New Life LIVE

Voiceover: Welcome to the New Life LIVE podcast. We hope to provide help and hope in your life through God's Word, counselors, and psychologists as we answer questions from listeners who call with the challenges of life. Let's go to today's episode.

Brian Perez: Welcome to New Life LIVE. I'm Brian Perez, here with clinical psychologist Dr. Jill Hubbard and licensed marriage and family therapist Mark Cameron, the expert on attachment style. He's here. At least he's written a book about it.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: He's written a book. I think that makes him an expert.

Brian Perez: Call in, we would love to talk to you. Dr. Jill, what's on your mind to start us off today?

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Something I've been thinking about is a speaker I heard recently. A lot of you are familiar with the name John Ortberg. I heard him speak recently, and I liked what he was proposing. We're all familiar with the 12 Steps. In fact, here at New Life, we promote groups all the time. I know we've had callers that call in and say, "Are the 12 Steps Christian?" There's even Christian versions of them.

John Ortberg in his book, and I have it here, *Steps*, and I'm actually doing a group with this book, is really taking the 12 Steps and bringing it back to the Christian community. It's good for all of us to know that AA started out of Christian principles. It started in the church, but now the church needs it back in a way because it's such a good roadmap for living life.

In isolation, we do not flourish. A lot of times we hear people say, "Well, I'm just working on my relationship with the Lord." That's great, we love that, we want that, but we need other people, even other flawed, imperfect people. John has taken the 12 Steps and step one, and how he's reworked it for all of us, "We admit we were powerless over our fatal attraction to do wrong, and our lives had become unmanageable."

Instead of putting anything in that category, all of us have a fatal attraction to do wrong. All of us are sinners and fall short of the glory of God. All of us have hurts, childhood wounds, or things that we have struggled with. We have habits and ways we get stuck, and it's just hard to move forward. I may not have your problems, Mark, but I certainly have my own.

Being in community where there is transparency, honesty, but in a net of safety where there's also confidentiality, taking some of these principles and bringing it back to the church and reworking it is a great way to move forward. Looking at all of us as flawed humans in need of our Savior from Romans 7:21 through 25, "I have discovered this principle of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong."

"I love God's law with all my heart, but there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am. Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God, the answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is. In my mind, I really want to obey God's law, but because of my sinful nature, I am a slave to sin."

We all need a Savior, and we need others to walk this journey of life with and to be on a path of realizing that we can't make all the changes. God can, and so we need to try to let Him.

Brian Perez: Great opening from Dr. Jill Hubbard today. The book again is called *Steps* by John Ortberg. I love that, "the fatal attraction to do wrong." For some, it's addiction. For some, it's choosing the wrong relationships. We can help you with all that here at New Life LIVE.

Voiceover: To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now back to New Life LIVE.

Brian Perez: Let's talk to Linda in Cincinnati who listens to the New Life LIVE podcast and is actually one of our monthly financial supporters. Thank you, Linda, for your support. How can we help you today?

Linda: Thank you for taking my call. I am a longtime listener and a Club New Life member. After reading *How We Love* and Mark's new book, just finished it, *Understanding Your Attachment Style*, I identify as a pleaser growing up with a vacillating mom and a pleaser dad. My husband believes I'm repeating many of the same traits as my vacillating mom. My question for Jill and Mark is, is it possible for you to grow up as one attachment style but then present another as an adult in marriage?

Mark Cameron: That can happen. Both the pleaser and the vacillator, they're both anxious attachment styles. One is more fearful and avoidant, the vacillator, and the other is more the pursuer and the protester. Attachments are on a spectrum, meaning we're mildly, moderately, or very much like this. These categories that we use are just categories for understanding.

You can display tendencies of two or maybe more different attachment styles depending on the strategies that you learned to get your needs met or deal with your needs going unmet. It's true too that there are times that in certain relationships we may display one attachment strategy and then in another, another one can come out.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Mark, is it true like with your friends you might be one way, but then in a romantic relationship with a significant other, it may bring out something else in you?

Mark Cameron: Yes, because there's different expectations in that relationship when it comes to intimacy and support and things like that. Really what we're doing is we're just looking at these attachment categories not to put anybody in a box, but just to create understanding and awareness so we can say, "Okay, these are the tendencies that I have and these come from a deep wound and that's created an insecurity in me. So what are the ways that I need to lean the other way to grow?"

