

So, thank you.

yvonne wink (03:47)

We're gonna talk about marriage, emotional abuse, betrayal, faith, fatherhood, and and what happens when you finally begin to recognize the patterns that you've been living in. And I wanna be really clear about something here. This isn't a conversation, and and you you have to know me by now if you've listened this far, that my conversations are never about men versus women or

yvonne wink (04:12)

We hate men, or women are terrible, or men are terrible, right? It's just about people. It's about humans. It's about what happens when love becomes confusing. When when sometimes when commitment becomes endurance. And when somewhere along the way, you begin losing yourself. And that's the ultimate heart of my podcast, right? Us losing ourselves. And so hopefully.

yvonne wink (04:40)

You know, this is a conversation about finding your way back, whether it's from a male's perspective or a female's perspective. I hope you get to savor every moment of us having Colby on the podcast today. So, Colby, welcome, welcome, welcome to the Unfolding Podcast. I am so glad that you're here and I appreciate your willingness to share your story. Welcome, Colby.

Kolby Fisher (04:54)

thank you. Thank you for the intro. That's good. It's, it's, I don't know. I just, it's kind of crazy because I don't, you know, I don't get nervous about things, but I kind of.

yvonne wink (05:12)

Ha ha ha.

Kolby Fisher (05:24)

made myself maybe a little bit nervous about this, but I mean, really, but I was just gonna say what it comes down to it is that I know that sharing what I know, what I'm hoping will help others.

yvonne wink (05:27)

But

yvonne wink (05:39)

I sure hope so. I know that what you have just in the little conversations that you and I have had, I I know that you're going to help a lot of people today. I think you're gonna help women, but most importantly, you're going to help men find language. And sometimes they can't hear it from my vessel, right? Sometimes they need to hear it via your vessel. And so you're doing the lowest work today, Colby. So

Kolby Fisher (06:07)

All right, there we go.

yvonne wink (06:08)

Yeah. And and I the f I love it when people are nervous because I know that means they care. And so I I'm glad that you care and you're here and sharing your story. So I will lead and you just, you know, you jump in, answer the questions and I hope you feel comfortable. Let's do this.

Kolby Fisher (06:26)

All right, let's do it.

yvonne wink (06:28)

Let's do it. So when I first read your message, there was something that you said that really stayed with me. And you and I were talking about this a little earlier. So but I want to bring it up again on this episode here. You described coming home and feeling like you were constantly doing something wrong. And I think anyone who's ever lived in that kind of emotional environment knows how exhausting.

yvonne wink (06:54)

that can be. I was telling you, right? Like you pull up to your house and you sit in the car in your car, right? And you know that you have to get in. You know that you have kids and family and food and things to get going, but you just the the exhaustion of knowing that you have to go in, right? And and and and just I I want you to share how exhausting that can be, but I want to start right there. So Colby, I want you to take me back to those early years of your marriage. I want to know what did it feel like

yvonne wink (07:23)

To come home.

Kolby Fisher (07:26)

well, as we, I mean, as we all know, like these types of people, they can hide it really well for only a little while. what'd be, you know, so I, I'd say like the first six months of my marriage, I didn't really see, I didn't see these patterns. it was a little bit, it was a little bit more into it.

yvonne wink (07:50)

Mm.

Kolby Fisher (07:56)

then, you know, but I mean, I'll be honest early in my, I mean, the crazy thing about all of this is that I really didn't start recognizing this chaos of confusion and not doing enough until well into my marriage. And you're talking like 18 years into my marriage that like, mean, even probably, well probably more like 15 years into my marriage of.

Kolby Fisher (08:21)

finally seeing like, why are you always stressed out? Why are you always confused or feel just not loved or feel like you're not, you just can't do anything right at any level really. Whether that be have a good job or like take your, I mean,

yvonne wink (08:38)

Right.

Kolby Fisher (08:48)

I don't know where they even really go because I'm kind of like, I mean, I mean, just to give you some background, I was the caretaker of my kids. I took them to all their appointments. My work schedule allowed me to do so. I, I, I took them to school. picked them up from school. I, my, my ex just simply with her career just told me that she doesn't have the time to do all those things. So as a team player, I thought, Hey, I'm going to do all this.

yvonne wink (09:01)

Aw.

Kolby Fisher (09:17)

I'm going to be there for my kids. going to, you know, I was in college at one point and decided and opted out of college just because it was just too much for me to be involved with my kids, having a full-time job and that, that, you know, college was, it was too hard. was too hard for me to do, be doing all that all at once. but you know, I, I made sure that she got through school. My ex graduated from BYU.

Kolby Fisher (09:47)

and that, and that came out of sacrifice. She literally was absent. And I understood that as somebody looking at it, I was like, you know what? Yeah, you've got to study. You got to go do these things. And, know, I was willing to make the sacrifices for us to build our life. And, and it allowed her to get a really good, you know, to get it started, a really good career and in an industry that she's still in today. And, but, know,

yvonne wink (09:47)

Wow.

yvonne wink (09:54)

Mm-hmm.

yvonne wink (10:12)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (10:14)

I don't know, like Yvonne, I was just going to say like it just to be honest, yeah, like when I finally realized coming home, it was interesting because I'm not sure what year it was because dates and things are just so scrambled for me these days. But I'll tell you, I was well into my marriage and I, I remember walking in and my ex, my now ex said, why were you out there for so long? You're out there sitting for a long time. What were you doing out there?

yvonne wink (10:30)

Right.

Kolby Fisher (10:45)

And it didn't dawn me even then why I was sitting out in my vehicle as long as I was. but then I started realizing, you know, really that's exactly why I was sitting in my vehicle. Cause I knew that once I opened that door, it was going to be, there was going to be a lot of, I don't know. There's been times where, I don't know, there's one time in particular I did want to bring up. this was like, probably this was like, two, about three years prior.

yvonne wink (10:45)

Mm.

yvonne wink (10:51)

Right.

Kolby Fisher (11:15)

to my divorce, but I had just walked in the door from work, had a great day at work, had a great day, just overall, the morning was great, everything was great. I'm rarely in a bad mood. I mean, that's where it even gets, you know, I'm always just pretty happy, outgoing. But I remember I was getting, as soon as I opened the door, I got berated and she started just yelling. I can't even remember everything she was yelling at me about.

yvonne wink (11:21)

Mm.

yvonne wink (11:28)

Right.

Kolby Fisher (11:42)

And then she's like, then you're, just tired and you don't want to do anything now. And I'm like, I just walked in the door and actually I've had a great day today. And I, and I, and what was crazy is that she was doing this. My son was laying on the couch and I looked over at my son. go, I said, Hey, did I do anything? I literally just walked in the door and interesting enough because

yvonne wink (11:50)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (12:10)

I had brought my son into the equation. Like she quickly just like saw that she was kind of like exposed at that point. And she just tried to immediately try to apologize. And I just, and I just said, I mean, when her apology was this empty, but it was just, it was just interesting. Cause that's just how it's just how it just was, you know, just always, just always being like berated yelled at, like I had friends like,

yvonne wink (12:35)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (12:39)

ask me why is your spouse so, like why is your wife so mad at you? I have no idea. I'm still trying to figure that out.

yvonne wink (12:46)

I have no idea. Yeah. you described feeling like you were constantly doing something wrong. Did you eventually start believing that you were really the problem? Like that you were the problem?

Kolby Fisher (12:55)

Yes.

Kolby Fisher (12:57)

Like,

Kolby Fisher (13:02)

Well, yeah. So what it came down to is that you start believing that my job isn't good enough. My the way that I my decision, my decision making isn't good enough. I don't have the skill set to be a good husband or a good provider or a good just even just a good dad. Like I started doubting. Like I can I got to where I doubted myself on every decision I made.

yvonne wink (13:31)

Mm.

Kolby Fisher (13:31)

Like you get to that point where you just start. And what was killing my mom and dad is that they started seeing this because let me tell you, you know, not to get a big head and relive my, you know, my glory days of being uncle Rico and being able to throw, being able to throw the football over those mountains. But I will tell you, I, I had coming out of high school, I had all the confidence in the world ready to go conquer it, you know, and

yvonne wink (13:45)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (13:50)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (13:56)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (13:59)

just, I mean, they just saw just a person that was just always so confident and always so just under a lot of distress and a lot of just had a lot of doubt in a lot of things.

yvonne wink (14:12)

Right, right. how did how did that affect the way well, I wanna know just quickly like how it affected you at how you behaved at home, but then how you behaved outside. Like were you constantly trying to anticipate what might upset her? And then did that move into other relationships, right? Like did you recognize how much stress you were living under?

Kolby Fisher (14:34)

absolutely. my head. So where I recognized it the most was my work relationships. I saw that I would explode at work. No joke. I would, I mean, a boss would come over and yeah, they were maybe out of line, but typically myself knowing who I am, I would not have any type of, I was, my reactions were just so explosive.

yvonne wink (14:42)

Mm.

Kolby Fisher (15:03)

and I would always find myself apologizing to bosses, coworkers because of how I reacted, even though like, you know, I still feel like, you know, my, my pride guy still feels like, you know what? I deserve to like, kind of go off on them a little bit, you know, but that's not who I am. That's not what I'm about. I'm about being an adult, being intelligent, being, you know, having good adult conversations without all the emotion coming in, you know, and

yvonne wink (15:22)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (15:33)

And so I noticed that it worked and then I thought, and then I got thinking that, know what, my work environment is so terrible. Life is just so terrible. It's my work that's doing it. I was ready to quit my job and move forward. I'm, you know, right now I'm glad I didn't, you know, but like, it's just, but I was doubting a lot. And then like my relationships with, with like,

yvonne wink (15:50)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (15:57)

I noticed with my relationships with my siblings and my parents became more distant because that's what, you know, I mean, I mean, I have a hard time saying, you know, clinically, my ex was never diagnosed narcissist by any means, but I will say that, but I was going to say that like she isolated me. She isolated me from my family. We stopped attending more and more family type things.

yvonne wink (16:14)

Usually they don't, by the way.

Kolby Fisher (16:27)

And so my relationships actually got more distant because of, mean, just, mean, a lot of my doubt was like, yeah, they don't want to be around. They don't want to be, you know, and she fed that, she fed that. And she always tried to feed fights that didn't even exist, you know, just to be, just to keep me even more distant or try to make me feel jealous of family and siblings, which it just didn't, you know, it was so, I mean, looking at it now, I'm like,

yvonne wink (16:39)

Okay.

yvonne wink (16:45)

Yeah, yeah.

yvonne wink (16:48)

Sure.

