13: Don’t Tell Mom: Grieving the “living death” of family estrangement

When Emily was a child, a family member abused her and told her to keep it a secret. She kept that secret until she was 34, but her family didn’t react well. Eventually Emily chose to stop talking to them, and in this episode she explains her choice to be estranged from her family and why estrangement was important to her healing.

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Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.
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Julia Winston: We opened the season by exploring the idea that the American Dream, especially when it comes to family, doesn’t work for everybody. Today’s episode is an example of that. This story talks about childhood sexual abuse. Please listen with care. 

Julia Winston: I'm Julia Winston, and this is Refamulating, a show that explores different ways to make a family. 

This week is Thanksgiving. In the U.S., this is the unofficial start to the holiday season. For the next six weeks, we will all be running around preparing for whatever holidays we may celebrate between now and the new year. For many of us, this is a frenzied time of year as we try to get gifts, plan travel and navigate all the family dynamics we'll be dropping into. 

This can also be a tough time of year for people who have complicated relationships with family. Whether they see their family or not, the holidays can be a reminder of what they don't have. Emily is someone who won't be seeing any blood relatives this week. 

Emily: Unfortunately I am estranged from my immediate family at the moment. I think for me estrangement is kind of like a day to day decision and I'm not ready to not be yet if that ends up being an option at some point. 

Julia Winston: Today we’re gonna hear the story about why Emily is estranged from her family of origin, and how the choice to distance herself has thrown her into a journey of refamulating. 

I've seen Emily's estrangement unfold up close, in real time. I’ve known her for more than 20 years. We went to college together and she’s been one of my best friends ever since.

Emily: I feel like we've really like watched each other grow up, which has been such a delight. Um, but also filled with, you know, real life. So it hasn't all just been like fun and giggling. Although there's been plenty of that. We've also seen each other cry a lot.

Julia Winston: A lot. And we've cried together a lot with and for each other.

Julia Winston: One of the things I’ve cried about the most with Emily is the reason she’s estranged from her family, and the fact that she’s lost one of the most important people in her life.

Emily: I haven't talked to my mom since like 2017, 2018. 

Julia Winston: But before we get into why, let’s start from the beginning. 

Emily : My dad was an English professor and they got married and they were like, totally like mismatched. Like my mom was like really fun and my dad was like very serious and like academic. Um, so they had my older brother and then four years later they had me. So I was four, they got divorced, um, which I think was like great for my mom. She was like a single mom in the late eighties. Um, what, you know, really hard decision to make and really difficult time in her life, I'm sure.

My dad was extremely bitter about the divorce. Extremely bitter. And my childhood was very much like him yelling at my older brother to like excel in school and like be perfect and very much ignored me. Like 100%. I was just a ghost. He had a lot of rage and I was just always kind of thought he was going to like kill me. Um, like when I would, uh, go to sleep for a certain period, I would really try to get him to say, I'll see you tomorrow because I was sure he was going to kill me overnight. 

Julia Winston: Did he ever, um, direct his anger towards you? Like why did you think he was going to kill you?

Emily : He was just so mad, like all the time, just like cursing under his breath, like a lunatic. Just, clearly needed some SSRIs, you know what I mean? And didn't have access, so, or didn't know about them, I don't know, it was so early. But I interpreted a lack of love as the presence of, like, murderous intent. Um, and a lot of the time at my dad's house, he would just like, get drunk and go to sleep. He ended up dying when I was 15 from cancer, and I was so relieved. I was so relieved when he died. It was, there was not a single part of me that was sad. I was waiting for it. I'm like, get out of here, man. Yeah, it wasn't until like 20 years later that I felt sad that my dad died.

Julia Winston: So that was your relationship with your biological father. Yeah. And what was your relationship like with your mom, your stepfather, and your brothers?

Emily : Yeah, so my mom married my stepdad a year after she got divorced, so I was only five, so my stepdad was in my life you know, from when I was really little. And they together had my little brother. So then we had this, you know, family where my older brother and I would go to my dad's every other weekend and every Wednesday night, like that kind of nineties divorce pattern, which I think you

Julia Winston: Oh, I know it well. Yep. Yep.

Emily : I lived with my mom and stepdad full time with my brothers in the suburbs. So, and I was like, a tomboy with ADD, so I was always like, climbing the tree, or riding my bike, or dribbling the basketball, like I was so hyperactive, um, and spent a lot of time outside at the park. So that was like the setup was like two brothers, divorced parents and kind of going back and forth and like really hated going to my dad's house like every, every Tuesday night and every Thursday night where I'd have to see him the next day I would cry, cry, cry, cry, cry so much to my mom. She was really there for me. And she did the best she could. 

Julia Winston: Something happened when you were a child that led to the estrangement. So what happened, Emily, what happened when you were a kid?

Emily : I think because I was so, like, rejected by my biological father, I had a stepdad. And I'm like, great! You know, another chance at a relationship with a father, kind of a thing. Um, and so he had all these like hobbies and stuff and I would kind of just like tag along and join him and you know, it took a dark turn. The way I describe it is like the nicest thing I can say about my stepdad is he didn't rape me. 

But he definitely molested me when I was I don't know how old I was, but I would think like nine, 10, 11. It was him trying to like get me alone and, and play quote unquote games where he would touch me inappropriately. 

Julia Winston: Like many kids who are abused, Emily didn't really understand what her stepdad was doing. It took many years of therapy as an adult for her to understand that what he’d been doing was sexual abuse. 

Emily : I was just too young. I didn't know what sex was, I didn't know what pleasure was. You know as a child you, you don't know your own body, you don't know what's happening yet. I was eight years old, nine years old, I barely knew my own, you know, private parts, and certainly not male, you know, a male body. Like, I didn't know. So I really interpreted it as like, I felt like special and like the chosen one. He was grooming me. You know, he would bring me presents a lot. And I just felt like, oh, good. You know, I had one dad who ignored me and one dad who didn't ignore me. So like, the world in my head kind of balanced itself. And one night he did, he touched me and I left his room to like, you know, whatever, go to sleep or whatever. And he came in my room and he said,  He said this whole thing has gone too far. Don't tell mom. 

Julia Winston: And Emily didn't. She didn't tell her mom or anyone in her life. She kept that secret for the rest of her childhood. 

Emily : And then from that point on, really, really, really treated me like an ex girlfriend. Like, was such a bitch to me. Was so mean. We fought all the time, like, very inappropriately. Just kind of like a teenager who just didn't have control over his emotions. Imagine  if you were 15 years old and you were living with your ex girlfriend, you'd be mean to them. And so my mom was, like, pretty confused, I think. And she would just, like, watch us fighting all the time.

And he absolutely hated me. He hated me. I had two dads who really didn't like me. But my stepdad, I mean, there was a whole other level to his, like, hatred. Because I used to have to drive him to the train station in the morning before high school, and he just wouldn't say a word, and he would just be seething, seething with anger. And I just remember we would just drive in silence, we'd get to the train station, he would get out of the car, he wouldn't say thank you, he wouldn't say goodbye, he would slam the door, and then I would see him at dinner that night, being an asshole.

Julia Winston: When the abuse started, Emily didn't realize that what was happening was something bad. But as she became a teenager, the demand to "not tell mom" made her feel uneasy. And yet she still couldn’t see the abuse for what it was. Her brain went into protective mode. 

Emily : I put it into a part of my brain that I never looked at. Like I was really good at compartmentalizing, putting it in a box and making sure that I never swiveled my head to that direction. You know what I mean? Like it was just off limits. I love writing my diary and I have since I got my first diary in 1991, and actually one of the first entries in my diary was, I hate my stepdad. And I have no idea why I wrote that. And I wrote, I hate my stepdad. I'm scared for my future. Which is such a sad little thing to see in, like, kid handwriting. Um, but that's what I wrote. And then it's like, you know, I went to the mall today. It's like, it's just like so unhelpful. I'm like, what happened, Emily?

There's an entry when I was in, like, the seventh grade, later, like after it stopped, probably a year after it stopped, where I wrote, like, what's the point of my, of my parent, my stepdad? Like, what's he ever done for me? You know, just like kind of read, like beginning to like rage. And I wrote down, um, I wrote down, he molested me, but then I crossed it out so deeply. I was like, no one will find this out. You know, it was a secret. Don't tell mom went to my bones. I was like, this is going to the grave with me. Like looking back and just being like, why was that a secret? Um, I think it was as mundane as like, did I tell my friends I played video games with my brothers? You know, it just was so part of life. It was not a momentous thing until I realized what it was. 

Julia Winston: Yeah, it's it's almost like it didn't have gravity until he said this has gone too far. Don't tell your mom.