If we can know what secure attachment looks like too, that's another way for us to compare how we know we are right now to where we want to be and where we want to get to. Does that make sense, Linda?

Linda: Yes, it does. I didn't know if maybe my pleaser frustrations got to a level where it came out as a vacillator, or if there could be two tendencies going on at the same time. I definitely could relate to the pleaser growing up, and the thought of being called a vacillator when it was so painful.

Mark Cameron: It really is painful to look at these broken areas within us, but if we don't become aware of them, then we can't do anything about it. On a recent show, I talked about learning to receive feedback to understand what our blind spots are. Until we are able to recognize and become aware of these things, we're not going to be able to do something about them.

I see what you're saying. It's connected to a wound because you see how your mom was and you don't want to be like that. The sad and unfortunate thing is we only know what we learned, and we only learn what we're taught. Our parents are our teachers, and even if we look at something and we say, "I've heard many people say this, my parent was this way and I'm never going to do that," then they find themselves doing it because just because you know the wrong way to do a problem, that doesn't mean that you know the right way, and we just end up repeating what we've been modeled for us. That can be painful.

Linda: What do you recommend for connecting as a couple to get that secure connection if he feels like I am vacillating with him in that relationship?

Mark Cameron: This is where Milan and Kay's book is more focused on the couple dynamic and what that looks like and how do you do that work. My book is more focused on the individual person regardless of relationship you're in, how do you grow? This is your own individual growth work, but the comfort circle what Milan and Kay outline is a way to create an environment that exposes dysregulation and creates an opportunity to teach regulation.

When we can go into listener-speaker roles and learn to hear what we don't like or necessarily agree with and then learn to say something like, "Well, let me think about that," and then to pause and consider and to understand what our defensiveness is. In my book, I talk about something called developing the observing self where we ask these four questions: what am I feeling right now? What's happening around me? What just happened before I felt that way? How am I reacting and where in my history does that come from?

As you learn to do this and to be able to self-reflect, you'll be able to understand how your past is animating you in the present, and it's really just these rekindling of old neural pathways. Once we can see it happening, then we start to become equipped with being able to practice the new way of growth.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Linda, if you can get past the terms, because obviously vacillator is a highly negative term for you, when he says that, it doesn't mean you're 100% a vacillator. You have some of those traits that you learned, but if you see both the vacillator and the pleaser to see that you're anxious and you're anxiously attached, and then you can pause and reflect on the questions that he was saying, that maybe might put it in a light. Why am I so anxious right now?

Mark Cameron: Not everybody who gives us feedback is accurate, but being able to pause and reflect and then being able just to practice the skills of listening to someone for understanding, that's a way of growing too.

Brian Perez: As you just heard from Linda, this is a great book. It's called *Understanding Your Attachment Style*. It is by Mark Cameron, who's here in the studio with us today. It's available for purchase in the NewLife.com store. I'm about two-thirds of the way through the book myself, and I have learned a lot about myself and sometimes other people. You read about the different styles and I'm thinking too, "Wait a minute, I don't think I'm fully this because I do act like this." It just depends on who you're around sometimes.

Mark Cameron: Many of us grow up with two parents. What we can get away with with mom, I can't get away with dad. So I form independent attachments to them, and that impacts me, that shapes me.

Brian Perez: Let's go to Philadelphia. Here is Carol who is listening on NewLife.com. Carol, how can we help you today?

Carol: Both of us have had previous marriages and we both agree that we need marriage counseling. I want to do a thorough marriage counseling session and he wants it kind of quick. My other question is, once we get married, I'm supposed to find a job right away and I'd like to get settled in and organized and make the house kind of my own. I'm getting the feeling that that's kind of secondary to him. I know of the previous marriages that he had, neither one of them did any house cleaning or very little, and I'm not that way.

Mark Cameron: So this is premarital counseling you're looking to do?

Carol: Yes.

Mark Cameron: And how long have you guys known one another and been dating?

Carol: About a year and a half.

Mark Cameron: And how about dating?

Carol: The same.

Mark Cameron: Okay, so you got into a dating relationship right away. When are you planning on getting married?

Carol: In the next couple months.