Kolby Fisher (16:57)

So it was just so dumb that I was just like feeding into her stuff, know?

yvonne wink (17:00)

No, it's not dumb. It's no, so what happens is it just becomes normal, right? And so, so something that I've learned through studying human behavior and and honestly through my own experiences is how easily that we can adapt to an environment that isn't necessarily healthy for us. And it's if you haven't been in this situation, this is my whole theme for this podcast, is because p I I've heard this so many times. Well, you're smart.

yvonne wink (17:28)

You know, this is what you study. Why were you in that relationship? Why were you letting anyone treat you like that? Right? Same with you. Intelligent, smart, you come from a loving family, you have siblings. And when you start getting pulled away from, you know, home base, right? And isolated. And you know that this isn't healthy, but something starts to happen repeatedly, it starts to feel normal. And sometimes we we don't even realize how much of ourselves we've changed just.

Kolby Fisher (17:33)

What?

yvonne wink (17:58)

To keep the peace.

Kolby Fisher (18:00)

So just recently I had a really good friend of mine. It's funny, I have a group of friends that I've been friends with since junior high. And some of them are female, some of her guys, but I didn't realize until after my divorce, one of them came and talked to me and just said, we tried to have interventions with you to divorce her without really being straightforward, like divorce her now. And it was just kind of like, man, now looking back, I can see that now.

yvonne wink (18:22)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (18:24)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (18:30)

But like you said, when you're in it to win it, it's kind of like, you know, I was just like, you know, was told by so many people, well, that's just how marriage is. That's how you've got to, you just got to keep working at it. You got to keep working on it. And if, know, and then, but where it was, I mean, where it was just so damaging is that I just, you know, she had broken me so badly that I was just convinced I was the issue. I wasn't, I wasn't like,

yvonne wink (18:39)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (19:00)

you know, I wasn't making enough money. I wasn't doing, I wasn't doing all these things. I mean, at one point in one of our, you know, when she was obviously like monkey, I mean, I look back and she was definitely monkey branching pretty much our whole marriage. But, but like she would, she would just like really

yvonne wink (19:17)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (19:25)

just get me thinking like I was like the problem and tell me that you need to go to therapy, which not saying therapy is a bad thing, but under those circumstances, having her tell me that I need therapy, I thought I was crazy. Am I going crazy? Am I bad for like, there's, know, that's what they kind of do. They cause a mass confusion and they break, they break, yeah, they break you.

yvonne wink (19:41)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (19:45)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (19:49)

Well, that's a smoke screen, right? It's a smoke screen. Yeah. It's a smoke screen so that you can't see what's happening. There's a lot it's like I always say it's like doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo like they're juggling and there's so much action happening that all of a sudden and you don't even realize, but you're being herded in a direction. And I want to make sure that we I want to make sure that we bring that point home because

yvonne wink (20:11)

People often look at that as weakness and it's not what it is, is it this is humans human biology, right? It's it's that we've adapted to this environment that's not necessarily healthy for us, but this is what good people do. Cause it's like, well, especially if you're a go-getter, like you were saying, and you're you're you're in it to win it. And you go, I'm I'm gonna make this thing work, you watch, right? And so w it and this brings me to my next point here, because you told me about an incident involving a neighbor. And I remember thinking,

Kolby Fisher (20:39)

It's funny that you mentioned that because I was just thinking about that as we were talking. Well, that story is just like, it was so gaslighting. And that's kind of where it kind of starts is that I decided to come home from work early.

yvonne wink (20:41)

That must have been a pretty significant moment in your story. Can you take me back to Matt Day?

yvonne wink (20:53)

Yep. I told you I'd guide you.

Kolby Fisher (21:08)

Sometimes my job, I'm able to just leave work and come home early. And this is before like you shared your locations on your phones and that. And I just happened to pull up to my house early and this neighbor comes bolting across my lawn from my front door. And he even had the audacity even waved at me. And I go in and I go into my house. can't find my...

Kolby Fisher (21:33)

Can't find my ex or my wife then, then couldn't find her anywhere. Couldn't find her inside the house, couldn't find her out. Who knows what she was doing, where she was hiding. She probably was hiding in a closet somewhere. But then eventually she comes out and I said to her, why was so-and-so running out our front door? She blatantly looked me in the eyes and said, nobody was even here. What are you talking about? And she argued with me for about 10 minutes about that.

Kolby Fisher (22:02)

And I finally lost it. And I said, you know, I said the F word and I said, Hey, I saw what I saw. I'll go right over there. And as soon as I said, I was going to go over there and talk to him. She said, no, he was just here helping me with the sprinklers. was kind of a, but yeah. So he ends up being there. And the funny thing about sprinklers, Yvonne is that I do my own sprinklers. I put in my own sprinkling system and I didn't need help with sprinklers. didn't need his help.

yvonne wink (22:07)

Thanks.

yvonne wink (22:16)

so he was there.

yvonne wink (22:26)

Mm-hmm.

Kolby Fisher (22:30)

didn't need nobody's help. So the fact that she even used that as even an excuse was even, you know, but this happened. I mean, I look back and this happened multiple times with different neighbors, especially from, you know, I mean, we've moved to two different neighborhoods within a mile apart from each other. But it's like that particular neighbor, I was going to tell you, ended up so he was older.

Kolby Fisher (22:58)

And actually they had moved into their dream home and that was going to be his retirement. Everything, they had everything going and then the next thing you know, they just moved away. We'll come to find out they had moved away because he had had an affair with somebody in the neighborhood. Well, that affair was my ex.

yvonne wink (23:18)

Wow. Okay, I have two good questions. F okay, I'm let me see how to how to ask this first, because this is good and I want you to elaborate here. Okay. Was there a part of you that still tried to explain it away or minimize what happened? And looking back, were there warning signs you recognize now that you couldn't see then? And maybe that's all tied into one question, but first.

yvonne wink (23:46)

Was there a part of you that still tried to explain her story away and explain it all away or minimize what happened? Like, well, yeah, maybe that it's not that bad, or did you know right then and there this is not right?

Kolby Fisher (24:01)

Well, it's interesting because I, it's funny you bring this up because I was thinking about all that. What was, I think where it was minimalized is that she was able to turn the tables to make me feel bad for questioning her about it. And I don't remember exactly what she said or did.

yvonne wink (24:09)

Good at what I do, Colby.

Kolby Fisher (24:27)

but I felt bad and I ended up apologizing. And like saying that, I was, kind of jumped the gun. Yeah, maybe he, you know, I accepted that maybe he was just there for the sprinklers. But I mean, I, and so, I mean, looking back, it's like, I still, even after, it still ate at me that he was there for that reason. And then eventually because of other things that they gaslight you with and

yvonne wink (24:41)

Wow.

Kolby Fisher (24:57)

And life, you do just move on from it, but that sticks with you. And really, to be honest, until I separated from her, I hadn't thought about that incident for over a decade. And then all of a because when your brain is under so much duress and you have all that cortisol, and then when you're able to finally breathe, because you're out of, you're away from the environment, your brain wants to piece together.

yvonne wink (25:02)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (25:17)

Mm.

Kolby Fisher (25:25)

everything that you've ever questioned and wants to solve your life in one night, which I'm telling you, there was no, no exaggeration, three months of me never being able to sleep. I thought I was going, I thought I was going crazy, but 21 years pulling out of that situation. My, was literally like, my brain was going through 21 years and, just answering like, this is what

yvonne wink (25:39)

Right.

Kolby Fisher (25:54)

was happening, this is what was going on. you know, to get right back, you know, not to get off the subject too much, but I just gonna say like, yeah, I just has accepted her narrative. And that's kind of what happens is that eventually because I'm not confrontant, I wasn't a confrontational person. This has, this whole experience has made me a little bit more confrontational, but not in a negative way, but in a way that I now call people out on their garbage and they hate it.

yvonne wink (26:17)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (26:23)

Mm-hmm.

Kolby Fisher (26:23)

People hate being called out and I don't do it for fun and I don't do it for my own pride. I do it for my own protection. Like I will tell and so, and I used to not do that. I used to, I was so non-confrontational. Like, but like, but that's, yeah.

yvonne wink (26:31)

absolutely. I love it. It's respect now.

yvonne wink (26:38)

Yeah. I think Yeah. I think one of the hardest things about well hearing this, you know, what you're you're what you're explaining, but one of the hardest things about being in a confusing relationship is that you can spend so much time trying to understand the other person's behavior that you stop paying attention to what it's doing to you.

yvonne wink (27:01)

Right? The confusion that it's causing you, the duress, you said mental duress, right? The stress, the mental duress, the depression, the spiral, right? The questioning of ourselves, and then the undoing of ourselves, right? Where we just let go. And so sometimes we stay because of what we believe love, loyalty, and commitment are supposed to look like, right? Which is, which is something that I really want, I wanted to explore this with you.

Kolby Fisher (27:02)

100%.

yvonne wink (27:31)

because you know, you you were married for 21 years, right? And I think there's something really important about that number. 21 years is a long time to keep trying. And so I guess my question is, what did being a good husband mean to you during those years? Like, why was that so significant enough that after t 16 years, 18 years, 19 years, 20?

yvonne wink (27:59)

What was it at that 21-year mark that changed? But first, what did being a good husband mean to you during those years?

Kolby Fisher (28:03)

It was to me like coming from, know, not to, you know, don't want to maybe jump ahead by any subjects, but like, you know, being raised a Latter-day Saint and LDS here in Utah. you know, that is part of your divine purpose is being a

Kolby Fisher (28:30)

being a husband and being a father and being a dad and, you know, and just being the head of the household, being the priesthood holder. I mean, to me, it meant everything to have a solid marriage. Because to me, that meant, you know, here, like what I believed was to be setting myself up for the eternities of the, you know, the stuff after this life. And I

yvonne wink (28:59)

Mm-hmm.

Kolby Fisher (29:00)

I, and so, you know, religion played a really big role in that, but like also just me being fulfilled because we all know with these types of people, there's not always just bad days. So when, when she would see me starting to pull away, which I, there was several times where I'm just like, I just got a divorce or I'd have these conversations with my brothers and I'd be like, I probably just need a divorce. And when I get to that point,

Kolby Fisher (29:28)

then she'd reel me back in. She'd be good for a few months. The push and pull, they use the push and pull. The emotional push and pull where it's like, I'm gonna lose them. And then she'd reel me back in. But I was gonna say, it meant everything to me to have that role. Because here in Utah, I mean, I think anywhere, but like here in Utah, it's really heightened.

yvonne wink (29:35)

Mm-hmm.

