Maggie:
Hey everyone. I’m so delighted to welcome you to today’s episode is going to be a very special one. But before we get started, I wanted to talk a little bit about beginnings and endings. This is the first podcast that I’m recording. Since I closed my free group, The Better Marriage Club, I ran that group for three years and I loved running it. And as I made the three-year plans for my life coaching company, moving forward, I realized it was no longer the best place to invest my time. And even though it was absolutely the right choice, I still felt sadness and grief over the end of something that I loved. And I think that in our society, that is something we don’t really talk about often or at all. So I wanted to make sure to talk about it today, which is when we make a change in our life, even then that change is good for us, we can still feel sad and miss that thing we’re saying goodbye to, and that it’s totally normal. And part of the process of living.
Maggie:
So as we live in this COVID affected world, and there are so many things to miss and grieve over, and they seem really small in the big scheme of all the world problems that we’re all facing. I just want to be the person in your head that says, if you miss getting your nails done or going to the movies or seeing your coworkers during a coffee break or anything like that, it is okay to miss that. It’s okay to be sad about it. It’s okay. That it’s small and simple. And if it’s meaningful to you, it’s okay to miss it. And to let that sadness be there and to let it be there until it’s run its course. I just really know there’s someone who needs to hear that today. And I wanted to start with that. Okay. So that being said today, we’re going to talk about how to be married to someone with a mental health issue. And we’re going to talk about that with Dr. Michelle Pierce. And I knew I wanted to talk about this topic for my listeners and my clients. And I knew I wanted to have a deep and thoughtful conversation about it with another psychology professional. And the minute I knew that I wanted to talk about it. I knew I wanted to talk about it with Michelle. So I want to introduce her to you.
Maggie:
She is a clinical psychologist and professor in the graduate school at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She’s an adjunct assistant professor and the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center. She is a board-certified health and wellness coach. She’s an author, a researcher, a facilitator on writing for wellness. You know, we love journaling at the Marriage Life Coach Podcast. And Michelle got her Ph.D. at Yale and then completed two post-doctoral fellowships at Duke University Medical Center. But above all those things, she is an amazing person. And I know you’re going to love spending some time with her today and she is the author of a fabulous new book. It’s called Night Bloomers and it’s 10 principles for thriving in adversity. We’re going to link to that book in the show notes so you can order your copies and make sure to check those out. But first, we’re going to have a great conversation about how to support our partners when they have a mental health issue. Welcome, Michelle.
Michelle:
Thank you, Maggie.
Maggie:
I am so glad to have you here and I just want to dive right in. So one of the things that I see my coaching practice is, you know when a woman comes to me who wants to have a better marriage, it’s because she loves her husband. She wants things to work, but sometimes she doesn’t know how to approach certain things. And one thing that can be really challenging is when your spouse has a mental issue that you don’t have, right? So even if we’re two partners and we both have anxiety sometimes, or we both have moments of depression, we have this moment that we have it in common and we can have a shared language or experience around it. But when one of us has that and one of us doesn’t, that becomes really challenging. So that’s kind of what I see on my side of things. And sometimes if we’ve never had that mental issue, it’s hard to even identify what’s even going on. Right. We think, Oh, is it PTSD? Is it something else? All that. So how can we know? It looks sort of in general terms obviously, but what are some pointers you can give us to look for to know if my spouse is having a mental health issue?
Michelle:
Sure. So I think there are two main things you could do. And the first is you’re going to notice a difference in your spouse’s baseline. So that’s their normal way of thinking, behaving, speaking, showing up in the relationship. So something has shifted and that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a mental health problem. It could be a medical issue. It could be a stressor in their lives, but it’s just a little red flag that, Hey, something’s different. This could be a mental health issue. And then the second thing is really to know the warning signs of mental health disorders. So that might be a change in mood. It could be an increase or decrease in appetite, change in sleep. There’s often a change in functioning. So they’re not doing as well, maybe at work or school or in the relationship, there might be a logical thinking or strange behavior. The one or two of those things doesn’t necessarily mean again, a mental health disorder, but you start to see a couple of those things over time. That’s a good indication that an evaluation with a mental health professional would be helpful. One caveat here is if they’re suicidal thinking or there’s some sort of plans or they’re hurting someone else, you want to get someone right to the hospital if that’s what’s happening.