Mark Cameron: Okay, that's a very quick engagement to marriage. When you say he wants to do it quick and you want to do it thorough, what do you mean by quick?

Carol: Just a few sessions. We're both in our 60s, so it's a little bit different than being 18 years old. I think it's a good grounding to have counseling regardless of your age.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Carol, previous marriages, so more than one for both of you?

Carol: Yes, we both had two. One was a death, and abuse and infidelity and mine were both abuse and infidelity.

Mark Cameron: So even more reason to slow down and want to really process through and understand before you jump into relationship with someone else. I often say this to people: until you do an autopsy on your prior marriages, you're going to drag that dead body into your new relationship. Both of you really need to learn to dissect what went wrong in those other relationships. What were your expectations? You need to individually say, "Why did I get into these relationships? How did I misread red flags? How did I not have a voice or stand up or hold boundaries when I needed to?"

The fact that you're already observing some differences, some challenges right now, doesn't necessarily mean that you're not compatible. It just means that you need to come up with a process of how do we work through these differences. I would caution against jumping into a relationship with somebody before doing this work because you're likely just to repeat the pattern.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: You want to establish prior to marriage how are we going to approach differences and problems? Do we allow room for that? You want to start setting a precedent that, "Okay, we're going to pause and we're going to reflect together."

It sounds like you mentioned your need to nest and he wants you to get a job right away. He's anxious about finances, which is understandable, and you're wanting to create a home, which is understandable. That's men and women and how we're wired. Those needs are not incompatible, but what's important is getting back to this, "Okay, let's talk about it. Let's have a space so that we both can be heard. We can learn what's important to each other, and we don't get into habits that are similar to where we've come from."

I just got remarried this year and I'm in my 60s, and we did premarital counseling. I'm a therapist and we went to a class that went through all of the issues and I was probably the oldest person, the oldest bride in the group. Nonetheless, I have to practice what I preach. So many churches will offer premarital classes that get you started and they have the outline. It's not just you having to go to a therapist and talk about your problems. They put some of the issues out there to make you think, how are we going to deal with conflict? What is our style going to be?

Mark Cameron: It's not just about premarital counseling. You're doing that before you get married, but it's therapy that you're learning how to do going forward. What I would say to you here, Carol, is what's the rush? What's the rush in needing to get married in two months if there's really some concern here?

Carol: I'm fine with waiting.

Mark Cameron: Good. You don't have to wait forever, but let's wait six months maybe. If you're not both looking at your small part in those relationships and what you're bringing, you will bring it into the next one. Problems just tend to exacerbate when we get married. They don't go away. It's easy to say, "He was abusive," or "She had affairs," and not go any further than that, but to look at your part. Not that you're responsible for someone's abuse, but what didn't I do to stand up and what do I need to do to recognize when that's happening in the future and learn to have a voice.

The fact that he wants to just do it quickly tells me he wants to just kind of, it's like a formality. Let's just get this out the way so that we can move to the next step, and you may end up in a more complicated situation if you rush it.

Brian Perez: The whole thing has been quick and rushed. I mean, they've been, when we asked Carol how long have you known each other? A year and a half. How long have you been dating? A year and a half. So right away, it just started off as a dating relationship and it seems like it's him, he's the one that's pushing it through.

Mark Cameron: Sometimes that happens. It's just all about our willingness to work. The number one thing to look for in a partner is their willingness to grow because no one's perfect.

Brian Perez: If clinical psychologist Dr. Jill Hubbard took some premarital counseling, then I think we can all use it. We can help you connect with one at NewLife.com or when you call us at 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Just because you've been married before doesn't mean you know what to do next time, what to avoid next time. In fact, a lot of times you gravitate towards the same kind of people and problems and everything else. We are here to help you with all that and more here at New Life LIVE.

Voiceover: To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now back to New Life LIVE.

Brian Perez: What are you doing tonight? We've got a webinar going on. It starts at 7:00 Central, "Breaking Free from Depression." You can still sign up for it. In fact, if you text the word "webinar" to 28950, you will instantly receive a link with a tip sheet on depression and information about the webinar. It puts learning and registering right at your fingertips. If you can't cancel the plans that you made for tonight, that's okay, register anyway because after the webinar, we'll send you a link where you can watch the webinar for about the next seven days or so. Do it today. You can also call us at 1-800-NEW-LIFE or go to NewLife.com.