Emily : Yeah. Then it became like, oh, now it's not happening anymore and now instead I have a massive, massive secret and a huge burden. I grew up having to keep a secret from everyone. And what's weird about that kind of creepy, gross secret is the only other person who knows it is your abuser. So you share this incredibly strange, uh, intimate Illegal, criminal activity with someone you hate. And he's the only one in your family who knows. So it kind of bonds you to them because he gets to exist in this family structure because I've listened to him and kept the secret. I didn't know that it was wrong. I was treated like a special friend. And I thought, you know, God was smiling on me., I wasn't religious, but I thought, like, oh, I'm the chosen one. This is a good thing. I did not interpret it as abuse because I didn't know. I was too young.

Julia Winston: Yeah. How did, as you got older, you know, you're going through your teenage years, how did what happened affect your sexuality and your, Your intimacy.

Emily : Yeah. Oh, so, okay. This is an important piece to know. When I got to college, I was like, actually, I want to kiss girls. but I came out when I was 19. But I still felt sexually I was really numb. I was really numb because I was not yet living in my body with all the feelings. 'cause the feelings were attached to memories I didn't wanna look at. So it took a lot of un. earthing feeling in order to get past a lot of the bad and, and start to like date in a healthy way, which I honestly couldn't really do till at my mid thirties. 

Julia Winston: Emily started to heal in her mid 30s, because that's when she started going to therapy and talking honestly about what happened. 

Emily : So I was in therapy three times a week and I had really good therapists and they kind of like slowly just chipped away at this fortress I had built up around the secret. So a therapist one time said to me, like, you know, when people go home for Thanksgiving or whatever. Like, a lot of people have crazy families. He said, you don't have a crazy family. When you go home, you're not going to a home, you're going to a crime scene. And it just hit me in my gut. I was like, It's true. My childhood home doubles as a crime scene. He would have been arrested. Uh, and he wasn't. And it continued until it stopped. So, I had another therapist who, who encouraged me to write a letter to my stepdad and not send it. And I think that was really, really important that she said, no, you know, no pressure to send it, print it, take it to the middle of the forest and light it on fire, like, do whatever. But get it out of your brain onto paper. So I did that exercise. This is all, like, part of the massive unraveling that happened, like, right when I told my older brother. And so I spent time. writing that letter. Like, what would I say to my stepdad if I could? 

Julia Winston: curious about the language that you used. It's so stigmatized and so taboo that like, what language do you even use to bring such a thing to the surface?

Emily : Oh my God. How did I write this letter? This is why I was having like a complete nervous breakdown. Like I remember walking down the street and just like crying because I was, it was just all coming apart and I just could not, you know, that box I put it all in, like it was exploding. And what do you do with that? Like it was too much. 

Julia Winston: When Emily wrote the letter, she ended up sending it to me and a few other close friends. She wanted to unburden herself and share what she was going through. During our interview she got in her email and found what she had sent us back in 2017. 

Emily : I started it: I'd like to open up a conversation about what happened when I was younger, specifically what you did. It has been exhausting to keep a facade up for so many years that you didn't hurt me. It has been such a heavy emotional burden to carry and I'm writing you to hand it back.

I said, like, you know, I wasn't in a position to decide whether or not to trust you and you took advantage of that. It goes on and on. I said, I ended it with, He had a horrible childhood, and I just wanted to acknowledge that. I said, your childhood was horrible, and you didn't deserve what happened to you either. You deserve to live an honest life as much as I do. The lies and secrecy have made me sick, and I want to bring it up because silence isn't serving me.

Julia Winston: When Emily wrote the letter to her step-dad, she didn't plan to give it to him. But once it was all on paper, something shifted. "Don't tell mom" was the mantra she had been given as a child. And finally, it stopped holding power. 

Emily : I was so tightly bound up with this secret. Don't tell mom this is like gonna explode the family. It was like a nuclear bomb that I had in my pocket and What happened I guess first was my brother got married and His wife got pregnant and I was like I can keep a secret from me because who cares But I will not let this happen to my nieces. So I knew I was just up against it. It was like suddenly I just had to tell. Like it was over. And so, first person I told was my older brother, and he, because I was like, you have got to know this, because, you know, I will, I will not let this happen to them. Ugh, sorry.

It's just like, it's, it's very sad to hear myself say words that I wish someone had said, you know, to protect me. But, they weren't said. So, I told my brother and he had no idea, like truly had no idea. And he was like really devastated for me, but I felt like that devastation was like kind of short lived, like it, it kind of just life went on.

Julia Winston: But life didn't go on for Emily. Something had changed and she couldn't keep pretending.

Emily : I went home to a bridal shower or something from my high school friend. And I saw my parents and I, I just remember looking at them and being like, I can't do this anymore. You know, it was over. The ruse was up. I had been sending my dad, my stepdad father's day cards, birthday presents. Like I was so invested in making sure that no one would ever find out that I was like, we are a perfect family. We are a happy family. And I just remember seeing them that day and being like, you know, it's, it's done. And I went home, I went back to my house and I got the letter. I found the letter. I copy pasted it, emailed him, sent it. I remember pressing send and calling my mom at the same second. And that was the beginning of the end.

Julia Winston: When Emily decided to finally share the secret that her stepdad molested her as a kid, she was 34. She'd been processing this in therapy for years. But it wasn't just the abuse that she was untangling, it was how this abuse had affected her self-esteem. As her friend, I watched Emily do really hard work as a result of therapy to show herself more love, to value herself more. And I think as her self-esteem improved, that's how she got the courage to confront her mom and stepdad.

Emily : A lot of the decision to like myself came because I want to have children. And I started to realize that I have this feeling that kids don't necessarily do what you say, but they definitely do what you do. And I knew in my heart I wanted to have kids who had self esteem. And there was just absolutely no fucking way I could raise children to like themselves when I was sending my abuser father's day cards. No way. It was like, there was just not a chance. I just looked into the future and saw these kids looking at my behavior and thinking that was something to model. And I knew I had to make massive changes to become a person I would want them to be.

Julia Winston: And that's an unbelievable level of courage, especially because you knew that it was possible for you to lose it all.

Emily : Yes, it was a massive trade off. It was like me or them, and I reached a crossroads, and it was like, okay, yeah, I've given, I've given you the rest of my life, it's time for me.

Julia Winston: So then you made this bold move where you sent the letter to your stepfather, you called your mom. You said, tell dad to check his email. 

Emily : He actually wrote back, Do and say what you feel you need to do and say. I feel for mom. Um,

Julia Winston: He took no ownership.

Emily : Yeah, what an absolute idiot. And then, he said, sorry, oh he did say, sorry this has caused you so much grief. I understand and feel horrible for you and mom. I am devastated and feel I may lose mom. I do love you so much, and as I told you one night, I love you too much to continue this.

Julia Winston: What? Oh,

Emily : Yeah, that's real pedophile.

Julia Winston: oh my God, like he was in love with you. And that's why it had gone too far?

Emily : Yeah, like the pedophile brain is like, you're You're not right, you're, there's some, there's a major thing that is not right, like, he thinks we were in love, like, that's why he treated me like an ex girlfriend. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, I didn't know what the hell was going on, I was a child, you were an adult, you took advantage of me, let me spell it out for you, it's over.

Julia Winston: The response that came from Emily’s stepdad was deeply disturbing. And her mom’s initial response was devastating- asking if Emily had instigated the abuse. 

Emily : she later did apologize. She said she was in shock. You know, did you instigate it? She had absolutely no fucking clue what to say to me. But this goes into like a deeper thing of like, did she know it was happening at the time? Which she claims she didn't, but many therapists and I have now reached the conclusion that yeah, she definitely knew that there was a strange relationship between us and my stepdad was so immature. Why were we fighting so much? Why was it so contentious? Like there was just so much more to the story than she was willing to dig in to. 

I thought my mom might leave my stepdad, because I'm like a normal person, and I thought, oh, you know what, who would want to be married to someone who had done that to their child? Um, she didn't. leave him. She, she was like, he's not a bad guy. Um, she really jumped through hoops, I think, to maintain this sense that he made a mistake. It happened a long time ago and there's nothing they can do about it now. 

But what, I'm upset about now, or like I think the reason for the estrangement actually is not that she stayed with him because we all have to make our own adult decisions about who we decide to be in partnership with. But my stepdad has never apologized to me, and that is what I can't accept. Is that she can maintain a marriage with someone who didn't spend the rest of his life apologizing.

Julia Winston: What was your brother's response?

Emily : So my older brother had already known because I wanted to protect my nieces and my little brother was a horrible, horrible conversation because I knew I had to call him. I had to tell him something that would really change his relationship with his biological dad. And that was one of my least favorite calls I've ever had to make. Probably second to like telling my mom was telling my little brother. He didn't know. He was shocked. You know, he was really supportive of me. But I think that my brothers also really felt for my mom in that situation because they didn't live it. They didn't see how she behaved towards me, him, us. Um, and I think they felt a little bit defensive of her pain and the situation that she was in. And that's, that was really hard for me to be around honestly. Like I, I actually really understand why people would not want to be very angry at their mother and maintain that incredibly important relationship, but since it blew up for me, it was really hard to watch them have a relationship with her.