Maggie:
Yeah. That totally makes sense. Absolutely. If they’re like imminent danger of some kind either to themselves or to someone else, that’s an immediate like hospital, we figure it out later. It’s like hospital first, ask questions later kind of thing. Now, why do you think support from me, the spouse in this case for the example is so critical and how would you define like my role as the spouse?
Michelle:
Yeah. So, I mean, it’s really hard to go through a mental health disorder and it’s hard to watch your loved one, go through that as well. And unfortunately, there’s still so much stigma around mental health, it’s very different than physical health. So your support as a spouse, it doesn’t guarantee your recovery, but it certainly helps with it. And I think because it helps decrease that stigma and decrease that shame so that the loved one can reach out for that support or admit that they need some help and reach out for that. So I think for those reasons, your support is really important.
Maggie:
And when you think about someone who may have, let’s say they have a warning sign or a combination of these warning signs, they don’t have a diagnosis or anything like that yet when your spouse is resistant to get help, what do you do?
Michelle:
Yeah. That’s tough. So one of the interesting things to know is that the same part of your brain that’s involved with self-awareness and insight can be the same part of the brain that’s impacted by mental illness. So when you have a loved one, who’s saying I’m not sick. I’m not having problems. That really might be their reality, even though it’s not your reality. So, Dr. Amador, he’s written a fabulous book, it’s an ebook it’s free online. The title is I’m Not Sick I Don’t Need Help. He outlines this principle, this finding from the research. And he has this acronym called LEAP. Really a way to approach the issue with your loved one, that you’re not trying to convince them that they have a mental health problem, trying to help them see from their perspective why they might want to reach out for treatment.
Michelle:
A lovely reframe that he does now, again, if it’s an emergency situation, your role is, as best is to get them to the hospital, there is no state something called involuntary commitments where someone for about 72 hours without their permission. And if someone’s suicidal, I mean, that’s saving their life, right? One thing that you can do. And the other thing I find for people who are resisting mental health help, sometimes there’s barriers in the way. So maybe not denying that they have a problem, see that they’re so depressed, that just finding a local therapist, who’s in-network with their insurance, who has openings just feels so overwhelming that they don’t know where to start. So again, like your support as a spouse could be, let me make those phone calls. Let me find someone and decrease that barrier for you.
Maggie:
I think it’s important. Like a couple of the things that I teach all the time is just acceptance for what’s happening right now. So as if this was a wife who had a partner who had this situation, it’s like accepting that this is what it is and seeing how much the partner wants or doesn’t want the help if their life isn’t an immediate danger. And they’re like, I don’t want help right now. It’s like, okay, can we be an acceptance that my partner may have this issue? They may have anxiety or depression, and I’m just married to a person that has anxiety. And that’s how it’s going to flow. Like that level of just accepting that this is my new situation, which maybe wasn’t the situation before maybe there was a triggering event or something like that. And it’s like, practicing acceptance becomes really important.
Michelle:
That’s true. I would add to acceptance, showing curiosity, and expressing concern. So for expressing concern, those are really your I statements. I’m concerned because I’m noticing that and then fill in the blank with very specific things. You’re spending a lot more time in bed or you’re playing video games all night long or you’re not sleeping or whatever it is that you’re noticing. Like I’m concerned about that. And then showing curiosity. Like, are you noticing a difference. What’s going on for you and opening that dialogue with them? So it’s not a debate, right? It’s really, let’s have a dialogue about this and see where you’re at.
Maggie:
And I love that you said video games cause my husband is a gamer and this is something we’ve talked about a lot. And I wanted to because I know maybe people who listen to this podcast, we sometimes are like over analyzers of things. So I want to be clear that your husband or your wife, if you’re married to a woman, could be playing a video game for five hours and there could be nothing wrong with them at all. Right. I want to just speak to that for a minute too, because sometimes we think, well, they shouldn’t want to do that. Right? They shouldn’t want this particular hobby, whichever hobby we don’t agree with for whatever reason. Gaming tends to be one that like, I am not a gamer.