Let's now talk to Lynn in Las Vegas who listens to us on SiriusXM Channel 131. Hi there, Lynn, welcome to New Life LIVE.

Lynn: Hi. I've listened to your program a few times, not a lot, but I do find you and your therapists and everything on other stations. I want to be brief because of the time that you guys take for everybody. I appreciate it.

I have two daughters and 13 grandkids altogether. My two daughters live in really close proximity to me on the same street. My eldest daughter has a child who's seven years old who has been touching his seven-and-a-half-year-old cousin who's a female, my other daughter. Not only that, he also has been trying to get others to do the same thing who are five-year-old and seven-year-old boys.

We knew something was wrong with our granddaughter. It was very apparent. By the grace of God, this person that my grandson reached out to is another, all my family are believers too, practicing Christian believers. The girlfriend is a believer as well. So by the grace of God, it was someone very close to the family so we got to find out because people go through their whole lives never knowing this.

Our granddaughter behaved in a way that was very apparent sexual issues. So we tried to confront my daughter. The problem with that being her, she's extremely defensive. She has pretty much raised her son, and we go head to head with it because I keep trying to admonish her that you have to hold your children accountable for the small things. He's never the one to blame, the older sister's always the one to blame, things like this.

Trying to take care of the situation has been extremely difficult because she really isn't responsive. She can't receive criticism, she can't receive truth, and she won't hold him accountable. So it's a very scary situation for the fact that we live in proximity and the fact that she won't receive the wisdom in helping. I wondered if there's anything I can do.

Mark Cameron: Lynn, when you say hold the seven-year-old accountable and receive the wisdom, what's the accountability you want her to put in and what's the wisdom that she's receiving?

Lynn: The wisdom that she's receiving is that you have to hold your children accountable because you are their parent and because you have been given the stewardship over your child to raise them up in the right way. God would not call you to just allow bad behaviors. This is something even different, and now this is a character trait more or less. So the wisdom we're giving her is biblical doctrine that you just need to hold your child accountable for this wrongdoing. There needs to be consequences.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Lynn, let me just intervene here. This is a seven-year-old boy and you're talking about confronting and consequences. I would want to find out what is going on with a seven-year-old boy. What has he been exposed to? Does he even know what he's done is wrong? This is pre-sexual usually at seven years old.

Mark Cameron: When you say that, I want to push back a little bit too, Lynn. I agree with you about accountability. I agree with you about parents protecting and that this is a dangerous situation, 100%, but I don't know if I would say that this is a character trait and this kid needs to be disciplined. I think there needs to be an exploring to find out and understand how much of this might be normal exploring behavior, because kids do that. They can play doctor and nurse and explore in certain ways. There's a range of what we call normal behavior.

But then what's he been exposed to? Because if he's been exposed, he is a victim too, and you're not going to discipline a victim out of what you're saying is a character trait. You're just going to shame him. I wonder if your daughter is defensive because of the way that you approach her.

Lynn: I haven't talked to her about it. I don't get involved. I am just outside listening to the discussions that my daughter with the little girl has related to me because I don't want to get in it. I don't think that the children need discipline, but there needs to be something that a parent, I've watched it for years, her cultivate him to just do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants to. I love him, he's a good little boy.

Brian Perez: So you're trying to find out what to do for your daughter to be accountable?

Lynn: Yeah, maybe, to the Lord. She's raising this little boy and I've watched.

Brian Perez: We've got to go to a break. We'll come back on New Life LIVE.

Voiceover: Today's podcast is brought to you by Club New Life supporters who give a monthly donation because they want to continue to offer help and hope in these very, very difficult places. To find out more about Club New Life, you can go to our website NewLife.com or call 1-800-NEW-LIFE.

If you're new to us, we drop an episode every weekday. We would love it if you would rate or write a review, which helps more people discover help and hope and helps us share wisdom with as many people as possible. Now let's listen to our counselors as they help people walk through life's hardest places. To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now back to New Life LIVE.

Brian Perez: All right, Lynn in Las Vegas is who we're speaking with right now. Mark, what else would you say to her?