Julia Winston: The estrangement didn't happen immediately. Emily waited to see how people would respond once the immediate shock wore off. She’d hoped there might be a little more care for her experience and how this abuse had affected her. Instead, the rest of the family seemed to want to keep the status quo.

Emily : My stepdad never apologized to me Or he did in that, um, stupid email, essentially, like he said, you know, I'm sorry I caused you grief, I'm afraid I might lose mom. But then he kind of changed his mind later on and he wrote an email to his son, um, my brother, my little brother saying like, I can't believe you believe your sister. I thought you were smarter than this. So he, he very much just did a 180, and it's like, what are you talking about? 

But, who cares? Someone who's so ill, mentally ill, that like, I can't spend time like, deciphering his, his words, because he's so off. But, the reason for the estrangement really is because my mom stayed with someone who didn't apologize to me. That was my bar, It was not leave him, obviously, I think that'd be most people's bar, but mine was even lower.

I'm like, have your dumb relationship, but let's live in reality. Let's like deal with what happened. Let's heal together. And we couldn't do it. And so I did end up going to therapy with my mom for three sessions, um, that weren't super helpful and actually were like pretty damaging. And she would just tell me that like, uh, Basically, like, I ruined her life, uh, or that her life was ruined. She told me a few times that she wished she didn't know. And she kind of blamed me in a way that felt like, you know, she would say, like, what did I miss? What was I supposed to have seen that I didn't see? And it's like, what, all of it.

Julia Winston: That's when Emily decided that having contact with her family was actually harmful to her. She couldn't heal and move past the abuse if the people closest to her couldn’t acknowledge the pain.

Julia Winston: Do you follow them on social media? Because I've gotten the sense that you've seen or heard things that have happened, what's that been like over the years?

Emily : Yeah, that's a good question, because I think there's like different levels of estrangement. So there's like absolutely no contact, like you have no idea what's going on in the other person's life. And then there's like the kind of estrangement I have, which I think is just like one little teeny level up, which is like, I follow, you know, my mom and I are Facebook friends, which is so lame.

Uh, but you know, I can kind of see what they're up to. That's how I know they sold my childhood house and moved to a different state was through Facebook. Which was like, really shitty. Because I had stuff in my room that I wanted that I just have to assume is in a landfill now.

You know, it's not a death. It's, these are living people who I do not have contact with, even though they live like two, like less than two hours away from me. my mom and I text like on our birthdays and some like Mother's Day, you know, so it's not like, it's not no contact, but it's, it's a meaningless relationship. There's nothing to it. It's just happy birthday. Thanks. Happy birthday. Which is crazy. Cause if I scroll up, you know, it's goes from happy birthday, happy birthday to like, what do you have for lunch today? You know what I mean? Like, we had a robust relationship until we didn't. So it is wild to kind of see that, like, one day it just literally stops and it's just happy birthday once a year.

Julia Winston: When we come back, Emily starts rebuilding her life after estrangement. 

Julia Winston: Being estranged from her family brings a lot of challenges for Emily. Of course there's grief about what’s been lost. But it's also hard to explain this choice in the course of her day to day life. Think about it, how often do you ask an acquaintance about their family. Do you have siblings? You going home for the holidays? Questions like this come up a lot, and Emily has found that people don't easily accept "i don't talk to my family" as an answer. 

Emily : I have to tell people why we're estranged. And that is, That's a bummer. You know, it's like, oh, we're all having fun at dinner. Not, not quite. You know, like, oh, should we do another round of cocktails? So maybe when Emily's done sobbing, we can look at the appetizers. This is why I'm like, maybe I'll just post this podcast on, like, LinkedIn, so I never have to have this conversation again. It is hard work. And so sometimes I just like let myself not tell people and just lie. Because I'm like, I don't want to cry again today. when I tell people, they are pretty much focused on two things. It's a very uncomfortable thing, estrangement. It's uncomfortable for me, it's uncomfortable for them, they want it to end. There's two main themes that come up, and one is reconciliation. That is probably the biggest thing. What's it gonna take to get back in touch? Because people want it to end. They don't want to sit in the discomfort of this, like, purgatory. Where it's a living death. I, um, Always get like kind of annoyed when people want to talk about reconciliation because I'm like, I don't think you're seeing the full point, which is I'm so hurt.

There has been no group healing. And by the way, a lot of that's on me because I was the one who backed out of my family. I was like, I'm out of here. Like this isn't working for me. And I think I could have done more to be like, let's all, let's try again. Let's come together. Like, and I just, I, I couldn't. I reached a point where I, I bounced.

So when people ask about reconciliation, it's like, you're not seeing the fact that I really tried. I got on the bus at 5am to go to my mom's city to go to therapy close to her. I did that because I couldn't bear the thought of not having a relationship with my mom. And now we're here. So, reconciliation says more about your intolerance for this pain than anything about me.

The second thing is forgiveness. People love to talk about forgiveness as if they are Oprah Winfrey. Everyone has a damn opinion about the way you are supposed to forgive people and, like, it makes them feel and sound so wise when they say forgiveness is not for them, it's for you, and, bitterness is whatever, a poison, drinking poison and hoping the other person dies, like, all these dumb ass, like, I'm like, put that on a pillow. Um, that sounds great your life, but it really isn't working for me. And let me tell you why. There is a cult of forgiveness. It is like, the only way people know how to frame trauma is to overcome it. And I'm like, actually I'm having a pretty good damn time being angry.

Like, forgiving to me sounds like you're telling me not to be angry, which by the way, is what I was told until I was 34 years old when I decided to stop listening to the command to not tell mom. So leaning into this anger is part of freeing myself from a secret. So no, I am not forgiving people who don't know deserve it, who didn't earn it, who didn't go through the million steps it takes to make me feel like this was not something I deserved and this was, you know, a really horrible part of my childhood that you just get to have a great life and you don't have to tell your friends why Emily's not around for Christmas or Thanksgiving and never comes to visit. Like, they just get to live a normal life. And I'm not following that path. I do not think forgiveness is for them. If I'm forgiving anyone, it's myself for waiting until I was 34 years old to come up with the self confidence to not listen anymore. And that's where I want to put my energy.

Julia Winston: When you and I were preparing for this conversation, when you talked about that point, it really was like, Oh, it really struck me because you said that for you, the goal is not forgiveness for you. The goal is healing. And That forgiveness is not part of your healing journey, at least not right now.

Emily : Yeah. My goal is not retribution. It's not putting him in jail. A lot of people Love to talk about that too, like why isn't he in jail, I can't believe your mom is still married to him. I'm like, you know what I'd rather do? Not talka about them. Like they sucked up so much of my mental space and my energy and my goodness for such a long time. Me tap dancing to make everyone feel comfortable that we can keep this family intact. It's all because Emily's being a good girl who listened to her stepdad one night. And, you know, the healing for me has really been watching this explosion that I started. You know, I, those words were due to my decision to end this secret. And really trying through the haze, through the grief, crying, depression, to appreciate this glorious explosion and mess that I'm in has resulted in my freedom?

Julia Winston: Emily is able to say all of this with confidence and strength today, but it took years and years of therapy for her to be able to talk about the abuse and the estrangement without crying. And the most heartbreaking part of the whole thing wasn’t just losing her mom, it was the fact that her mom chose to stand by her husband instead of her daughter. 

Emily : I had a fantasy that it would be her butterfly moment. You know, it would be her like, Joining me in reality over here, where we talk about the truth and we do cry and we, we heal and we, we do the best we can to pick up the pieces and, and move on together. But the blast was too strong and we just ended up on different sides. So I had a fantasy that she would, I guess, leave him and We would be closer because I felt chosen by her and I wasn't. So that was a massive period of grief. I mean, three like major depressions, like the only thing that gets you through that kind of level of, of sadness is time. And I hate that that's true, but I feel a lot better today than I did five years ago. My God, I was like, didn't know which end was up.

Part of telling my mom was knowing that I might lose it all. I might lose the whole family. And I remember therapists would be like, You won't. You know, that's not gonna happen. And it's like, no, it literally did happen. So, there's a massive risk in Deciding to unburden yourself, but I also don't regret it, you know. I needed to do that. Thank God I did.

It was really devastating for me to realize that I was failed on that level from my mother because I always held her up as like the good parent and letting go of that like fantasy I had that like at least I had one and in many ways I did have a really good parent in my mom. She she came to all my games she packed my lunch she wrote me notes in my lunch there was a lot of good a lot so I don't want to say like the whole thing was bad but Obviously, like, a pretty big, important thing happened that colored it all, even the good. 