Kolby Fisher (29:56)

about being a father figure and being a good husband. It's kind of a prestigious thing in a sense. But like for me, because of the way my heart is made is that to me being a good husband and being a good dad, that was life. I was happy with that.

yvonne wink (30:14)

Yeah. I love it. Especially when you come from a family like that where your parents are still together, right? And and they're and the family you were raised, you know, in a loving home. And so this makes sense. And I think a lot of men listening that have that connection with their faith, right? That faith does influence our decision to stay. Right. And then and then also, you know

Kolby Fisher (30:22)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (30:39)

that feeling that leaving meant that you were somehow failing your family, right? Those are all really good attributes to a man and to a someone that, you know, is is wanting to build this family, right? No one I w I was in a we were in an episode last week and my guest said, no one ever gets married to get divorced. We don't think about that part, right? So, you know, but Mike, I guess another question to keep going down this path, but like, did being a good man become confused with

yvonne wink (31:09)

Being a man who could endure anything?

Kolby Fisher (31:13)

Say that one more time. That's kind of an interesting question.

yvonne wink (31:20)

So Yeah, think about it. So I tied in Yeah, no no. So I was tying in your upbringing, your faith. sometimes leaving means that we don't want to leave because that means we're failing our family. And so sometimes we focus on being a good man and being a good husband, but some can that be confused with being a man who is also just able t he can just endure anything? Do we get con did you get confused there?

Kolby Fisher (31:28)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (31:34)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (31:48)

Yo, so it's kind of like, well, yeah, because what was crazy is that, man, I killed it. I mean, I'm not trying to sell myself on your podcast, but I will tell you, I will tell you.

yvonne wink (32:00)

Guys, wait, wait, wait, wait. Women women, by the way, he Colby's single, so if if he is selling himself, let us know. I'll give I'll pass on his digits. Just kidding, just kidding.

Kolby Fisher (32:07)

Dude, I, Yvonne, I cooked, I cleaned, I took pride in just being the ultimate husband and being the ultimate dad. And then it was kind of like, what was hard for me though, is that outside of that, I knew deep down there was no connection there between me and her in a sense that she didn't respect me.

yvonne wink (32:20)

Yes. Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (32:35)

And it just ate me up and I would constantly, mean, the conversations, she would get irritated by them, but I'd go into her, cause she worked from home. I'd go into her office and I said, what is going on here? I see that you're pulling away and that there's a disc, like what's going on? You're upset about something, you know, and that's the kind of games she would play. It was constantly like me trying to guess why she was upset and don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to paint myself as perfect.

Kolby Fisher (33:04)

because I am a man and then, know, there's these are not perfect that, but to be honest, there was never really a legitimate reason for her to really to be mad at me about. I show ice. Yeah.

yvonne wink (33:04)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (33:17)

That's confusion though, right? That's the that's the smoke screen that where the confusion comes in. And I I you you're you're going in circles, you're never moving forward, you're just fighting in circles and you're fighting each other. You're not fighting a problem. You're f that's why i I understand what you're saying. I know I know that you're not trying to put everything on her because you and I have had this conversation, and it is never, it is never just clear-cut, even if you're with a narcissist, like, it's all the narcissist's fault. It's not.

Kolby Fisher (33:25)

Yes.

Kolby Fisher (33:28)

Yes.

Kolby Fisher (33:42)

Yes. Yes.

yvonne wink (33:45)

It it it is definitely Yes. Yeah, yeah. But I think that this is something that both men and women can relate to, right? We grow up with these I call them I've been doing a lot of this in my studies lately with my groups, is invisible rules, right? So we grow up with these invisible rules about what love is supposed to look like.

Kolby Fisher (33:46)

Yeah, we have, have, we have our foot. Yeah. Yeah. We definitely have our faults too.

yvonne wink (34:08)

You know, marriage is hard, you don't give up, you fight for your family, men just stay quiet, women rule, or whatever, or vice versa, right? And then there's no, you know, there and and even I know I was fed this a lot too, and I think just coming from a family of faith, right? Is that there's value in commitment, right? You made a commitment, you made a commitment to God, to people, to whatever, right? To one another. But I think the question becomes, at what point does fighting for your marriage

Kolby Fisher (34:28)

Yes.

yvonne wink (34:37)

become fighting against your own mental well-being or overall well-being.

Kolby Fisher (34:43)

Well, that's where like, eventually, I don't know, Yvonne, I don't know how to explain it. I will tell you, there was a moment where I just woke up fully. Like I was like, mentally, my eyes were awake to what she was doing. And I had started really diving in deep. And luckily I did find a therapist. This is during COVID. I'd found a therapist that I was able to

Kolby Fisher (35:12)

express all this stuff that had been going on for the last, I think at that point it was like 18 years. And she full on just made the statement, you're with a full blown narcissist. You need to get out. She says, you need to get out. She said in all the years she'd done like 40 something years as a therapist. And she said, I never recommended anybody to divorce, but I'm recommending that you divorce.

yvonne wink (35:24)

Wow.

Kolby Fisher (35:38)

and that you move forward. And at that time, I still wasn't quite ready, but I had woken up to her stuff. And then from that point, I started calling her out, you know, like really holding her accountable. And I think the end of my marriage was when I couldn't get her to set boundaries with the man that she's currently with. You know, I couldn't get her to set the boundaries with her boss. I couldn't get, because I tried to tell her that

yvonne wink (35:52)

Mm.

yvonne wink (36:05)

Mm-hmm.

Kolby Fisher (36:08)

her one-on-one sessions that would last for five or six hours that she called business lunches. I told her I didn't like it. I go, can I come to lunch with you? You know, like I don't like, you know, I didn't like, you know, so I mean, my point bringing that up is to that setting boundaries was she wouldn't do it. She wouldn't set any boundaries and set boundaries with anybody or anything. And so that really, I don't know, that's just.

yvonne wink (36:19)

Thank you.

Kolby Fisher (36:34)

part of that, but you do. It's like, it's kind of weird. can't explain how I almost kind of think like this point, cause I just think it's more of a like, like, you know, I think God finally realized like this person has been through a hell of a lot of s**t. And like, all of a I'm not kidding you. It was like, I woke up that day and it was like, I had my wits about me and I just started calling her out on everything. And it just, she just couldn't be held accountable. Yeah.

yvonne wink (36:49)

Mm-hmm.

yvonne wink (37:00)

Don't give the end away yet. Don't give the end away yet. But yeah, no, but one of the reasons I wanted you on this podcast is because

Kolby Fisher (37:04)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

yvonne wink (37:11)

We hear a lot about both me running my mouth on social media, the podcast, and then women in general, right? That women experiencing emotional abuse. And and we have to pay attention. It's so important. But we don't hear nearly as much about men experiencing emotional abuse, right? And so I wonder how much of that has to do with what men are taught about strength, right? So I know I how okay.

yvonne wink (37:40)

How difficult was it for you to finally admit and was this was this the with the help of your therapist or with just your f like you're talking about your brother and friends, but even how difficult was it to admit even to yourself that you were experiencing something that was what we now know as emotional abuse?

Kolby Fisher (37:56)

my god.

Kolby Fisher (38:02)

my God, it was hard. I'd say even now it's not easy because I'm learning that I can talk to you about it in this space. But what you know, what you learn is that there's people, even when you tell them your story, they don't understand it. They can't recognize the patterns. They don't know. And that was frustrating for me is that my mom and dad understood me and thank God.

yvonne wink (38:25)

Mm.

Kolby Fisher (38:32)

has helped me through so much. But like my siblings, my friends, people just looked at me, I was like crazy because they didn't understand what was going on. But it

yvonne wink (38:44)

Did you believe did you ever think that people what did you worry that people wouldn't believe you once you started to tell them or w was that was it pretty obvious who she was?

Kolby Fisher (38:53)

Well, and I was going to say she made it pretty obvious, especially towards the end, because she was posting things on social media. So she exposed herself without me having to, I mean, I mean, that's the story in itself, but like, yeah, she was posting stuff on social media. had people reach out to me, like, how are you doing with all this and your kids? Like, I see that you're just kind of like this single parent taking care of your kids while your, your, your wife is out.

Kolby Fisher (39:21)

doing whatever the hell she wants. And I'm like, it's hard. I'm in a hard spot right now. But what was crazy when you go back to like the whole guy thing, admitting it, I'm telling you, you know where the anger is with all this Yvonne for me? You know where the anger is? The anger is that I let a complete loser do this to me. And that's where the anger is because

yvonne wink (39:27)

Yeah. Yeah.

yvonne wink (39:39)

Where?

Kolby Fisher (39:49)

I look back at who I was before I met this person and I'm like, how did I even let that person in my space in a sense that, you know, but I allowed this person who is a nobody do this to me. And that's where the anger is, is that I'm like, my gosh, why, you know? But I also, I can reflect and see that there is, with all the trauma and all the s**t.

yvonne wink (39:58)

Mm-hmm.

yvonne wink (40:09)

Mm, yeah.

Kolby Fisher (40:18)

that we go through, we grow and become so much better versions of ourselves in ways that I never, don't think I could have grown without going through all of that, but I still wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy by any means.

yvonne wink (40:36)

No. No. I know. I have

Kolby Fisher (40:38)

But it is kind of, it's looked at, I will say this, it is looked as weakness to men to admit that kind of stuff. It is.

yvonne wink (40:45)

So good. I want you to address these. Go ahead. I want you to address these two questions because I think this is really important because it's it it's touching on what you just said. And I think this is really important for men to hear because sometimes they'll tune out a lot of what we're saying, but that's why I want to come back and focus on this. So two things. How did your these experiences that you now started to share with the therapist and your family and your, you know, your brothers and people around you?

yvonne wink (41:13)

How do those experiences affect your confidence and your identity as a man? And two, what do you wish someone had asked you during those years or intervened or like you said someone someone said that they were gonna do like a intervention? Do you wish that would have happened? So answer those two. I can I can ask you again if you need to. But the first one was how do those experiences affect your confidence and identity as a man?

Kolby Fisher (41:36)

I couldn't see my declining confidence. That came from my mom and dad and my mom. So this is where it was like really beat me up. know, parents sometimes they do have all they for the most part, I think parents have the right things and can say the right things. But it beat me up to no end when my mom and dad would say.

Kolby Fisher (42:04)

You used to be so confident. And at that point I was kind of like, I was like, didn't know what they were talking about. I thought I was still myself. Like I was in denial. You know what I'm saying? Like I just, I was, I thought I was confident and, but I will tell you, I did come to the realization when things were coming to a head and Mike, had, I will be honest, I had no confidence. did, I, it really ate at me.

Kolby Fisher (42:33)

of where my life was going and just that I was convinced that I was the problem and that this was like, everything was my fault. But like my.

yvonne wink (42:46)

Yeah. Can you talk to some men right now? K some men right now, and you can tie in your confidence with this too, but do you think that some men do do you think men sometimes confuse s staying quiet or being chill or going with the flow with being strong?