Mark Cameron: Lynn, I heard what you said right there at the end. I'm a little confused, to be honest with you, because it did sound contradictory to me. I heard words of accountability and character flaw, but I'm not really hearing words about love, support, understanding. I think this is a difficult situation for your daughter to have to manage, and of course then this is a sibling's child because it's a cousin.

The family needs to come together and say, "Okay, how do we address this together? How do we support and love one another? How do we find out what's happened to little boy? How's that affected little girl, and how do we build safeguards in place rather than accountability?" I really think it's more about safeguards and support and protection. When you come along with that kind of language and that kind of approach, people are less likely to be defensive because this is a really difficult thing for her to have to manage. There's no parenting manual to manage this.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Immediately you feel like, "Okay, I'm a bad parent," and all of the words and the messages, that's what she's defending against instead of someone coming alongside and saying, "Hey, can we talk about this?"

Mark Cameron: I would go to your daughter, sit with her, and I would take more of a humility posture and just say, "Hey, this must be really difficult for you. I'm so sorry this is happening. What can I do to support you?" and see how the conversation moves from there.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Start there instead of, I heard you, Lynn, saying, "She just lets her son do whatever he wants." So there's a little bit of an attack on her parenting. New parents, it's on-the-job training. They're learning, but she's probably not going to receive input about her parenting until there's understanding there and she feels like it's safe for her as well.

Mark Cameron: I appreciate the spirit behind why you want to address this, and I'm so pleased that you did call in today, but I would suggest approaching with more support and see what the difference is.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Even as her mom, do you have the type of relationship where you can say what Mark was saying, "Hey, sweetie, this must be really hard for you. How can I help?" just starting there.

Brian Perez: It could be Lynn's daughter is overwhelmed. Lynn mentioned she's got 13 grandkids and two daughters. That could be part of it too, and so the approach that Mark and Jill just mentioned is very important. Lynn, thanks for calling us today on New Life LIVE. Your gift to New Life helps carry hope to the hurting, meeting real needs with real help right when it matters most. Your joining in what God is doing through this ministry when you make a gift of any size. You can give online at NewLife.com or by calling 1-800-NEW-LIFE or text NLM to 28950.

Tina in Frisco, Texas, who listens to us on KWRD, welcome, Tina, to New Life LIVE.

Tina: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I have a couple people in my life that both treat me bad, basically the same way. The way that I see it is they have both the same personality traits, and instead of standing up and sticking up for myself, I don't. I just take it. I have a twin sister that says there's no way I would ever put up with that. She's totally the opposite of me.

What is wrong with me that I keep doing this? I tried counseling last month. I did it for a month, and it didn't do any good. I didn't get any advice, I didn't hear what I wanted to hear because I don't want it to sound like that because I am open to growing and I am open to facing whatever is going on with me that I do this. It is a repeated pattern.

Brian Perez: Can we ask these two people, what relation are they to you?

Tina: One is a boss and one is a boyfriend.

Mark Cameron: Tina, do these two people, you're noticing the same personality trait so there's a commonality there. Does this remind you of anyone in your background like a parent or another family member?

Tina: Not a parent. My father died when I was very young. My mom, I was 13 and my mom basically said, "You're on your own," so I basically raised myself. Have I had these people in my life the whole time? Yeah. I am divorced, I was married for 20 years. He was not physically abusive, but emotionally, and it probably was not a biblical divorce because I don't think emotional abuse is something that God says, "Okay, you can walk out of your marriage for." Instead of learning, I just got into another.

Mark Cameron: There's more nuance to it than that, but does your boss and your boyfriend remind you of your former husband? Are they similar personality traits?

Tina: To the extreme, yeah. This will sound real bad, but I kind of feel like God's saying, "You know what, you didn't like that, then this is going to be way worse." I know He doesn't work like that, but that's almost what it feels like.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: It feels like even God is punishing you.

Mark Cameron: That's a skewed view that you have of God here, and I hear you acknowledging you know that God doesn't work like that, but it seems like that, it feels like that. That usually comes from our past experiences. When you say, "What's wrong?" here's what I'd say: you're wounded. That's what's wrong. It's a wound, and we all have wounds and they create insecurities in us.

You might be right to have your antenna up here and be thinking, "Gosh, these people are treating me in a way that I don't think is okay." But what you're looking at here is there's some shame there because you're seeing that your twin sister can stand up and have a voice and you feel like you can't. That does need to be explored.