I'm really mad, I'm really at my mom and I feel like, I guess kind of like pathetic, but I miss her even though she put me through like complete bullshit. I like, I miss my mom. You know, I miss the relationship that we had and all the joking we did in the, just the, we're just fully aligned on so many topics. And she really put me through so much, and I rejected it because I chose myself. And this, this is a hard thing to square with self confidence, is missing someone who treats you like shit. But, that's where we're at. She's my mom. And I'm, you know, I'm not like, I'm gonna reach out to, uh, to get rid of that bad feeling. It's something I sit with.

Julia Winston: What are some of the unexpected ways that you feel the loss of not having parents?

Emily : Okay, so, it's actually really interesting. There comes a time in your life where you go, you transition from being taken care of to taking care of others. And I am really blessed in many ways in my life and I have been successful in my career and I would love to have parents I could spoil. I would absolutely love that. And I feel like part of estrangement that sucks is I don't have anyone to take care of who is older than me, you know, who raised me. Giving back. That's been a really sad thing for me. And thank God I have amazing in laws and I really want to spoil them. Like sometimes my girlfriend will tell me where she's at. She's like out having a drink with her parents and I'll like call the bar and like pay for their tab 

Julia Winston: Oh, that's so classy.

Emily : It's just like so fun to be like, and this one's on me, you know, and I would do that for my parents. I would like buy them a vacation or whatever, but I can't. And so I'm glad that I want kids because I clearly have this, like I want to give. And when you don't have parents, there's a real hole. There's a real lack of the ability to give back to people who gave you so much. And that makes me sad.

And then there's the everyday, like, birthdays, holidays, you know, just the relationship. I had a really fun friendship with my mom. Like, I really did. Clearly, she didn't know everything about me, and you could argue that a lot of it was surface level, but the way that you connect with your own mother, like, you are on the same wavelength in a way that is kind of impossible to have with anyone else, even really good friends, you're just, you come from her. You're She made you. And my mom's really funny, and so we, we would laugh a lot. So, there were so many jokes, there were so many times we were like, doubled over laughing. And that's a loss. That's a really big loss. Because you're kind of losing, like, a lot more than, you know, a good friend. It's like, the deepest kind of friend you can have. It's not there anymore.

Julia Winston: Yeah. Is there some part of you that still does hope for a relationship in the future? Or are you, have you made total peace with estrangement as being the sort of end state for you?

Emily : No, this is interesting because, again, going back to like, what kind of model do I want to be for my children? Estrangement isn't fun. I don't, and there are many times when I've thought this isn't working for me. You know, like, I gotta change this up, this is too painful. I'm being stubborn. You know, I don't think I handled it perfectly. When I decided to leave the family, I wasn't like, these are the four things that need to change before I can come back. I just left. So I imagine that my brothers feel really abandoned and really hurt, and I needed to leave to repair and heal on my own because I was not, I what? It was not possible to do in that structure. It was not possible. And I worry about regret. You know, any one of them could die any day, and this would be our final, the final chapter? It's not great. It's not the final chapter I would write if I were writing a book. And this is how it ends, everyone. It's completely open ended, and there was no contact made ever again.

Like, that's not a good movie. So, I treat estrangement as a day by day decision. I'm not ready today to reach out. And it makes me sad, you know, my nieces have grown up. I've often thought about like, do I buy them a birthday card for every year I've missed, you know, and just start putting them in a drawer just to tell them like, I missed your childhood or like a portion of your childhood, but I really thought about you a lot, you know that's the hardest thing, I think. Is the kids. But they have a relationship with their grandparents. So that's really hard. Because, what's the story they're being told? I don't know. I don't think this is the end state, but I cannot predict the future. I hope I don't regret it. But this is my decision today. just like it was yesterday and the previous seven years. 

Julia Winston: It’s been incredibly painful for Emily to distance herself from her family. But she knew she wanted to be a mom one day, and one who sets a healthy example for her children. She wants to be a role model who loves and values herself, not someone who punishes herself to make others more comfortable. Today, Emily is in a relationship with an amazing person who loves and values her, and they’re engaged to be married. She and her fiance want to have kids and are making all the plans to start their own family.

Emily : I would say like for my kids, future children, hopefully knock on wood, they exist one day soon. I want two things for them. Every parent will say they want their kid to be happy. So obviously I want happiness for my children, but I want something else that I don't often hear people say, which is for my children, I want them to have clarity. I want them to have a robust vocabulary for what they experience, and I want them to be able to connect it to how they're feeling in real time. I am not a secret household. We will not have a secrets household. Um, I want them to be able to discern what's happening and describe it. It's the opposite of my childhood in many ways. And that's a gift that I can only give them because I suffered.

Julia Winston: Just the idea of you being a mother is like incredible. I mean, you're just, the way I hear you talk about your children, it's like fills my heart with hope and excitement because you're going to be such an amazing mother and you have had to go through so much shit to know exactly what kind of parent you want to be.

Emily : yes. you Know, straight people can just, like, have sex and have a kid, and gay people have to go through, like, a lot more effort, and I think that's also kind of a gift because it's given me the opportunity time to really reflect on what kind of parent I want to be and to become the person I want to be to ensure that that is possible. So, God bless egg freezing and embryo creation because it's given me time and space to, to change, which I needed to do. I used to absolutely hate myself. I had such low self esteem. And I still do struggle, but not like I did. Oh my God. Going from Don't Tell Mom to being on your friend's podcast and announcing it to the world, like, that's a huge change.

Julia Winston: What role have friendships played your journey you As you've navigated estrangement?

Emily : Yeah, I imagine for, for everyone who's estranged that their friends suddenly take up a larger emotional role than they may have otherwise. Not to say that people who aren't estranged, like, have, you know, surface level friendships at all, but it is true that when you're estranged, your, like, partnership, I think, became like much more important to me because.

What would I do on Christmas and Thanksgiving? Like be in my apartment alone? Like I, I didn't want that for myself. And so now always having someone else's family who is so amazing. I have the best in laws in the world and having that and having a partner who like can accept all of my grief and like lift me up and bring me so much joy. And for me, that has been huge. And, my best friends, like, I have so many amazingly smart, deep emo you know, the EQ of our friendship group is amazing off the charts. Just the depth of your love has been so powerful because I was broken and I needed help and you were there. 

Julia Winston: Years ago, when Emily told us what happened and sent us the email she’d written to her step-dad, it broke my heart. It crushed me to know that someone I love so much had been hurt, and was hurting. As she's gone through this whole process, an excruciatingly painful journey of refamulating that she never asked for, I've been watching from the sidelines. And I am sooo inspired by the love she’s found within herself. Emily lost everything when she stood up for herself. And yet...she gave herself exactly what she needed to make a loving family of her own. 

Emily : Child abusers are incredibly short sighted. They're dumb because what they think they're doing is abusing a child. But what they're actually doing is abusing a future adult. And worst case scenario for them, it's not just a future adult, it's a future adult who likes themself.

When you're a kid,  the adults around you control everything. They control your bedtime, your diet, the activities you do, the friends you're allowed to see, the school you go to, the neighborhood you live in.  But there is one thing that they do not control, and that is time.

So, it really is playing with fire when you abuse a child because you don't know who they're going to become. They're actually not frozen in a state of childhood forever. When they grow old, we grow up. So, they're losing power, we're gaining it. We're stepping in when they're on their way out. You know? And it's like, that is the ultimate retribution, is like, you're an old man now. And look at me on a podcast. Don't remember you getting invited to a podcast. Your child abuser, You know what mean? Like, go away. Like you're, you're so obsolete. And he didn't, he just couldn't see when I was nine years old and it started, he couldn't see that I would one day go to a lot of therapy and become a person who likes myself. He just didn't have the imagination and neither did I. I thought, Oh God, my life's, you know, that that's just going to be, have to be something that I ignore because it's too painful. Well, I have the last word here and that's the joy of stepping into power and realizing no one's going to give it to you.

Julia Winston: and just seeing how happy you are in your relationship and you're now you're engaged. You're getting married soon You're in a loving relationship. You're flourishing in your career like you're not about them anymore. Like your life is really about you. What are you proud of? 

Emily: For me to like myself, that's what I think I'm proudest of, is, is realizing that I have the power to decide how I feel about myself instead of listening to criminals dictate, you know, my worth. Like that was a huge, huge, I mean, Herculean effort to, To change as an adult. 

We know which path to walk down to feel happy You And then there's another path that is extremely painful for a very long time, but at the end of it is freedom. And so many people just choose to walk down the path of denial because who wants to cry for four years? I mean, it was, it was unbelievable. It was so exhausting. You've seen me sob, like, on vacations. Like, it was so awful. I can't even put it into words how hard it was. But the fact, now that I'm on the other side of the biggest barrier possible, losing your mother, uh, exploding your, the closest relationships in your life, so that I could potentially feel better and have it come true that I actually feel better, what a gift. Thank God. Thank God I didn't go through all that and regret it. I mean, there's no way. I'm so proud that I cried for four years.