Kolby Fisher (42:54)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (43:07)

Yes, and I think I absolutely because we're told to do so Yvonne We're not told to talk about this stuff. And matter of fact I've had plenty of family and friends tell me you just got to move on you got to stop talking about it You got to just move on you got to heal and move on but they don't when they say those things they're blank They're kind of just blank statements because they have no idea what what all of it entails Like I posted some I put

yvonne wink (43:28)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (43:32)

Exactly. I'm healed when I'm healed. Right? I I'm he we say I'm healed when I'm healed. Not I'm not healed on your timing. I'm healed when I'm healed.

Kolby Fisher (43:35)

Let me tell you, I posted some...

Kolby Fisher (43:43)

Well, and it's like the worst thing that being in this type of situation, the worst thing that anybody can do is to tell you quit being the victim and move forward. That's what all my siblings were telling me except for my sister. But my brothers were like, you stop being the victim. And I'm like, I'm not playing the victim. I'm saying the truth. It's like, there's a, to me there's a difference there. I don't think like a victim.

yvonne wink (44:06)

Right.

Kolby Fisher (44:11)

Like I didn't feel like I was playing a victim. Am I a victim of those of emotional abuse? Absolutely. But at the same time, I'm not like trying to play that feel bad for me. I'm this victim, but I wanted to get my truth out because I, I know, and I try to tell, I try to tell people this, getting your truth out, getting it out of you is going to heal you.

yvonne wink (44:20)

Yes.

Kolby Fisher (44:40)

more than you would if you just kept it all in and silent. Because what happens, and I worry being in the dating game, I worry that I don't wanna carry any of that into another relationship.

yvonne wink (44:45)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (44:55)

Right, right, yeah. No, getting the story out of your body is the best way to heal. It's the best thing that you can do. So keep talking about it, keep doing what you do, keep healing, keep growing, keep evolving all of it because that is how you're able to show up healed to the next person. And that right, we say this, there's a saying in in in therapy, we say stop cutting, stop bleeding all over people who didn't cut you. And so

yvonne wink (45:22)

Obviously there's some things that happened with this person that you were in a relationship with, right? And we're not gonna diagnose her. I can't, I don't know her side of the story. But also there was off obviously obviously some bleeding that she was bleeding on you, some cuts that took place that you didn't do, but yet you were there holding bandages and and gauze and towels and you're trying to stop the bleeding all over her and that's causing the confusion, right? And so, I I wanna Yeah, go ahead.

Kolby Fisher (45:28)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (45:38)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (45:43)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (45:49)

Well, when you, was gonna tell you on that, it's crazy because part of some of those red flags I didn't see before I married her was her dad telling me that she had so many issues that she needs to work through through a therapist. But he never told me that he was that issue when she had issues with both her parents and with them controlling, manipulating and.

Kolby Fisher (46:16)

Also, just abandonment with her parents as well. There's so many issues that, I mean, really, narcissists are created, sadly, by their parents, right? I mean, or, you know, and maybe, I don't know, understand as much as you do, Yvonne, but Yvonne, I just think that, I think that narcissists are created, and she was definitely created from her experiences from her childhood. And because I'm the empath that I am,

Kolby Fisher (46:43)

I really gave her, I mean, she told me her childhood story and I felt so much, I think a part of me sticking it out with her was my ability to be understanding and to show empathy.

yvonne wink (46:52)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (46:57)

Yeah. That's exactly absolutely what they bank on. is that people like us show up and have that empathy. So, but I wanna talk about, you know, we've spent a lot of time talking about you know a very similar you and I had very similar stories, right? different obviously they're coming from different perspectives because you're a man and I'm a woman and but very similar in terms of

Kolby Fisher (47:25)

I know I was always drawn in when, so this is funny because when I came across you on social media, my sound wasn't even on, but I saw like how animated you were talking. And I'm like, I've got to I've got to hear, I've got to hear what this lady is saying. But what was crazy though is that, you know, that, I mean, yeah, you're a woman, I'm a man.

yvonne wink (47:44)

Ha.

Kolby Fisher (47:52)

But your experience in certain things were very much similar.

yvonne wink (47:56)

Yeah, I really appreciate that. And also I have to say for those listening, Colby has been the absolute hype man that anybody could ever, ever want on their side. So you are you've been incredible reposting my videos and just hyping me up, supporting me. And and I I would I tell this to people often, I say I get more support from Colby than I do my own like good friends and family who

yvonne wink (48:24)

probably just scroll right past my stuff, you know, don't repost or or support me in any way. And here, you know, you meet some of the best, most supportive people that are strangers on the internet. And so it's been my pleasure to get to know you.

Kolby Fisher (48:34)

Well, well, it's been my pleasure to get to know you too. And I was just going to say, I share your stuff because I know it will, it will, it will help somebody. It will, it will get to somebody random that need to hear it. There's people that are in these types of relationships just as long as me. And it's like, if they hear it,

Kolby Fisher (49:01)

when you hear it from somebody else or hear it from a perspective, it opens your eyes. And I mean, that's what I tell you. Like at the beginning, I was telling you that there was a guy on TikTok that was making videos and he was talking about narcissistic abuse. And, and I had no idea what a narcissist was. I mean, I had the general idea. Like I thought, narcissists is just someone that's

Kolby Fisher (49:23)

into themselves, you know, they have a mirror and they like to admire. The admiration end is all I understood about it. I didn't know how deep it went, but hearing him, it helped me. And so I kind of take that perspective with your videos and the content you make. I know that there's women, men, people, humans, whatever people want to recognize themselves. mean, really, I mean, you know, it's just they, them, it's like you can make an impact.

yvonne wink (49:25)

Right, right.

yvonne wink (49:45)

Yeah, they yeah.

Kolby Fisher (49:51)

And I'm telling you, in my healing journey, finding your content was just, anytime somebody that's been a victim of this kind of stuff, when you feel that validation that somebody understands it, somebody knows, it is so healing.

yvonne wink (50:09)

It is, right? I so many times you have no idea. Well, I've shared with you some of the some of the awful comments and we we've laughed about it, but you know, right? And it's like that's that's when you know you're like narcissist, you know, but but it but just when I feel like those things don't make me want to quit. But sometimes I just get overwhelmed with my own life. And you know, you just go, I just need a break and I r and then I remember all the incredible humans that

Kolby Fisher (50:17)

my gosh, hilarious.

yvonne wink (50:35)

write in and DM me and text and get email me from my website and it makes it gives me the courage to keep going. And that's why I was like I kept I kept saying we need men need to hear your voice. So we we are coming to the end and I I we have so much to talk about. So we're gonna have to go through this faster now. because I think we're coming up on an hour. Can you believe that?

Kolby Fisher (50:57)

I can't believe it.

yvonne wink (50:59)

No, I know. So okay, we talked about

Kolby Fisher (51:02)

I'm sorry I'm so long-winded.

yvonne wink (51:05)

No, it's okay. I'm I'm gonna keep you I'll keep you wrapped. Well, I'm gonna keep you locked in right now because this is really important. but but I think it was important for you to also get your story out, right? And your experience, which was the manipulation and the erosion of yourself and you know the confusion and the smoke screens and everything. And I think we were able to touch on that, how it affected you as a man and as as a as some a person of faith, as a you know, a provider and what that did to your

Kolby Fisher (51:09)

Okay.

yvonne wink (51:32)

confidence. And so I think let's start to transition into, you know, maybe when the noise stopped for you, right? I want to talk a little bit about what happened when you finally stepped outside of that environment. We talked about how maybe a year or two before that you found a therapist and you started calling her on things and then family started chiming in, right? Even some people saying, hey, we wanted to do an intervention. And so because this is to help people. We don't always recognize how much stress we've been carrying.

Kolby Fisher (51:45)

you

Kolby Fisher (51:54)

Mm-hmm.

yvonne wink (52:01)

Until we're no longer carrying it every day. It's almost like someone, God, the universe, angels, they come and pick the backpack up that we've been dragging all that dead weight on and they set it aside. And so I want to hear from you, you know, what it was like when the noise finally stopped, right? Did you experience relief right away? Was it complicated? Were there parts of yourself you realized that you'd lost along the way? what did you have to relearn about yourself?

Kolby Fisher (52:01)

me.

Kolby Fisher (52:06)

you

yvonne wink (52:30)

What role did your faith play in your healing? Did your family play in your healing? And then and now what does that peace look like in your life today?

Kolby Fisher (52:39)

Well, I was going to say like, I just want to point out that I went, I lost my hair and went gray.

Kolby Fisher (52:48)

pretty prematurely going through all that. Like my beard, I went, my beard is as white as snow because of it. And I went white before my dad. And I, know, it's crazy, the stress that you go through. So when I pulled out, when I finally was able to kind of like, I mean, to be honest, it's only been about a year ago that I've been able to just, was when I could finally just breathe. And I could finally just say, I could finally just say,

yvonne wink (52:51)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (53:15)

Right.

Kolby Fisher (53:18)

you know, no longer my chaos, but it was, but it was crazy because that's, mean, being able to sleep again, because people, it plays in every aspect of your life. So like, yeah, to be able to finally just be at peace, being out of it, my body, like the inflammation, I didn't have the inflammation in my body physically. didn't have, I stopped having self doubt, believe it or not. I started like,

Kolby Fisher (53:47)

seeing that I could still be me and that was a big, you my personality, you know, like I was voted class clown all through high school. So I was like the comedian, the funny guy. I'm the guy that comes in and I break the ice when it's in a tight situation. My friends bring me in, break the ice, you know? So I always break the ice. I'm easy to meet people, I had to find, I mean, I'd lost all that. I wasn't, I was just kind of like,

yvonne wink (54:08)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (54:17)

I was just kind of, I felt like I was just kind of existing. So yeah, when the noise, when I was pulled out of the situation, I felt like I could finally breathe. I could like finally, and really to be really pulled out of the situation, I had to be pretty much living in my own place, you know, having things set in place with my divorce because during it, during the divorce part of it all,

Kolby Fisher (54:44)

I was still chaotic. It was still stressful. It was still, I felt like I couldn't breathe. But when the divorce was done and I was just left here like this, it is what it is. The decree is what it is. And I could like start looking for the future and start planning and start doing things and start breathing again. And I don't know. It's, it's, I don't know. I think, I don't know how to explain it, but what I do reckon, what I do,

yvonne wink (55:11)

No, I get it.