One month really is not a lot of time to expect that therapy should work, if we want to talk about it in that way, but it may be enough time to figure out maybe this is not the right therapist for me or maybe this is not the right approach for me. So that's what I would say. I would say keep working on that. Keep exploring, keep looking for a different approach and then the right personality fit for you.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: It's worth the effort it takes to find the right person, Tina. Then once you find someone that you like, you feel like they can help you, allow them to walk beside you as you learn new skills because of our past woundedness, we often teach others how to treat us by what we are willing to put up with or not do. A lot of that is out of fear.

When you describe your story of your father dying and then from 13 on feeling like you had to raise yourself, well no wonder these strong overbearing men in your life maybe could easily step in and fill a void for you. Learning to do it differently so that you can make different choices and can start to assert yourself is a journey worth taking, but it does take time.

Mark Cameron: There's an abandonment in there and maybe you didn't have a dad to step in and take care of you. But what I would say too about therapy is tell the therapist upfront, most therapists will have a 15 to 20 minute conversation before you enter into therapy with them, but tell them what you're looking for. Say, "Hey, listen, these are the struggles and I want help developing my adult voice so that I can say no and that I can hold boundaries. Is that something that you can do for me? What's your experience with helping people with that before? What's the approach that you take?" Make sure that the approach is the right approach too and that they have experience in doing what help that you need. Oftentimes in these situations, I role-play with somebody because you need to actually build that experience to be able to learn how to do it in real time.

Brian Perez: Tina, stay on the phone. We'll send you a tip sheet on the types of questions that you can ask a potential counselor to make sure that you're getting the most out of your experience. Thank you so much for calling in today to New Life LIVE. Some people listening or watching right now might be thinking, "Well, just tell Tina to dump her boyfriend, to find a new job because it's her boyfriend and her boss that are giving her all these problems." Is that going to help?

Mark Cameron: It could help, but there's a part about learning to stand up too. When we set boundaries, the boundaries are for us, they're not for the other person. Sometimes people say, "I'm setting a boundary on you," as if I'm pushing you over there and you won't treat me that way. But boundaries really are about what we're willing to engage with. I've said this often and I'll say it again because I think it's good, but boundaries are like setting a wall that has a door. You say, "Okay, this far and no more, but here's how we can engage back into relationship." All relationships need boundaries to push against, and that's how we learn to be around one another when we can respect those boundaries.

Brian Perez: *Boundaries* is also the name of a book that we offer in the NewLife.com store, so you might want to look into that as well, Tina. Thank you so much for calling in today. It was great speaking with you. Adrian in Summit, New Jersey, we're going to speak with you when we come back from the break here on New Life LIVE. I'm Brian Perez, here with Dr. Jill Hubbard and Mark Cameron. Thanks for watching today and for listening to New Life LIVE.

Voiceover: To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now back to New Life LIVE.

Brian Perez: Here is a New Life LIVE programming note. Our friend Laura Mangin McDonald will be joining us once again tomorrow. We hope you can join us for that either here on the radio or on YouTube or however it is that you watch or listen, podcast as well. Looking forward to that once again. Let's go back to the phones now. Here is Adrian who is listening in Summit, New Jersey. Hey there, Adrian, thanks for calling in today. How can we help you?

Adrian: Thank you so much for taking my call. I've raised a foster son for years. He was in foster care till he was 21 and he has gone with a relative down in the Texas area. I'm so happy that he's there, but because I really raised him for all these years, I miss him, so it's a big adjustment. I am in my 70s and I'm unmarried, but I go to church all the time, go to Christian clubs and activities and I keep busy. There was no solution for him. I couldn't get him help, I couldn't get him in a program. It's very crowded here. He wouldn't really cooperate to go in a program. He was half homeless and half not, he was with friends and not with friends and just all over the place. But now, he's a good kid, never got in trouble. He's in his 30s and he's with a family member now in Texas. I think he's going to stay there. Why wouldn't he with the great temperatures and nice people? It's such an adjustment for me because I won't see him anymore, maybe on FaceTime.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Do you guys keep in contact? Do you call or text?

Adrian: No, he has not, no. It's been about two and a half months and I think he just got a phone. He had a little bit of some mental issues going on because he was in foster care for so long, but he had good foster mothers. It was still hard not having your real parents there.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Of course, but you raised him from 5 to 21, is that what you're saying?