12: Reframing The American Dream (Pt 2): Communal Living Makes a Family

What happens when you expand beyond the nuclear family home? In this episode, we meet people who've chosen to share their daily lives with others in unconventional ways - from two married couples buying a house together to raise kids, to a man who's spent 14 years living on a hippie commune. Their stories challenge our assumptions about what makes a successful adult and show how living communally might be an antidote to America's epidemic of loneliness.

Additional Resources: 

• "Everyday Utopia" by Kristen Ghodsee

• Learn more about Twin Oaks in Virginia

• Learn more about The Radish in Oakland

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Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.
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Julia Winston: When Etosha Cave thinks about her college experience, she looks back on it fondly. 

Etosha: I went to a school where everyone for the most part was living on campus. It’s effectively an intentional walking community where you're surrounded by people who are engaged in similar but very different lives. And  you all are sharing those experiences. You're sharing food, you're going to activities together and you're meeting each other's families. You're just really engaging in, in deep conversations.

Julia Winston: After Etosha got her Bachelor’s degree in engineering, she got an internship with the National Science Foundation in Antarctica, where she once again lived communally- just like in college. 

Etosha: I was stationed at McMurdo, which is one of the largest stations on the continent of Antarctica. And it's a US base. It's about a thousand people there over the summer.  You know, I, I loved it. I had an amazing time. There’s only two bars and it was, there was one coffee shop and you'd go and you'd just talk and you'd get to know each other.  And so you would, yeah, you just have these amazing conversations and really get to know people and feel part of a group.

Julia Winston: After Antarctica, Etosha wanted this kind of living experience again. So she lived in a dorm type situation in grad school. When she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for work, she looked for communal living homes. For the last 15 years, she’s lived in a larger community on and off. 

What that’s looked like for her: organized homes in the Bay Area that bring together a group of unrelated people who share their home life together. 

For a while, Etosha lived at The Radish. The Radish is an intentional community in Oakland, where 20-30 people live in a few homes near each other. Each person has their own room but shares living spaces and kitchen with the group. They all rotate chores and obligations. 

Etosha:  People either jokingly or maybe not so jokingly, um, will say, Oh, it's like kind of like a hippie compound or cult.  A lot of people just don't know how to place it and they think it's very radical.

Julia Winston: It’s not any of that. For Etosha, living with a larger group of people just works for her lifestyle. As a single person she gets to share the obligations and costs of a home with other people, which gives her more time for her work and hobbies. It also gives her a built in social circle.

Etosha: I consider myself introverted and I would say half of the people in the communities I've lived in tend to be introverted as well.  I think as an introvert, I still like being around people. I just don't always like interacting with them or talking. And so like if I can just be in a room with like 10 other people and be quiet because every, you know, the more extroverted, egregious people are talking, I'm in my happy space.

Julia Winston: I'm Julia Winston and this is Refamulating, a show about different ways to make a family. 

Living communally is a way that Etosha built a support system in her adult life. But like she said, many people have assumptions about what that means, they think it’s very radical. And that’s because many of us have a story about how we should live: You’re allowed to have roommates when you’re young, but as you get older that’s less acceptable. Living with your spouse and kids is normal- living with other people and their kids is not. 

In part one of this episode, we explored how the American dream and the nuclear family might be making us more lonely. In this episode, we're going to explore what it could look like to expand our families in our day to day lives. Itasha's story is just one example, and now we'll hear from others who've found different ways to live more communally.

In part one of this episode, I interviewed author and professor Kristen Ghodsee, who wrote a book called everyday utopia, which talks a lot about the benefits of communal living. If you didn't hear it, I suggest you go back and listen. Kristen gave us so much good information to chew on when it comes to the nuclear family and how that's influenced the way we live here in the U. S. and why communal living seems so weird to many of us.

Kristen Ghodsee: We live communally when we're young. And we tend to want to live communally when we get older in retirement communities or golden girl type houses. But precisely in these middle years when we need the most help from allo parents, it could be godparents, friends, colleagues, neighbors, we tend to isolate ourselves in the nuclear family. 

Julia Winston: FYI- Alloparents are people who help raise kids they aren’t related to.

Here in the US, we’re facing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Kristen believes that communal living is one tool that could help some of us feel more connected. Think about- we’re told to aspire to homeownership or at least to live with as few people as possible. That’s success. And many of us have internalized that- a third of Americans now live in a home by themselves. I’m one of them. 

Kristen Ghodsee: This is a very American thing. People associate Autonomy and privacy and Lack of connection with success. 

Julia Winston: And that’s the story I’ve been telling myself, but honestly, I long for more connection in my day-to-day life. I’m childfree, but people with kids have a whole other set of challenges. Most people raising kids don't have a strong enough support system, which can be extremely isolating. Our housing is one of the things making us lonely. So why aren't more of us considering a new way of living? Well...like I said earlier, we’ve attached how successful we are to our living situation.

Kristen Ghodsee: And so, so much of what we need to do, if we're talking about expanding our families, if we're talking about expanding our communities, if we're talking about living more collectively, is redefine our definition of success in the world, of what it means to be an adult. 

Julia Winston: That's what today's episode is all about. We're going to hear from five people who choose to live with more people than just themselves and their immediate family members to have more community in their lives. And they all do it for different reasons: it saves money. It makes parenting easier. It makes them feel less lonely. I talked to people who do this in a smaller town and a major city. No one I interviewed is in a cult, and they all say living with more people makes them happier. 

Julia Winston: The first group of people we’re gonna hear from are two married couples. The first... 

Deborah: My name is Deborah. I am 46 years old and I live in Washington DC. 

Luke: And I'm Luke and I'm 41 years old and I also live in Washington DC

Julia Winston: Deborah works for an Anglican Church. Luke is a pediatric oncology nurse. And here’s the other couple…

Bethany: I'm Bethany. I'm 35 

TJ: And I'm TJ and I'm 36 

Julia Winston: Bethany and TJ are college sweethearts who got married in their early 20s. By the time they met Luke and Deborah, they'd been married for a few years. So how did these two married couples get together? First let’s clarify one thing…

Luke & Deborah: Yeah. I think before we, uh, shacked up, um,  we're not swingers. 

Julia Winston: Actually, they were all members of the same church and met regularly with a small group of friends from church for a supper club. Here's Bethany:

Bethany: Once a month we would like rotate houses where we would all have dinner together. And then we started having dinner with Luke and Deborah on the side. We were like cheating on supper club. And so, we started hanging out, um, and just became really good friends, like, through that. 

Julia Winston: During this time, both couples were independently talking about their futures. Luke and Deborah had been married for a few years, and were starting to explore what family meant for them. 

Deborah: When we got married, I was older and so we knew we probably were not going to have kids. I'm six years older than Luke is. For some people that would be a sadness ,for us that was not a sadness. I think we kind of knew going into it that that, ship was sailing or had sailed.

Luke: We got great advice from our pre marital counselor when we were dating. He was like, if you're not going to have kids, that's fine, but you need to, you need a third. You need something outside of yourself that the two of invest in that keeps you from just completely, uh, turning inward and being just classic dinks, um, just spending all of our money on ourselves and totally focused on ourselves.

Deborah: And I think I felt like after we got married, I just had this feeling of like, okay, this is great. I love being married to Luke, but I just, I'd like more people to be around. And so I started sort of floating with Luke, like, Hey, you know, we could, Buy a house invite people in to live with us.

Julia Winston: Luke didn't love this idea. Both he and Deborah grew up in big families with lots of siblings. Because of that, Deborah finds comfort surrounded by lots of people. But for Luke, an introvert, all those people just made him want to live alone as an adult. Which he did for many years until he met Deborah. 

Luke: Getting married and just living with one other person was quite the adjustment. That was one of our early struggles that we had to work through was our introvert, extrovert difference. So I felt we had reached a nice equilibrium on that, finally, a nice understanding and then Deborah is wanting shake that up a bit by living with other people. I said, no, of course, immediately and vehemently, but I thought about it. And I think I was listening to a podcast with a random pastor. he was talking about he and his wife, they were empty nesters and kind of reaching retirement age and that they actually were making the decision to sell their house and move into community with other people, anyway, he just kind of sold it, and, and I was like, oh, interesting. 

Julia Winston: Meanwhile, TJ and Bethany were also having a conversation about family. For them, that meant having kids. They both wanted to be parents, but like many Millennials, they also both wanted to have careers. And that felt daunting while living in DC.

Bethany: I grew up in Alabama and a very conservative environment. And so people got married right out of college and started having babies like right away. I didn't see myself in that situation. I always imagined myself with a career and like, and I would have kids and I would have a partner who, you know, we like equally participated. 