Kolby Fisher (55:13)

What I do recommend is people, you know, don't isolate yourself because you feel broken. The best thing I did, I'm not kidding you, Yvonne, I'd never done it in my life. I started going to dinner by myself. I started going to the steakhouse next door to my place. I started getting out. I started calling my friends up, like in a way. And some of these friends were married. I'm like, I want to get out. You guys want to get, let's get out. Like I started getting out more. So the worst thing, I just, I just wanted to say just not,

yvonne wink (55:27)

Love it.

yvonne wink (55:40)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (55:43)

to be so long-winded. People need to just, when they're in that broken state and they can't breathe, get out more. Don't isolate yourself. I isolated myself for two months when I had separated from my ex, and that was so bad. That was like the worst thing I could have done.

yvonne wink (55:51)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (56:02)

Yeah. I just thought of this right now as you're talking. I think that sometimes people imagine that leaving a painful relationship is the end of the story, right? And and but in many ways, that's when another part of the work begins. Another part of your healing journey is because now now you're left with yourself.

yvonne wink (56:23)

And you're left with your core beliefs and your fears, your habits, the things that you tolerated, the things that you didn't understand. Like you said, it took you how long? I mean, it was you said like weeks and weeks and weeks, you know, to not you had zero sleep because you your mind was just racing, right? And so hopefully, with time and reflection, you know, you begin to understand.

Kolby Fisher (56:32)

you

yvonne wink (56:49)

what you want your life to look like moving forward without all the noise and and I think that's where you find yourself. Again, I know that's so cliche to say, but you find yourself like at the steakhouse. You find yourself out with your buddies laughing again and visiting with family and going aw going out by yourself, you know.

Kolby Fisher (57:05)

Well, it's.

Kolby Fisher (57:08)

What I have learned and even in a good marriage or a good relationship, what I have learned, you cannot, you cannot not put yourself first. You have to put yourself first. And I didn't understand that people might, it might sound selfish, maybe to people who don't understand. But when I had put myself, I'd be, my, my ex and my kids was before everything.

Kolby Fisher (57:37)

And I think you gotta find a balance where you are putting yourself first with your dreams, your goals. You know, I let all that go to solely focus on them solely. And I think that's where people get lost. And even in a good marriage, you find yourself lost because you forgot that, holy crap, I've gotta put myself as priority.

Kolby Fisher (58:01)

That's why I always tell people, like, what helps you? I, cause I've talked to, it's funny, leading up to this podcast, I had ran into and talked to several people that had been through similar circumstances, but I tell them, I'm like, go get a massage, go get a pedicure. I'm a dude, do pedicures. I do all kinds of stuff. mean, do all these things that pamper yourself and take care of yourself and put yourself first. And that's what's crazy is that I still,

yvonne wink (58:18)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (58:31)

Like I feel like when I'm doing something for myself, I still, because maybe of the scars that I have, I feel like it's like selfish, like, I'm being selfish. And I really should be just like, no, this is an awesome opportunity or something I need to do.

yvonne wink (58:51)

Yeah, no, that's just self-care. And I love it. there's a c one question that I've been wanting to ask you since I first read your story. s for so many years, right? It sounded like you were you were trying to figure out how to save your marriage, right? And I love that. I love that part in humans that we are are trying so carefully at times, right? Even recklessly, I guess, at times, right? To save something, a relationship and a marriage. And I and and so

yvonne wink (59:20)

I I wanna first say thank you, because that's wonderful, right? But for so many years you were trying to do that. And so when did the question change from how do I save my marriage to how do I save myself? And we have like a minute to answer that.

Kolby Fisher (59:37)

Well, I think it's when I had the last conversation. had a brother that's a couple years older. He's always been my, he's the one that's carried me through life. Like seriously, like he's two years older. Just, I always looked up to him and I had a conversation with him and I just remember just like him just saying, he's like, Colby, you've got to

Kolby Fisher (01:00:06)

take care of yourself. You deserve to be happy. You deserve, like he pointed out so many things that I just never really thought about. And I'm like, you you're right. You know, I deserve to have happiness in a way that's not toxic. he started seeing it with her where she would constantly bag on me.

yvonne wink (01:00:25)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (01:00:34)

I mean, that's a whole other podcast in itself. mean, she was, she was built. Yeah, she was back. She was, mean, but like, would tell you, like, yeah, I just, it was probably after I talked to him and just really realizing that that marriage isn't, I don't know. I still will say, I think it's divine intervention that I just woke up out of it. Yvonne, there's not really like,

yvonne wink (01:00:37)

Yeah. We'll do a we'll do a bagging podcast.

yvonne wink (01:01:01)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (01:01:04)

maybe a defining moment, but there's so many things that led up to that where I was just awake and I realized how, when I realized and saw myself, how broken I was, I knew it was time. And you know, I knew it was time to get up and get out. And, then, and I think my soul just spoke to me and said, Colby, what the hell are you doing? Seriously, literally like out of a dead sleep, like Colby, what the hell are you doing? You cannot live like this anymore.

yvonne wink (01:01:20)

I love that.

yvonne wink (01:01:24)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (01:01:27)

Mm-hmm.

yvonne wink (01:01:34)

Yeah. okay, so I want you to take what you just said. I want you to think about yourself back then, and I want you to think about who you are today, everything that you represent today, all the strength that it took for you to muster up everything, right? Taking into account family, faith, commitment, all of that. And and and taking all of that and leaving and walking away. And I want you to think about that man that did that, who you were back then.

yvonne wink (01:02:03)

But the Colby who is here right now, if there's a man listening to this episode alone in his truck, alone in his car, alone in his company truck car, whatever, and he's recognizing, he's recognizing pieces of his own life in your story, wondering what the hell is happening to me. Like, my gosh, I parts of what this guy's saying, it's resonating with me.

yvonne wink (01:02:32)

I wanna know what would you want him to know? And I and you I want you to finish on that note.

Kolby Fisher (01:02:40)

I would want him to know, I mean, to be, this is funny because I'm just like, that's a pretty in-depth question, but you know, like, it's just what I would want him to know is that it's gonna be hard. It's gonna be hard. It's gonna be hard. And to like, it's not easy.

yvonne wink (01:02:52)

Ha ha ha.

Kolby Fisher (01:03:10)

to just, you know, it's not easy to get out of it. It's gonna be hard, but also I want people to know where I'm at. I want you guys to know, all of you to know that like I went from somebody that was scared, confused and just broken to where I am now that I don't give a s**t what people think. I have, I do what I want. I have a surety in my choices. I don't question myself.

Kolby Fisher (01:03:39)

I'm like, you know, and I do it with a healthy balance because I'm also able to see, like I'm able to see when I'm wrong and, you know, and I still make mistakes. But at the same time, I feel like I'm a more confident, more outgoing individual because what I mean, the lie that we have when we're in those circumstances of emotional abuse or with a narcissist.

yvonne wink (01:03:39)

Mm.

Kolby Fisher (01:04:06)

is that we still think we are still the same people and we're not. And the only people that see you broken are your friends and family, but they won't, lot of people won't say anything to you because they just figured you're in your own, it's your marriage. You got to figure it out. But what I would say is, is don't be afraid to talk to people. Start talking to people and talk to the right people, you know, like,

yvonne wink (01:04:10)

Hm.

yvonne wink (01:04:22)

Yeah. Yeah.

yvonne wink (01:04:30)

Mm.

yvonne wink (01:04:34)

Yeah.

Kolby Fisher (01:04:34)

Find a therapist that can clarify some of the things you're feeling. Because therapy, let's be real, Yvonne. Like the therapy in our childhood, like therapy was looked at like, you don't need therapy.

yvonne wink (01:04:39)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (01:04:49)

If you're in therapy, you're in you're in a white jacket. And it's not like that. It's not. It's not. I appreciate your perspective of of you know bringing in the past you, right? Because it's easy for us to, you know, f as us currently here right now to go, just leave, just leave. No. But I love that you have those two sides to you, which is it's scary, it's difficult.

Kolby Fisher (01:04:54)

No. And so, bye bye.

yvonne wink (01:05:15)

But it's doable. It's manageable. You can survive. I'm on the other side of it now, surviving and thriving and living. And that in and of itself is amazing. Go ahead, you can wrap up.

Kolby Fisher (01:05:25)

And so the last, the last, the last random advice I give men, women, if you're, if you are constantly feeling like all of a you're being berated over the most trivial random things and people can disagree or agree, get a PI and start, and start figuring out what your spouse is doing because I'm telling you in media and me,

yvonne wink (01:05:52)

I say that all the time. Gosh, if somebody's mean to you, if somebody's mean to you, they're probably cheating on you. I said what I said. Hang up, get rid of us. Don't we don't have to listen to this episode anymore. I don't care. We just said it.

Kolby Fisher (01:05:55)

and

Kolby Fisher (01:05:59)

Yeah, I'm not.

Kolby Fisher (01:06:03)

Well, I P I P I I'm telling you evidence in a mediation or in a court setting of cheating is gonna get you what you need in your divorce. Exactly what you need. Because I'm telling you, when you have actual evidence, these, these narcissists, these people, they crumble and you gotta, I mean, I'll tell you, like it's yeah, anyways, but I firmly, I, I had a friend a few months, I had a friend that

yvonne wink (01:06:17)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (01:06:29)

Good advice. That's good advice.

Kolby Fisher (01:06:32)

Yeah, a friend that just came out of nowhere and said, hey, my wife is berating me on all these things. And I said to him, if I wish somebody would have told me this when I was going through it, get a PI and figure out what's going on.

yvonne wink (01:06:49)

I love that. I love that. Thank you, Colby. Thank you so much for trusting me with your story and for being willing to have have a conversation that I know it this isn't always easy for men to have publicly. And I appreciate you so much. I think one of the most important things about today's conversation is recognizing that emotional pain doesn't belong to one gender. And I think that's a misconception that I hope that we put to rest today.

Kolby Fisher (01:06:51)

Yeah.

yvonne wink (01:07:18)

Right? Men experience this. Women experience it. And while the circumstances can look different, so many of the underlying experiences can feel so remarkably similar. You know, going back to what I was saying earlier the confusion, the self doubt, the feeling of of that you know, the the slowly losing yourself. And hopefully the realization.

Kolby Fisher (01:07:19)

Yes.

yvonne wink (01:07:46)

That you can begin finding your way back like Colby did, right? I I I I also want to leave everyone listening with something to think about. Sometimes we spend years trying to understand why someone treated us a certain way, or or how could you have done me so dirty? Right? How could you have cheated on me? How could you have hurt me? How could you have tr I loved you, right? And and why they said what they said.

yvonne wink (01:08:15)

Why did they talk badly? Why, why, why couldn't they love us the way we needed? And those questions can keep us searching for answers that may never come. But eventually, another question becomes possible, right? And that question is, what have I learned about myself? And what do I want to do differently with this new understanding?

Kolby Fisher (01:08:30)

Bye.

yvonne wink (01:08:43)

Right, because that's what we're that's what we're doing right here, right now, right? Even right now, as we're talking, we're reclaiming our own lives. Right. And I want to thank Colby again for sharing his experience and bringing a perspective to the Unfolding podcast that I hope that we can continue to explore. It sounds like he has so much more to share with us. And so I hope that everyone is is that's listening today wants more. You know, if something in today's conversation resonated with you, I hope.