Adrian: Yes, but he didn't live with me all the time because I worked every day. He was in a guardian home and I was like a volunteer that took him to see his sisters and helped him get tutoring. I saw him all the time, helped him get in basketball or football, whatever he wanted to do.

Mark Cameron: Now he's with a biological family member, is that right? Not your family member. Does that feel somewhat like a rejection for you, Adrian?

Adrian: It doesn't because there was no hope up here. It's too crowded and we tried many times to get him housing and stuff and you just take a number and sit in the back.

Mark Cameron: That's not what I'm asking here. It's not whether he could survive or whether it was the best thing. I'm asking you, and it's okay if it does, does it feel a little bit like a rejection of you that he's not with you and he's with one of his biological family members?

Adrian: A little bit, but when I drive to his old spots where I used to give him clothes and food and talk to him and just see how he's doing, I'm just so glad he's not there because he was mostly outside.

Mark Cameron: We can experience two different emotions at the same time. We're very complex beings. One day my daughter will get married and I'll be sad, but I'll also be happy at the same time. It's a common reaction at weddings. We can cry and we're sad and we're happy at the same time. It's okay for you to feel that rejection on the inside. You don't choose to feel the rejection and also to feel glad that he's in a better place and you can also feel sad. It's learning just to manage all of those emotions on the inside and that's okay, it's okay to feel that way.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: You are very focused on what's for his well-being, what's good for him, and that's where your happiness comes. But looking at your own life, you're not married, you're in your 70s, and you volunteered for years and helped with him. It's a loss for you. You are feeling what all mothers go through. You did mother. You're feeling what all of us moms go through as our kids grow up and they don't need us anymore in the same ways or they have other people now who are meeting those needs. It's just a loss that we have to grieve. It's lonely. It's nice when we have our kids to organize around and it feels very purposeful and meaningful, and now you have a void.

Mark Cameron: And then the emotional complexities with foster care, to be able to be taking care of someone and bond with them and love them and then I've got to take you back to your biological family and I know that's the right thing to do and I know that you have a longing for them too. We have good friends, my wife and I have good friends and they do foster care and they fostered a baby from birth and then the baby went back at one years old. Oh my gosh, to watch how painful that was for them. You have to give your all to do well by the child and to bond with a baby in that way, or a five-year-old. And of course throughout that time, the baby was also seeing the parents and so the plan was ultimately get the baby back to the parents, but it's just a complex bundle of emotions that you're allowed to feel in that way.

Adrian: Yes. But I'm happy for him that he's first of all in a warmer place and he's with family and he never experienced that up here. It was like nothing worked. I think this is the first time in probably 20 years that he's had his own room. I don't think he ever had his own room ever.

Mark Cameron: Does he call you Mom, Adrian? How does he refer to you?

Adrian: He used to when he was up here.

Mark Cameron: So that's probably hard too, if he used to do that and now he's not doing that. Again, that can feel a little bit like a rejection too. It's not wrong to have that feeling.

Adrian: Right. But I'm happy for him that he's first of all in a warmer place and he's with family and he never experienced that up here.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Adrian, you did right by him. Job well done. Now you just have to deal with your own heart and grieving that this stage is over. You really helped him in his life.

Adrian: I did. I was always there with a warm winter coat or a warm meal. It just takes one person to encourage you.

Mark Cameron: We need more people like you, Adrian. Absolutely.

Adrian: Thank you. And I just want to say one more thing, another little boy that I knew, I was very good friends with his mom, still am. She wouldn't send him to school because of all these school shootings. She wouldn't send him, and that's against the law. But we got her help and now he's doing fantastic. He's older, he's a teenager, he's doing fantastic. She wouldn't send him and I say, "Pray about it, let's go, you go see a counselor." I took her to a very wonderful counselor, a couple, and they went to school with her, they filled out all the papers. They were right there, they reassured her.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Adrian, there's more for you to do. As you grieve the loss of this son, there's more for you out there. You should order the *Life Recovery Workbook for Grief* from the NewLife.com store, I think that'll be very helpful.

Brian Perez: We'll talk to you next time here on New Life LIVE. God bless you guys, and we will see you next time.

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