TJ: So I think that's where like we had the shared vision is like, we both love people. We both want community. So I think we've always thought about raising our kids and having a family in that context. 

Bethany: And you know, we were living in D. C. And our families didn't live anywhere near there. And we knew that we wanted to stay and live in D. C. And have our kids. And, you know, we were trying to figure out how are we going to do that, With the two of us and, doing all the things we wanted to do.

Julia Winston: So the four of them are becoming close friends. They're all thinking about the future, and then comes New Year's Day, 2018. 

Luke: We invited them over for a New Year's Day brunch. We were having, pancakes and bacon and, mimosas.

Bethany: we were like, two bottles of champagne, and, and Luke is like, what if we live together? We were like, what? what if we did?

Luke: And, uh, I actually forgot to ask Deborah, talk to Deborah about it beforehand. So it was a shock to everyone at the table. 

Deborah: No one was more surprised than me when he asked them to live with us. 

Luke: TJ and Bethany are great. We have so much fun together. They're so thoughtful. They're kind. They had lived with several other people in community before, like renting, group house situations in DC. And I was sort of like, wow, like we love TJ and Bethany. Like, why not? 

Bethany: and TJ and I just looked at each other, and we were like, sure, yeah, we could, we could think about that.

Julia Winston: This was not a strange possibility for TJ and Bethany. Because they got married young, they had lived with a lot of friends as a couple to save money. 

TJ: But we had actually, to that point, actually lived longer with other people than separately in our marriage. So that's important context. We weren't just like, yeah, this sounds awesome. Like we had experience doing it. 

Julia Winston: TJ and Bethany said yes, and the next step was talking out the details.

Bethany: We decided to start meeting weekly, like we had weekly dinner, and during that time we would talk through things that we thought you should know about someone if you're going to live together. So, I mean, we talked about finances. We talked about what we would want in a house.

Julia Winston: One thing they all agreed on, was they wanted to buy a house together. Luke and Deborah had only rented and were ready for something more permanent, and to start building equity in their home. 

Deborah: I think we thought like, okay three to five years feels like we'll get our money back if we do it for that length of time. And so I think that was part of the calculus too, is that this wasn't just like a one year decision that we were willing to commit for at least a few years, and so it seems like, let's just go ahead and buy a house, be investing in an asset together.

Julia Winston: But they all agreed there was a psychological component too. If they all co-owned the property, their commitment to their arrangement would be as serious as their commitment to the home. 

Luke: when you're a rental, like your commitment to each other is only as good as your lease, right? We didn't want to just have a one year sort of casual, like let's live together and have fun. We were looking for something kind of more significant with more staying power.

Bethany: A lot of people ask us, or they assume that like one person, one couple owns the house and the other couple rents. And we made that decision pretty early on that we would buy the house together. There's four of us on the mortgage because we didn't want that power dynamic. We wanted, you know, everyone needed to have an equal say and what was going on in the house.

Julia Winston: The budget for their house was the first of many logistical conversations the two couples would have. It was also the first time they let each other into their lives more than just typical friends. 

TJ: they knew how much we had in every one of our bank accounts and savings and retirement accounts. We knew how much they had.

Julia Winston: During their home buying process, the four of them encountered a lot of pushback from people in their lives. Most people didn't understand why they wanted to share space with another couple. They also got a lot of pushback about buying with other people. Deborah said she heard a lot of fears- fears that apply to a couple that live together by the way. 

Deborah: What if they get a divorce? What if Someone has a mental health breakdown. What if they're actually don't have financial integrity or, you know, all different kinds of things that could happen. 

Bethany: Our families didn't think it was a good idea. I think people were worried about the money thing with like splitting the mortgage and like, it's a lot of money. Do you really trust these people? 

Deborah: Ppart of that is that this is not, um, modeled in our culture. Right. And so I think people were like, this is really strange and it feels like really, like you're putting a lot of money and risk on the line. 

Julia Winston: Of all the people who were skeptical about this working, their realtor came up with an idea for addressing some of the fears they might have. 

Luke: When the four of us sat down with our realtor, actually, the first thing he said is, I think this is a really terrible idea. So, like, How about you guys convince me that this is actually a good idea? And, uh, something he encouraged us to do, is to actually sit down and  assume that this fails in a year. Like, all of you should write down, like, why did it fail?

Bethany: Like what we are the worst case scenarios of what could go wrong and like talk through them.

Luke: And really just some of the like most vulnerable things that you know, like you, we have a kid, and you actually hate our kid. Or like, um, yeah, someone's mentally ill. Our marriage falls apart, or all sorts of just all sorts of fears about like, what might happen. It was really an amazing experience. That sort of skepticism really forced us to talk about and consider potentially really hard things and I think that actually made our relationship stronger.

Bethany: And we did that exercise. Everybody cried, you know, we made it through.

Julia Winston: After a lot of logistical and emotional conversations, and some house hunting, they bought a three bedroom home in DC. In some states the laws make it easier to live communally. Washington, DC is one of those places. But like we mentioned in part 1, there are places like Shawnee, Kansas that have actually banned co-living for more than 3 unrelated adults. 

The two couples told me that when they talk about their house with others the first question is usually: is the house a duplex? It’s not - it’s a traditional single family home. 

Deborah: When you walk in, an open floor plan, kitchen, living room, upstairs, three bedrooms, two bathrooms. We did each want our own bathroom. That was critical. And then in the basement we ended up converting it into basically office space post pandemic. And so Bethany, TJ and Luke all had offices in the basement.

Julia Winston: Because their home ownership looked a little different than other people, they did create some paperwork to formalize what they were trying to do. 

Bethany: So we have like a document that we did get notarized But it's probably not legally binding, but it's like a contract between the four of us. And so in that we had a three year agreement But like we would, you know, we wouldn't buy or sell for three years. 

Julia Winston: Once they closed on the house and had a move in date, they all rushed to get settled in the house. And then on moving day…

Luke: I think Bethany was eight months pregnant.  She was not carrying a lot of boxes in. 

Deborah: When we started talking with TJ and Bethany about buying a house together, they were not yet pregnant, but we knew that they wanted to have kids in the near future, that they were getting ready for that. And so, we knew that was part of equation that we would be buying a house that would have, children in it, and that would have rooms for children in it. And they became pregnant while we were searching.

Julia Winston: When we come back, we hear about co-living with four adults and two kids. 

Julia Winston: When Deborah, Luke, TJ and Bethany all moved into their new house, Bethany was seven months pregnant with her and TJ's daughter, Mary Haley. 

Bethany: it was exciting to move into the house and we were about to have, we felt like we were all about to have a baby, right? And so we were preparing the house for the baby. And so there was a lot of anticipation for that, but none of us had ever had kids. We never lived with a kid. So we didn't know what it would be like, you know, we could guess, but we didn't know what it would be like. 

Julia Winston: Before the baby was born, they all talked about what Luke and Deborah's roles would be: 

Luke: early on, they, they, decided that we would be the kids godparents. We take a vow to be part of their like spiritual upbringing and to see them raised in the faith and to be models and in the faith for them. 

Bethany: Luke and Deborah are there like aunt and uncle. They don't discipline our kids they can like remind them of the rules, right? Which is a role that they are very comfortable in playing. But TJ and I discipline our kids.

Julia Winston: TJ and Bethany had another baby a couple years later, their son, Pax. And the kids actually ended up being a big reason why communal living worked so well for these adults. For TJ and Bethany , it’s easy to see why. They had double the amount of adults on hand to help juggle parenting, work and keeping house.

TJ: Our daughter greatly benefited from spending the first five and a half years of her life With four adults versus two. And just like, yeah, they talk about the 30, 000 words thing or whatever. 

Julia: TJ is referring to research suggesting that kids should be exposed to 30k words per day to improve their language and reading skills. 

TJ: Like she got hers by the time she's like, whatever, she probably got it half twice as quick. 

Bethany: Yes. Yeah. Luke's vocabulary 

TJ: and Luke has, Luke has an amazing vocabulary. E very place she's been like in school or pre preschool or whatever she just like talks to the adults and like, basically has conversations with them. 

Julia Winston: At one point, TJ started a three year MBA program while working full time, with two toddlers. If he and Bethany had lived with only each other, in a city far from family, this could have been incredibly stressful. TJ would have been gone all the time at work and school, and Bethany would have been trying to juggle her job and most of the childcare. Instead...Deborah and Luke stepped up. 

TJ: Like they would go on evening walks with Our daughter, Mary Haley, when she was, you know, two or whatever, and I was away at class. All summer basically, like, Deborah was doing breakfast with them. Like, she was cooking eggs and sausage and, like, they, like, loved it. It was special breakfast.