Kolby Fisher (01:08:49)

yvonne wink (01:09:13)

That you'll share this episode with someone who might need to hear it. If you know of anybody, any male experiencing just one of the things that Colby shared, I hope that you send it to him and that we remember understanding our patterns isn't us judging another person, right? It it's about giving the person, it's you know, giving them, giving us that opportunity,

yvonne wink (01:09:41)

to make a set of different choices. And so I hope we find that freedom. And I wanna thank each and every one of you for listening today. And until next time, keep unfolding.

Welcome back to the Unfolding Podcast. Season four, episode two. I'm your girl, Yvonne Wink. But before we jump in, I have to give a little love to my girl Tracy. First of all, thank you, thank you, thank you for all the love on our season four premiere. It was amazing. That episode is still blowing up, friends, and honestly, I'm not surprised.

Right? But two women who have known each other for what 23 years, I think is what we decided on. throw some microphones in front of us, give us permission to talk about anything. And apparently we've got ourselves a little situation. So thank you for all the love. Tracy, thank you. I love you. Thank you for being so open and honest and funny and so unapologetically you.

That we all embraced it and felt the same way. So if you haven't listened to it yet, that episode, go back one. Trust me, it's worth it. All right. Let's do this now. I want to talk about something today that's been on my heart. And it and this might make us all a little uncomfortable. I know I am. I know when I have to have conversations like this, when I've had them with myself, it wasn't fun. So

I don't want to scare you, so stay with me. I want to talk about something that I think we're all guilty of. Some of us more than others. And some of us should probably be paying some restitution here. Because we've been spending some something incredibly valuable, like it's an unlimited resource.

Guess what that is? Yes, you guessed. It's our time. And I think what I'm so fascinated with is that I was thinking about this. We're so protective over so many things, but let's just name one thing. Okay, money. We are. We're a lot of us are very protective of our money. We worry about.

wasting it about you know maybe someone's gonna overcharge us or that we've missed a good sale right we want to know exactly where our money goes we look at it you know I know I do as soon as I get my statements or going through my charge my charges on my credit card I am very methodical and precise about what was spent

But our time? I know for myself, I'll give that away like I'm handing out free samples at Costco. I give it away to people, right? Five years in a job that sometimes we absolutely hate. Ten years promising ourselves we're finally going to start taking care of our health. Twenty years waiting for the right moment to pursue a dream.

Or years waiting for someone to finally love us the way we've been asking to be loved, the way we deserve to be loved. Somehow we convince ourselves that what's been happening is it's it's perfectly reasonable, right? But here's the thing. See, you can lose money and make it back.

But if you don't know this, now you're gonna know. You cannot earn back a single random Tuesday from 2019. Trust me, I've looked into it because I know there's some of us listening. We'd give up all of our earthly possessions for just one more day, just one more minute, hour, time with a loved one. And yet we keep telling ourselves.

The same little lie. I have time. I'll start Monday. I'll do it when I'm feeling better, when the sun's out, when the kids are older, when I have more money. When I lose the ten pounds. When work slows down, that's when I'll do it for sure. When I feel ready. When the economy improves.

When Merc when Mercury finally gets the hell out of retrograde.

And here's what makes this lie so expensive.

We don't notice what it's costing us while we're telling it. Because the bill doesn't arrive all at once. No, no, no, no, no, friend. It comes in installments. A missed opportunity here. a a dream postponed there. A friendship or a relationship that we stop nurturing. Conversation.

That we swore we were gonna have, but we never did. A version of ourselves that we never got around to becoming. But we saw her, we we envisioned what that looked like. And then one day we wake up and we realize we've spent years preparing to live a life we haven't actually started living.

And and I wanna make something even even a bit more clear here before we go any further. See, this isn't going to be one of those motivational episodes where I tell you, quit your job, sell your house, abandon your responsibilities, and come join me in Bali.

Because y'all know I love Bali. And frankly, I understand the temptation. I do. I do. But that's not what this is about. That's not what is sitting and weighing heavily on my heart right now. This is about something a little bit more uncomfortable, right? Because what if you're not waiting for the right time?

What if you're waiting for a version of yourself who isn't afraid?

I said it. But what if that version of you doesn't arrive until you actually start moving? Until you start heading in that direction with courage one small step at a time.

So as we talk today, we're talking about the psychology of waiting. And I I hope that gives you more insight. I hope that that I can share some of my wisdom here, right? Because the stories we tell ourselves, right, the years that we invest in things that stopped fulfilling us a long time ago, right? And what and why it's never too late to question the life you built.

gonna help you understand the psychology behind all of this right now. Because here's what I want you to remember, if anything, today. Just because you've grown roots somewhere doesn't mean you're required to stay there.

That's where we're gonna go today.

was having it actually what I'm about to talk about today stemmed from a conversation that was having with somebody that I I I cared deeply for. this man recently he's he's about 55 years old, right? And he and he was actually struggling. It was this wasn't just a bad day. This is someone who was struggling. He was looking back at his life with some regret. You know, he was talking about the years that had passed, the things that he'd wished he'd done differently. Some of those decisions

That he had made? What if I had gone left, not right? Right? What if I would have taken this opportunity and not that opportunity? You know, the things that he hadn't quite accomplished yet. And I could hear how disappointed he was, not just in his circumstances, but in himself. I think we've all had moments like that. I know I have. We look back and we wonder, how did I get here?

Is this really what my life has become?

And I listened to him because I could hear, I guess I'd call it sadness. I could hear the sadness. But I could also, I I could also hear something that concerned me. And that's what I wanted to talk about today, right? He seemed to have accepted that his life couldn't really change anymore. So I said, well, why not reinvent yourself? Start something new.

I don't know, go back to school, explore another career, quit, abandon this whole thing if you're that miserable here. Learn something new, something that you've always wanted to learn. Try it. Travel. Find something that inspires you and excites you again.

And I was stunned by his response. He said, No way. It's too late. This is just who I am.

And that really stayed with me because I wasn't looking at a man whose life was over. I was looking at someone who still had so much life in him and so much life ahead of him. Someone with experiences and abilities, talents, qualities that I don't think he could fully see in himself at that moment.

See, I could see the success he's had in many aspects, in many areas of his life. And I wanted him to see what I could see. The possibilities, the opportunities, the parts of himself that he hadn't discovered yet.

And I remember I thinking

Who told you that 55 was too late? I mean, right? Like who decided that? Because I missed the memo. I'm glad I missed it. Like, was there a meeting that was held that I wasn't invited to? right? Like this like A-A-R-P send out some notice, right? Congratulating us on reaching 50, right?

Congratulations, sir, you've reached fifty-five. Your personality and your entire life is now permanent. Please return all remaining dreams, visions, thoughts, feelings to the front desk. It's no longer yours. I mean, seriously. And I say this with love because I understand how somebody gets there. I do. I understand how we get there. Life can wear us down.

People wear us down. Disappointments, you know, accumulate, right? We make decisions we wish we hadn't. We experience losses. Sometimes we we stayed too long, right? Sometimes we try to change something and it didn't work. We tried.

And after enough of that, you know, I think it's possible to stop imagining that things could be different. This is why I get it. I I understand when people say this to me. What are you talking about? Starting something new? Learning something new, leaving my career.

It's not because we're we're incapable of changing, right? Sometimes it's because we stop believing that change is available to us. We don't even think about it anymore.

And that's what made me sad about that conversation. I wasn't trying to tell him his life was easy or that reinventing himself was gonna be like this easy one, two, three step, right? Just purchase my program for nineteen ninety-nine.

I just didn't want him to confuse the life he'd lived so far with the only life he was allowed to live. Because how many of us do that? And and maybe not not with age. Sometimes it's with our marriage, our relationships, our careers, our bodies, our money money money, even our past mistakes.

We start describing our circumstances as though they're permanent features of our identity.

I'm just not confident. Hi, I'm Yvonne. I'm just not good with money. I'm too I'm too old to date. I'm not creative. Hi, I'm John. I'm terrible at relationships. I've always been this way.

Really? Always? Careful. We are trapped in our words. Cause really always? Is it possible that that maybe you've just been practicing that version of yourself for so long that it feels like the only one available?

There's a saying attributed to what I think his name is what's his the the there's helicopters going there's a lot happening in my house right now. But there's this I was thinking about him earlier. This he was a he was a motivational speaker. He was Tony Robbins mentor. His name was Jim Roan. That's right. he he said this thing, I've heard it

said several different ways, but he basically what he said was, if you don't like where you are, you can change it because you're not a tree. I loved it. My friend just said it the other day that her daughter reminded her of that. And so it reminded me of that. I was like, who said that? But it was Jim Rohn. So you can look into his work if you want. But I was thinking about that, right? A tree a tree can't wake up one morning and say, you know what?

I'm done here. I'm done with this forest. You know, this energy just isn't working for me anymore. It's just off. But we can make changes. Not always immediately. And it's not always easy. Not always the exact changes and the timing that we'd prefer. But we can question the story that says nothing can ever be different.

In fact, I challenge you, right? Question that story.

Just because you've grown roots somewhere doesn't mean you're required to stay there. Sometimes we confuse familiarity with destiny, right? And those, those two things aren't the same.

And so thinking about this, because you know what I've noticed in the work that I do professionally, and you know what, actually, I'm gonna throw it out there. I I'm gonna say this even with friends and conversations that I have, right? People can become incredibly comfortable being miserable. Right? It's a story that they've taken on. And I know this sounds ridiculous. I know it does, because who wants to be miserable? Nobody wakes up and says that. And in fact, it's really difficult for us to admit that.

Right? Hey, good morning. Another beautiful day here to hate my life. But think about it. We do. We complain about the same job. We complain about the same man or woman that we are in relationship with or friends with, right? We complain about the same circumstances. We don't change them. We complain about the same habits.

I'm so sick of smoking, drinking, right? We complain about the same problems, the same body, year after year after year. And when somebody suggests we change something, for instance, me, nicely suggesting, hey, why don't you change that? Suddenly, I notice people become attorneys, right?

We have this entire legal defense prepared for why change is absolutely impossible. I've come across many people like this, right? You suggest that they stop or start doing the thing that'll give them that forward progress, right? That's those small little changes daily. And they are ready to defend you. I can't afford it. I'm just too old. I don't have time.

I wouldn't even know where to start.

And sometimes those are legit obstacles. I'll give it to you. But sometimes they're just really convincing excuses.

And here's where I want you to feel a little uncomfortable, because I know I did.

Have you become more committed to explaining why your life can't change than actually exploring how it could?