Bethany: They were like, can you make me some of what you're having?

TJ: And that's just, like, something organic that just happened. When we went into it all, we were like we're not co parenting. Like we're going to try to like have boundaries and, you know. We're not expecting any of this from you guys. Whatever you give is great. But they're just great people. So they 

Bethany: love our kids. They're really generous with their time. The relationships that our kids have with them. It's just really beautiful. They have like, you know, deep relationships with like a bunch of adults that care a lot about them. 

Julia Winston: Even though Luke and Deborah knew they'd be living with kids when they started this arrangement, they were surprised at how much they liked it. 

Deborah: I would not consider myself to be a kid person, but I'm crazy about those kids and like became so attached to those children. I think I was surprised by how much they just captured my heart. The kids were such a joy watching them grow up, watching them learn how to walk and talk and being part of their day to day lives. That was such a joy, such a privilege to be part of their lives. Um, and also that's challenging, you know, the kids, kids are, kids are kids and they're. Messy and loud and they kind of take over the house.

Luke: Deborah's a little bit of a, a little bit of a neat freak, little OCD around crumbs and stuff like that. And the kids know, like, Auntie Deborah doesn't like crumbs. And so Mary Haley, you know, would be sitting at the table and she's like, Deborah, I'm going to sit next to you. But don't worry, I won't get any crumbs. And then you like, look over and she's, you Scraping crumbs off the table to make room for Deborah because yeah, you know, You're like, oh how sweet she's gonna have crumb issues now. Great

Julia Winston: She's, they're, the children are taking on your neuroses and their parents neuroses.

Deborah: That's right, they've got four sets of neuroses to take on 

Julia Winston: One of the things I was most curious about, and I think most people are, is how do the logistics of living like this work? Does it feel like a college house with five roommates and carefully labeled tupperware? How do finances work? How did they divide chores? 

Deborah: we didn't come into it with a strong plan of the logistics and how we would live together. Yeah. But very quickly, we realized that it was just a lot easier if we could share everything basically. So share cooking, share cleaning, we chore chart, um, share groceries. We ended up going on a family phone plan. 

Bethany: we shared all of our groceries and so it wasn't like, Oh, this is your shelf. This is our shelf. We all are committed to tracking the spending and, T. J. and Deborah would settle up at the end of every month about who owed who'd what and they put in the spreadsheet. 

Deborah: It was not a financially driven decision, but at the same time, there were these kind of like wonderful financial implications. Like we had to repair the roof and we had to repair the deck and we had to like, yeah, buy new appliances that you're just splitting that cost. It makes it a lot more manageable. We brought in a house cleaner every couple of weeks and we were splitting that in half. And I don't know, just everything suddenly becomes more manageable when you're splitting with other people. 

Julia Winston: They also found the right roles and tasks for each person. Deborah was the house manager. 

Deborah: I was the one who managed the house inventory And so I always I don't know. It's not um Is that a virtue? It's just actually innate. I just know. She 

Luke: can't help herself.

Deborah: like know everything that's in our house at all times. All 

Luke: of the cans are facing the same direction in the cupboard.

Deborah: I do have OCD tendencies. Yes. 

Luke: we were really good about having a weekly meeting, usually Sunday night, where we would, you know, sit down after the kids went to bed and, um, talk through the logistics, you know, logistics of the week. Who's, you know, who's eating out? What night? What night is TJ cooking? What night is Deborah cooking? Etcetera. That sort of thing. Um, what do we need from the store? And then also the sort of more emotional or relationship aspect of things like what's working, what's not working. 

Bethany: We would always start with like, what's working, not working. And it's just really important to like, for everyone to go around and name something that's not working, especially early on so that when, so you get a lot of practice with like low level conflict. 

Deborah: Those things are pretty minor. It's like, you were on trash this week and you just let it really overflow a couple times, you know, 

Julia Winston: There were challenges too, of course: Luke sometimes struggled with how much noise the kids made. They had to communicate between four busy people. And there were four adults all weighing in on big decisions. Deborah says they developed a tactic that worked well for making decisions: 

Deborah: if you have a strong opinion, voice it. If you don't have an opinion, then don't voice an opinion, let the person with a strong opinion make that decision then. There's no reason to like overly complicated decision. 

Julia Winston: She says that splitting the housework, the cooking, and the costs to maintain a house made living communally very practical. One person was never overwhelmed or carrying the burden because the other three adults picked up the slack somewhere else. But sharing so much of their daily lives also brought them closer. 

Julia Winston: The integrated lives eventually led to a stronger support system for all of them. They had dinner together most nights with the kids, and often hung out together after the kids went to bed. 

Bethany: When you are living with your best friends, you can like talk about at dinner like how much you hate your job. And we can all like put our heads together about what you could do. And you've surrounded yourself with people who love you and care about you and can just encourage you. And see the things in you that you might not see in yourself at that moment, because You're in a low spot. 

TJ: And it doesn't just put all the burden on like one spouse, right? Like it's great to like share that with other people like in the same breath that you're talking to your partner, you're able to share with two other people, right?

Julia Winston: Something that struck all four of them about this experience was the vulnerability of living with other people. You can't hide your emotions or bad days when you live with someone, you just have to let them in to witness all of you. 

Deborah: I can think of several situations where, you know, you walk into the kitchen and someone is crying and sometimes that's someone else and sometimes, you know, that's me. Someone else walks in and I'm just sitting at the kitchen table crying. 

Julia Winston: And they also had a front row seat to each other's habits, marriages, and parenting. 

Deborah: TJ and Bethany are such good parents, and they're so intentional. I think I just learned so much watching them parent. Parenting is so hard, it's so hard to be consistent, to follow through on consequences. Kids will just push all your buttons. And so they, I really admire them for being willing to do that with an audience basically 24 7.

Luke: There was one memorable night where Deborah and I were fighting about something, and it's dinner time, so we all sit down at the dinner table, and Deborah just stops and goes like, T. J. and Bethany, I want you guys to know, Luke and I are fighting right now. And Bethany said, T. J. and I are fighting as well. We all like split up, and I think they went on the front porch, and we went on the back porch, and we all got our fighting out of the way, and then like, came back and had dinner together. But like, that's the kind of thing that you don't get that if you're just having dinner together once a week.

Julia Winston: They lived together for six years, three years longer than they planned. But it did come to an end recently. Earlier this fall, TJ got a job offer in Orlando, where he grew up. He decided to take it, and so he and Bethany moved out of the house in DC and moved to Florida. Now they’re living near his blood-related family, but in a house with just the two of them and their kids. The only life their kids have known is life with Luke and Deborah, so they've all felt a void. 

Bethany: It's hard. It's really hard. Moving from DC to Florida, that was a really big transition, but I think Even in just like our daily rhythms have just been interrupted and part of it is the move, right? but Another big part is that Luke and Deborah aren't here. And so weekly tasks that a household would do, we divided between four people and now there's two, right? When you live with other people, they're more like moments for like connection and, or that is like spread out across a lot of people. And so, yeah, we just, we miss them. We miss them a lot.

Julia Winston: Deborah and Luke have also been struggling with the transition. Their house in DC feels too big for them now. And they want to have more people around, but they know they had something special with TJ and Bethany. 

Deborah: I Think before we lived with TJ and Bethany, we would have said they were really good and close friends, and that we just loved spending time with them. They are such a good time. They're both really, really fun. And I would say after living with them, I would say the same thing there. They were so fun to live with, but I would also say that now it does feel like they're family.

Julia Winston: Recently, Deborah accepted a new job in South Carolina, so she and Luke are leaving DC too. Living closer to TJ and Bethany was actually a factor in deciding to make this move. Soon they'll be just a few hours away from TJ and Bethany in Florida and are excited to see them and the kids more often. And they all said they would love to live with each other again someday. For now, they’ll sell the house they bought together and work out the finances together.  

But all four remain huge advocates of living with your friends.

Bethany: I would just encourage people if they wanted to do this to like have a have a period of discernment where you where everyone involved is really thinking about if this would be a great decision for everyone. And like, what is it? What is it that you're hoping to get out of communal living? And if you have a shared vision and a shared value system and. You, um, you talk, you know, ahead of time how you're going to work through conflict or how you're going to work through money stuff and, um, how you are going to be intentional with your friendships and living in community. And you find that you're on the same page, like do it. It's really beautiful. It's really rewarding. It's so much fun.

Julia Winston: When we come back, we take you from living with your friends to a real life hippie commune. 

Julia Winston: The way that TJ, Bethany, Luke and Deborah created a communal living situation is something a lot of us could replicate. They found an already existing single family home and turned it into a co-living space. There are definitely logistical challenges and financial hurdles in that kind of situation, but it’s the most accessible way to create a more communal day-to-day life based on the way our systems are built in this country. 

But I also wanted to talk to someone who lives in a more official communal living situation.

Adder Oaks: I'm Adder Oaks. I'm 36 years old and I live at Twin Oaks Community in Central Virginia. 

Julia Winston: Twin Oaks is an intentional community where 100 people live in 6 large houses on farmland. Adder has lived there for 14 years. It was started in the 60s and might be what you picture when you hear the word “commune.” 

Adder Oaks: I think a lot of people that come to Twin Oaks come because they're connected to alternative culture in some way. They're sort of groovy and weird and, and seek out, uh, community living because they have some connection to it. 

Julia Winston: The community is self sufficient- they run multiple businesses for income and share their profits among the community members. Adder joined when he was 22 after graduating from college while he was searching for a job and living with his parents. 

Adder Oaks: I Googled one day, do hippie communes still exist? and I found it. I wanted some place where I would show up and they'd say, here, we've got work to do. All your needs are taken care of. I went and did our three week visit. And I just fell in love. I think during that, that three weeks, I finally got a call back about a computer programming job. And I was just like, no, thanks. I think I know what I'm doing.

Julia Winston: tell me about Twin Oaks, like paint a picture for us of Twin Oaks. What is Twin Oaks? How does it work? 

Adder Oaks: So the way Twin Oaks works is you come there, you work your work quota, which is about 40 hours a week, you know, including the work business work and domestic work, right? Taking care of the kids, cleaning the house, doing the dishes, working in our communal garden. You do your work and then the community takes care of all of your physical needs, right?

We share all of our income, our businesses are owned by the community, and then you have a place to live, you have food, you have health care, you've got your personal spending money. So that's the sort of economic unity. And then furthermore, we, we live close together. We live in shared houses, you know, for the hundred or so of us, we live in six different houses. 15 to 20 people in a house. And, and we, yeah, we do a lot together, right? Every day, lunch and dinner are communal meals. We give our labor credits for people to make those for us. And then we all just get to go and eat lunch, eat dinner together, you know, celebrate holidays and just live a lot more closely.

Julia Winston: Would you describe yourself as a hippie and how would you describe the other people that live at Twin Oaks?

Adder Oaks: My name Adder Oaks, it's not the name that my parents gave me, uh, when I was a kid. It was kind of my, the name that I took on while living at Twin Oaks, which is certainly not something like we as a community do institutionally, but lots of people like to take on a new name, sort of living in a new lifestyle.

So I often describe that as my hippie name, right? but I don't really think of myself as a hippie. I don't spend any time gardening. I like listening to our dance music, but whenever we have our Grateful Dead cover band, I'm like, not that interested. My actual day to day life, it's pretty normie in a lot of ways. I like to read. I like to play board games. These are not the most hippie, hippie things. But! The most valuable thing that I think we can take from the hippie movement, I'm doing air quotes here, is, uh, is that living together is valuable.

It's valuable socially because it's really energizing to live around people and it really helps train oneself in compassion and caring and social skills. And then of course it's valuable economically, like it just is more efficient, in terms of resource uses. When we live together in a single house or we have a handful of cars that we share among a hundred people. yeah, that's just so valuable. 

Julia Winston: Twin Oaks owns a variety of businesses to earn income. For a long time they made and sold hammocks, then tofu production became their main income, and now it's selling seeds. 

Julia Winston: So does everybody make the same amount of money?

Adder Oaks: No. So Twin Oaks I think is one of the few communities that has survived because we do make sure that everyone is working and is contributing to the community. Uh, but we have this egalitarian ethos, right? We take from each according to their ability to each according to their need. So some people make more money than others. I mean, oftentimes it's not, you know, it's not even seen because it is working in these community owned businesses and they're just doing what needs to get done to make those businesses happen. But we also have one guy that does software engineering part time on contract and. Yeah, he makes a lot of money, um, more so than, than we have, say, Weaving Hammocks.

Julia Winston: Yeah, the resource sharing is a really interesting angle at looking at value, like value exchange. What about retirement? This is something a lot of people worry about. How does retirement work at Twin Oaks? 

Adder Oaks: We have this labor credit system throughout the working years of a member. And so we offer pension in the form of labor credits. So rather than, you know, working until you're 65 and then stopping, the idea is starting when you're 50, you can slowly reduce your, your work quota. sometimes we have members that get to a point where they can't work and by fiat, we just say, we're taking you off the labor system. And as long as you remain a member, your needs are going to be taken care of. It is challenging, I think, for people who, put a significant portion of their life into Twin Oaks and want to leave in older age because we don't, you know, except for small loans of a few thousand dollars to help people get going, we don't give people money to leave the community with. So Twin Oaks is a great place to retire, but it's not a great place to build a retirement fund to take somewhere else. Like that just won't happen.

Julia Winston: Adder joined Twin Oaks when he was 22. In the 14 years he's lived there, he met his partner and became a father. He and his family live in one of the houses on the property, with their “small living group” or SLG. Their SLG is eight adults and 4 kids. 

Julia Winston: What is your SLG look like? And what is your room like?

Adder Oaks: we've got a couple hallways with almost dormitory style rooms. Um, but then, you know, a shared living room and kitchen, we kind of have an open, open floor plan for the living room and kitchen area. Because this building was built specifically with having rambunctious kids, uh, in mind. You know, the idea was this would be one of our places that is especially conducive to raising kids. I have a wing where myself, my partner, our two kids, we all live right next to each other. We each have our own rooms there.

Julia Winston: So each individual has their own room, even married couples.

Adder Oaks: yeah, yeah, totally. This is really important. I think part of our story and intention about communal living is that, it helps curb the oppression of traditional living structures, as someone who has, been partnered for a decade now and raising two kids together, I do have a lot of appreciation for the value of a nuclear family unit, right?

But we also want to make sure that if someone is in a relationship that isn't working for them, they have their own room to go to, right? They can go to their own place and, and be apart and have their own resources and their own rights. And that couples aren't economically dependent on just each other. We're, economically dependent on the whole community.

Julia Winston: Twin Oaks also looks at parenting a little differently. Adults who want to have kids have to go through a community process first. 

Adder Oaks: This is something that a lot of people find shocking. This is not really an exercise in trying to control people's reproduction. It's really just a process to make sure that Parents go through the steps of thinking carefully about their decision to have kids, because we raise the kids. The community is responsible for those kids and we really do a lot. We put a lot of resources into them, you know, partly money, but mostly time. We really value childcare as work, so we want to make sure that Yeah, that parents are coming in with open eyes and seeing what it's going to be like to raise a kid in community. 

Julia Winston: And he's seen that the community mindset around raising kids has not only helped him, but also his kids. 

Adder Oaks: I think the most enjoyable parts have been the been watching my kids be happy. They just have an amazing life here. It's amazing how much freedom they get and how safe it feels for them to just, run off and play. There are sort of always adults around, but with kids sort of having, yeah, just having a lot of freedom. I think raising kids is also a challenge in community. You know, mostly I think to be a parent in community, you need a little bit of a thick skin. because other people are judging you, right? They see how you decide to parent. and every time your kid has a tantrum, you're like, Oh, like, what does everyone think right now? or the opposite. If you're hard and disciplining your kids firmly and you wonder. Oh, do the other sort of hippie dippie parents judge me for this? Yeah, it is a challenge parenting publicly.

Julia Winston: Wow. Parenting publicly. That is quite a concept. Yeah. I guess that's one experience of being so separated in these single family units that's for better and for worse. People can't see how you're parenting. 

Adder Oaks: I think that is one of the main reasons I like I am here and I am committed to being a longterm member is that it just, it just makes parenting so much easier. I imagine that it's a lot easier than raising kids in the mainstream. 

Julia Winston: Clearly, there are many practical benefits to living communally. Mainstream society doesn’t want us to. Our systems and stigmas don’t incentivize living this way, for all the reasons Kristen Ghodsee laid out in Part 1: like tax breaks for married people, housing designed for smaller groups and keeping the consumer economy going, one fridge at a time. You have to really want to live communally to do it, so it’s considered fringe. But the people I’ve met who do choose to live communally seem pretty, well, normal.

Deborah: I don't like being strange. I You know, like, I'm pretty conventional.

Adder Oaks: My actual day to day life, it's pretty normie in a lot of ways. I like to read. I like to play board games.

Julia Winston: The party doesn’t have to end with college when it comes to communal living. And as we can see, it’s not just about a party or practicality. What I gathered from all our guests, is that living with others is enriching. 

Adder: It certainly made my life better. I have a very rich, fulfilling life. You know, the work that I do, you know, even say the income work that's serving other people I see very locally how it benefits those around me. I feel very, very connected to my day to day work. I feel energized by having you know, having a bunch of interested, energetic, intelligent people around me all the time.

Julia Winston: I know I want to do it again… Maybe living communally is just the medicine we need to heal our epidemic of loneliness and isolation.