Ouch. I know. I didn't like that question either. Because I I actually had to ask myself the very same thing. I walked around for a year kicking my own ass as I was answering that question, right? Because I realized I had become more committed to explaining why my life couldn't or wouldn't change as opposed to actually.

exploring all the possibilities and the reasons for why it could change.

Here's what makes this so interesting psychologically, right? Because we often gravitate toward what's familiar and predictable. We do. There's a payoff for everything we do. I say this all the time. Even when what's familiar isn't particularly fulfilling or even good for us, right? Because uncertainty can feel threatening. Sometimes the discomfort we know.

we feel safer than the possibility we don't.

Think about that. We will sometimes tolerate years of familiar unhappiness to avoid a few months of unfamiliar discomfort.

Do you know how difficult it was to finally say I'm done? I deserve better, I want better, I'm done. I tolerated years of familiar unhappiness because I was avoiding a smaller time frame of unfamiliar discomfort.

And then we call it being realistic, right? And okay, listen, I'm not suggesting that everybody who's unhappy is choosing to be unhappy. Life is complicated. Money's real, health is real, responsibilities are real, but so is our ability to get very creative when we're defending a life we've outgrown. Sometimes the hardest part isn't changing our circumstances. It's admitting

that you may have more choices than you've been allowing yourself to see.

Because once you admit that, you might actually have to do something about it. And honestly, that can be terrifying. But I want you to remember something as you're listening here. You can be grateful for the life you've built and still admit you've outgrown parts of it. Both those things can be true.

So I want to go even a little bit deeper into our uncomfortability. Unbeing uncomfortable. Is it uncomfortability? Who knows? But I want to go deeper there. Okay. I want us to get more uncomfortable. There's a word for this, and I can't think of it right now. I don't know why. but okay, whatever, let me move on. I think.

I think there's another reason that we stay in situations that we've outgrown, right? I don't think that we talk about this enough. So I want to make us uncomfortable and talk about it. Because see, the thing is, is sometimes we don't actually want to make the decision. We want the decision made for us. We want the job to fire us or lay us off. Probably lay us off, right? So we can get this, we can get a what's that thing called?

I can't think anymore. I'm done. I'm done. sometimes we do though. We don't want to make the decisions for ourselves. We want the business partnership to go away, to just dissolve. We want it to just it's gone. We want the circumstances to change so dramatically that we have no choice but to do something different.

I've even heard people say, you know what? I wish my partner would just cheat on me or leave us. Leave my family. Leave us. He's worse for me. She's worse for the family dynamic. This is terrible. I know. I know. Stay with me here though. Because have you ever been in a relationship where you knew something wasn't right? You weren't, you weren't happy. You weren't fulfilled. You weren't getting what you needed and deserved.

But you also weren't ready to be the person who ended it. That is why people find themselves in those situations.

So somewhere in the back of your mind, you almost wish something would happen. Something undeniable. Something that would finally give you permission to leave.

Poof, he's gone. Right? Maybe they'd cheat. Maybe they'd end it. Maybe they'd get lost and couldn't find their way back. Maybe they'd do something so outrageous that even your most delusional, optimistic, but I see their potential self couldn't even justify staying.

Then you wouldn't have to be the one who made the decision. You wouldn't have to be you wouldn't have to have that difficult conversation you've been avoiding. You wouldn't have to disappoint somebody. You wouldn't have to sit, what I say all the time, in your shitty diaper. You wouldn't have to sit with the guilt, the pain, the irritation, the uncomfortableness. You wouldn't have to wonder whether you made the wrong choice.

You could say, well, they left me. They cheated. I had no choice.

And I'm not saying everyone does this, so hold on. But I think more people recognize that feeling than are willing to admit it.

Because sometimes what we're really waiting for isn't clarity. We're waiting for permission. Permission to leave. Permission to change. Permission to disappoint people. Permission to want something different.

And here's the brutal part about this. While we're waiting for somebody else to make that decision, we're still making one. We're deciding to stay. We're deciding to postpone. We're deciding to let another day pass.

yvonne wink (25:52)

And sometimes that decision is completely understandable, right? Maybe, maybe we we it we just can't. We have kids, we got little ones, we have financial responsibilities, we have a complicated situation. It's just not that cut and dry, that easy to understand or digest, right? Sometimes we're just afraid. And maybe we genuinely don't know what the right decision is. So I'm not minimizing minimizing any of that.

But I I do want you to ask yourself something, right? Are you staying because you're actively choosing this life, right? Think about your life. Think about your relationship, your career, your friendship, your dynamics, all of that. Are you staying in that because you're actively choosing that? Or are you staying because you're afraid to choose a different one?

Those are not the same thing.

Sometimes I think I I I we don't realize how much power we've handed over until we find ourselves hoping that somebody else will do the hard thing for us. Yet we're making their life miserable.

Or and our our life miserable.

'Cause then we get to be the person something happened to. Don't start throwing tomatoes at me. It's true though. Some people enjoy being the victim.

Because then we get to be the person something happened to instead of the person who chose something, right? Because choosing can be scary. It takes courage.

Choice comes with responsibility. But guess what? It also comes with. And I love this. It comes with possibility. And so if you look at it like that, maybe that's the trade-off, right? We can't always control what happens to us. We can't control what family we got dropped into and who we were raised by, right? Who the caregivers and the programmers and all of that was. We can't, we don't always have control over that. But when choices are available.

We can start taking responsibility for the direction we're moving.

I want you to remember this. Not making a decision doesn't stop time. It just means time keeps moving while you're waiting.

And I wanted to talk about that just briefly about the cost of waiting. There's a real cost of waiting. And so there's this something that psychologists and they call it's called the sunk cost fallacy. I don't know if anybody's ever heard of that. Well, well, I guess lots of people have, but for those of you that that I this is better, for those of you have that have not heard of that, the sunk

cost fallacy. but don't worry, I'm not going to turn this into a college lecture right now. I'm going to give you the real quick on here. what that is, the sunk cost fallacy, it's how do I say this? Okay. So it's like our tendency, it's our tendency to keep investing in something because of what we've already invested. Does that make sense? Even when, if you think about it like this, even when

Continuing may l it it doesn't make sense any longer.

And and frankly we do this everywhere. You stay in a career you hate because why? Well, I've already sp spent twenty years, thirty years building this career. I'm ready to retire.

You keep paying for a gym membership that you've never used because well, I paid the original I was grandfathered in with the in original, you know, this this enrollment fee, right?

You finish a terrible movie because well, I'm already an hour in and I I I'm committed to this. We stay in relationships because we've already invested so much time.

We say, I've already put so much into this, right? So I get it, I get it. That is real. It's so real. I hear you. That those all those investments mattered. All those years mattered. The blood, the sweat, the tears, it all mattered. But here's the question. If you weren't already invested, would you choose this again today? Would you choose

The home, the neighborhood, the career, the friendships, the partnership, the marriage, the vacations, the trips.

Because the years that you've already spent they're gone, whether you stay or leave.

And that doesn't automatically mean leading is the right decision. So hear me here, hear me, hear me, hear me. Sometimes staying and repairing something is absolutely worth it. I have done it in a couple of relationships. I stayed, I I worked diligently at trying to repair something, and it is worth it. Sometimes, sometimes your career it needs a new direction, right? It needs a new revamp, not a resignation letter necessarily.

But just a little bit more like put your back into it a little, right? Sometimes a marriage needs honest conversations, even if people are pissed. Not necessarily a divorce.

But see those decisions should be based on what is possible now and what you you know it

And what you want for your future. That's how you should base that decision making, right? What's possible now, and what do I want for my future? This isn't just solely on what you've already spent and what you've already invested in. If you look at it like that, it'll be really difficult to look at that circumstance and realize: this is slowly killing my soul.

There's a huge difference between honoring your investment and continuing to pay, continuing to pay for something that's no longer working. Imagine this, right? So you go to a restaurant, okay, you order a meal, and it's freaking terrible. It's awful. It's horrible, horrendous. You basically have to ask for salt and pepper and and chili flakes and everything that you can to put together so you can create an actual taste to this.

Awful dreaded meal, right? But see, you keep eating it because you paid $35. Now you're miserable. You're full. And you're angry. And you've somehow convinced yourself that finishing the meal is going to make what the purchase worthwhile?

No. Now you've paid thirty five, forty bucks, whatever, and you've given yourself nausea, indigestion. Congratulations, slow clap.

That's not being financially responsible. That's that's you being committed to suffering.

And some of us are doing the emotional equivalent of that with our lives. We're so focused on making the past worth it that we're not asking whether the future is worth protecting.

So want to ask you something. What are you still paying for simply because you've already paid so much?

Is it a career? Is it an expectation? A version of yourself, maybe? Perhaps a relationship? How about a dream that used to belong to you but doesn't anymore?

Because sometimes the bravest thing you can do isn't to keep push pushing through. I'm just pushing through. Right? Sometimes it's to admit that the direction needs to change.

And just remember, your roots that you've built, they're not handcuffs.

Last week I opened season four with one of my dear friends, Tracy. we've known each other for 23 years. we talked about how we raised our children together. We watched each other navigate marriage and and motherhood and careers, loss, divorce. And now we're both empty nesters and single. Watch out, world. She's hot to try. but

Apparently, we just really like doing things together. So we circled back through the years each time and keep finding each other. But but talking with her reminded me of something that I've been thinking about for a really long time. You know, how easy it is for women, especially, to spend decades building a life around everybody else's needs. Right. And listen, I know this isn't exclusively a woman's experience. Men can absolutely lose themselves as well in responsibility.

So, but I want to speak to women just for a minute here because I know this life. So I can speak to it because I know it, I've lived it, right? You become a mom, a wife, a caregiver, an employee, a business owner, a daughter, a friend. And slowly your your life and your calendar fills up with things that need to get done, right? Doctor's appointments, school, schedules, bills, meals, birthdays, work, deadlines, family obligations.

And you find yourself managing all of it. You're the family project manager. I always say that. I have experience in project management. Of course I do. But the problem is, is nobody hired you. Okay? There's no salary, no paid vacations, right? And somehow you're also responsible for knowing where everyone else's b you know bags and and folders and socks are. And then one day, the kids grow up.

They move out, they leave for college, the house is quiet. And you have this strange moment where you realize, wait one minute. Who am I when nobody needs me to organize their life?

What do I want? What do I enjoy? What would I choose if I wasn't making decisions around everyone else?

Sometimes we don't know. And it's not because we're incapable of knowing or we're lazy or we're like, I don't know, I'm just kind of going through life. It's because we've spent so many years asking a very different question. What does everybody need from me? Instead of what do I need from my life?

And I am treading lightly here. I do. I want to say that, right? Because I wanna say this because raising I know lots of moms are gonna join in with me here because I know for me, raising my three daughters has been without question, hands down, one of the absolute greatest joys and most meaningful experiences of my life, right? If I could go back and relive those years, their cute little fingers and toes and their little voices and their laughter and their mommy.

I need this, mommy, help me. You know, the that even the chaos, the ordinary days that I didn't realize would become some of my most treasured memories. I would do it all over again. See, those weren't years I put my life on hold. Those were years I was living one of the most beautiful chapters of it. So motherhood didn't take away from who I was. It helped shape the woman that I become.

And now as my daughters, as they grow into their own lives, right, I get to discover new parts of mine. And it's not too late.

Here's what I've learned. You can absolutely love the life you've lived and still be excited about the life you haven't lived yet. One beautiful chapter, it just doesn't mean the story is over. That's what I wanted women to hear today, right? Wanting more for yourself doesn't mean you're ungrateful for everything you've already been blessed to experience. It simply means you're still growing. You're still curious, you're still becoming, you're still unfolding.

And there's something really beautiful about that. I don't regret loving people. I don't regret showing up. But I do think there's a difference between giving your life meaning through the people you know you love and forgetting that your life belongs to you too.

You can love your children fiercely and your friends and your partner. Be devoted partner. You can be super successful in your career and still want something that's yours. A dream, a hobby, a new career, a a new business, a trip, a new relationship.

Maybe that's what midlife is really asking us, right? Not not what have you accomplished, but what haven't you allowed yourself to experience yet? Because just because you spent 20 years being one version of yourself doesn't mean the next 20 have to look the exact same.

Here's where I have to include myself in this conversation because it's easy for me to sit back, right? And tell everybody else how to reinvent themselves. go back to school, start the business, right? Take the trip, change your life. I sound like a motivational speaker who had three espresso martinis, right? But really, I've I've actually had to do these things that I'm talking about, right? After my divorce, I had to figure out what the next chapter of my life was going to look like.

And I could have stayed in the version of my life that was familiar. I wanted to. I actually did for way longer than I care to admit, right? I could have decided that I'd already lived the biggest, greatest chapters of my life. Marriage, three daughters, raising my babies, right? Building a family, owning beautiful homes, cars, taking those beautiful, wonderful vacations.

And and now I was supposed to just what? Coast? Right? Take up knitting? Start collecting coins? I don't know. No offense to anybody who knits. I'm sure it's very therapeutic. But I w I wasn't finished. I I wasn't finished and I didn't think that those were my greatest chapters. I wanted more. I wanted to travel. I wanted to learn. I wanted to write. I wanted to build something of my own.

I wanted to create a legacy that I leave behind. And so I started doing those things. I traveled. I went back to school. I started building my business. I was fifty, guys, when I started all of this.

I wrote a book, a couple books. I started this podcast. And I want to tell you something. Reinvention looks a hell of a lot sexier on Instagram than it does in real life. So keep my business card when you start to reinvent. Okay? Because nobody, nobody posts the moments when they're questioning every life decision they've ever made. Nobody posts the bank account anxiety, the loneliness.

The uncertainty, the moments when you're wondering whether you've completely lost your damn mind.

They post the sunset in Bali, not the internal conversation you had with yourself moments before you booked the ticket.

I'm not saying that every decision I've made has been perfect. Very, very, very far from it. But I keep coming back to something. I know for a fact, this is sort of my my mantra right now. I'd rather be a beginner in a life I'm excited about than an expert at living one I've already outgrown.

And again, this doesn't mean you have to change everything. Sometimes you just have to give yourself permission to want something different.

I don't believe our lives are supposed to stop evolving simply because we've reached a certain age. I don't know who the hell decided that there was a certain number that we had to all stop at. Okay, it's time to cut my hair, permit, buzz it around my ears, just so I can just shake and go. No.

If that means I'm going to be figuring things out for the rest of my life? Fine. At least I'll have material for the podcast. I'm like, hey guys, welcome to the Unfolding Podcast. It's season 682. Episode 940. Let's do this. I'm your host and friend, Yvonne Wink.

I'm gonna bring this to a close now. I have no idea what time it is or how long I've been doing this, but I'm having fun, so but I wanted to shift gears just a little bit and and sort of wrap this up. I think there's another kind of time that we take for granted. And this one hits differently. So hear me. The time that we think we'll have with people we love.

We've all lost someone. I lost my mom. And when you've lost a parent or a child, a friend, a part a lover, right? Someone deeply important to you, your relationship with time changes. I know for a fact minded. Because suddenly you understand something you you may have you, I guess you've known intellectually your entire life, right?

There are conversations that you don't get to have later or ever again.

There are ordinary afternoons that turn out to be the last ordinary afternoons. And you usually don't know they're the last ones while you're living them. That's the part that guts me, right? We spend so much time waiting for special occasions, the holidays, the birthdays, the vacations, right? The perfect opportunity. Let's get everybody together. But remember,

So much of life is happening in the ordinary moments, in the phone calls, in the in the you know, random impromptu coffee dates. The stories that we've heard a hundred times, the conversations where absolutely nothing important happens but maybe some belly laughs.

Until one day you'd give anything to have one more.

And I don't say that to make anyone feel guilty, especially people who have lost someone. Because grief already has a way of making us replay every single moment and wonder whether we could have done something differently. I know I'm not alone in this.

I don't think we need more guilt. I think we need more presence, more willingness to say, I love you. I miss you. Can we have lunch? Tell me that story again. And sometimes, hey, I'm sorry.

Because we can spend years waiting for the perfect moment to repair something or to reconnect with someone or express how much someone matters to us. And the perfect moment may never come. So maybe we stop waiting for perfect. Maybe we start appreciating available.

So

So just wanted to leave you with this one too. There

Love people, right? Love people who love you back. Genuinely love love you.

Invest in people that invest in you. Take time. Take a phone call from someone who reaches out to you. Respond via text when someone texts you. Give them that. Yeah, think about it. People you keep meaning to call, call them. Not because something terrible is going to happen tomorrow, but because connection is part of what makes today worth living.

That's another reason that time is so valuable, right? You can't store it up for later. You can only decide what to do with the time that is available to you right here, right now.

I want to I want to give you three questions. So lean in, stop what you're doing. I don't know if you're driving or folding laundry, but come closer. I want I want to I want you to imagine that we're sitting across from each other as we wind down here. And I want you to actually think about these questions and maybe write them down or answer them out loud. Right? Question one.

What's one thing in your life that you keep saying you'll change someday? Not ten things. One thing. One thing in your life that you keep saying you'll change someday. Maybe it's your health, your work, your finances, friendships, relationship with yourself, I don't know. Maybe it's finally pursuing something you've wanted to do for years. Whatever it is, name it.

Because vague dissatisfaction is very easy to live with. Specific dissatisfaction? Whew, that's a different beast. It asks something of us. It forces us to be uncomfortable. So ask yourself this. What is one thing in my life that I keep saying I'll change someday?

Second question. What are you waiting for? Wait for what? As my mama would say. I want you to be really honest here. Are you waiting for more money? More confidence? A beautiful sunshiny day? Are you waiting for someone else's approval?

Or a guarantee? Or are you waiting until making the change no longer feels scary?

Cause as we know, that day may never arrive. Sometimes courage doesn't come before the action. Sometimes courage develops because you've taken the action.

And our final question: what is one thing you can do in the next seven days that moves you in a different direction? Not to transform your life completely, not reinvent your entire personality, not become this brand new human by Thursday. Just small movement in that direction of what you want.

Make the call, research the program, update your resume, book the appointment, have the conversation. Open that travel savings account. Take the walk. Write the first page. And if the change you're considering is a big one, take your time making a really thoughtful plan. There's a difference between being intentional and being impulsive. So you don't have to burn down.

Your life to build something better. Sometimes you just need to stop pretending that you're happy with a direction you no longer want to go. Right? You don't need permission from the version of yourself who was afraid five years ago. You don't need permission from people who are comfortable with you staying exactly as you are, because it's convenient for them.

And all you know what else? You don't need to wait until everyone understands your decisions, right? Because some people won't, they never will. Some people are gonna think you're crazy. Some people will say, At your age? You're doing what? Why would you start all over? You had such a good life, Yvonne. Why?

What if what you want to do doesn't work?

Some people told me, you'll never be able to make it without me. Look at me now. So maybe the question isn't, what if it doesn't work? Challenge yourself. Maybe the question is, what if you never find out?

So I'm leaving you with this. I want you to think about the person you were 10 years ago. Really, really, really think about this person right now. It's you, right? What did they worry about? What did they believe about themselves? What did they think their life would look like?

What were they absolutely certain would never change?

And now look at you. Look at everything you've survived. Everything you've learned. Everything you never thought you'd get through. Every freaking hard day you survived. And all the ways you've changed without even realizing it. You are not the same person. So why are you so convinced that 10 years from now, you have to be the same person you are today?

Ten years from now, you have to be in the same career because well, I don't know, we've been doing this for 25 years, right? Ten years from now, well, I'm just gonna stay with this person because I don't I don't think anyone else will like me. I don't think I'm attractive anymore at 55. I'm not 55, I'm just saying somebody would say this. but why are we so willing to believe in the permanence of our limitations?

But so, so, so reluctant reluctant to believe in the possibility of our growth. Right? Maybe you have regrets. Maybe you wished you'd started sooner. Maybe you wish you'd left earlier. Or you wish you'd stayed longer. Maybe you wish you'd taken the chance, said the words, made the call, taken the trip, did the damn thing. I understand. But here's something I want you to consider.

Regret can teach you something without becoming the place you live.

You can't recover the years that have passed, but you can stop using them as evidence that the years ahead don't matter or that the years ahead can't be your best years, your best chapter.

I want you to think about the man I was telling you about earlier who was convinced that his story was finished. I wish I could show him what might happen if he allowed himself to believe that another chapter was right there. So, so, so possible for him.

Because maybe he doesn't need a completely new li new life. Maybe he just needs to stop treating the life he has as the only life that could ever be.

And maybe that's true for some of you listening today. You don't know exactly where you're going. You don't need to. You don't necessarily need your entire life planned out, right? You don't need a five-year plan. You don't need to have all the answers and have done all the research.

You just need to stop confusing where you've been with where you're required to stay. Because just because you've grown roots somewhere doesn't mean you're required to stay there.

well, I just want to thank you so much for listening to the Unfolding Podcast. Right? You are not required to spend the rest of your life proving that your past decisions were right. You are allowed to make new ones. I am so grateful for everyone listening and tuning in. And if there's one thing I hope you take away from today's episode, it's this.

Your past, it may, it may explain where you are, right? But it doesn't get to make every decision about where you go next. Remember, the rest of your life is still unfolding. I'm your friend Yvonne until next time.