Maggie:
So I don’t have, I don’t have that shared experience with my husband, but I have other things I love to do. So it’s like I could watch five hours of Oprah and have a great time. Right. Think of the latitude for that. So one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is also to really speak to there’s a moment to be concerned, to express concern, to be curious, to see what’s happening. And then there’s a moment to also be like, maybe this isn’t it. And this is just something that they love to do. And they’re really okay. Or it may be, they had a huge project at work and now they’re sleeping a little more. But when that project was over now they’ve gotten their rest and they’re fine. So there’s this sort of nuance that I also want to speak to because I think sometimes we also overanalyze and then we give our partners like 54 things and they don’t have, what do you think about that?
Michelle:
True, So when we’re diagnosing mental health disorders, there are two things that we’re really looking for. One is that these symptoms are causing distress. One, is it causing distress specifically to the client, right? Is it causing significant Problems in functioning? And that again, school work, home life, social relationships. So if you gave me an example, rather than seem like it’s causing him distress to play video games for five hours, but the change in functioning could be instead of going to work, he’s playing video games or, you know, instead of engaging the relationship, he’s playing video games now seven nights a week. Right? So those two things are when we would become concerned.
Maggie:
Yeah. I love that. I see it as if the behavior is exacerbated, right? It’s like a couple of hours of watching Oprah shows back to back is fine. If I stopped recording the podcast no longer, I’m showing up for my client calls, something’s wrong. Right. So it’s also that sort of like how often and how intense is the behavior. Right. Okay. As the spouse of someone who has a mental issue, like if someone’s listening to us and they say, okay, I understand now what are some things to look for? How do I express concern? What are some really clear don’ts that we should like not do? And that you kind of see sometimes people do when they shouldn’t.
Michelle:
Yeah. So we don’t want to deny there’s a problem. We don’t want to be shaming to contribute to that stigma. We also don’t want to fall into the role of fixer or savior. So I know we had talked to like here, we really need to support yourself. Yes. And you know, no matter how much you love someone, you can’t save them. And that is a really hard truth to sit with. Along with that is we don’t want to enable them. I think this really applies to things like addictions. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is set a very strong boundary and have the loved one take responsibility for what’s going on in their life. So I find it’s a fine balance and I want to be supportive of you, but I also don’t want to enable or try to be your savior.
Maggie:
Yeah. I actually ended up talking about that in a wide range of context and a lot of different situations with my clients, the idea of like how much help is good help. And when does the help become bad help? Right. Right. And it’s like, first of all, unwanted help. Right. If they’re like, I don’t want your help. That’s bad help. That’s like one of them. And then it’s like, sometimes we need to take a step back. And I was reading a quote online that said, I think it was from Henry Cloud who has a great book on boundaries and talks about boundaries all the time. And he said, you know, it is very loving to let someone experience the consequences of their actions. Right. So when, if we’re constantly removing consequences from someone, right. And in this case, we talk about marriage. So we’re talking about husbands and wives, but they could be a son, a daughter, a cousin, a family member. We know we’ve all had that moment where we’ve we’re, we’re like, Oh, let me remove this consequence from this person. And we think it’s coming from this loving place of caring for them. But sometimes the most loving thing is to allow them to experience the consequences of that action.
Michelle:
We can really handicap people if we don’t let them experience that.
Maggie:
Yeah. And it becomes the opposite, of love. Right? It’s like a lot of times what I see also is like, Oh, the reason that I want to remove the consequences so that I feel better. Right. And it’s like, you know, I’m a type-A person. I know what that’s like. I have done the things that I coach on. It’s like, Oh, but is this really in the highest service to this person, right? Now, sometimes it is very challenging when you have a spouse and say that there is a genuine mental health issue and you’re trying to help this person. And sometimes as you know, when we have one mental health situation, they often feed off each other. So you might have someone who has a lot of anxiousness and then it has a depressive moment or things where they start sort of compounding in a way. And I’m the spouse. And I love this person and I want to help them, but I also need to be taking care of myself. So what are some of the things I should keep in mind to take care of myself?
Michelle:
Yeah. Self-care is still important. I mean, there’s better in shape. We are physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. We are to be able to reach out and help our loved one. So the first thing I would offer is you may need individual counseling for yourself. Living with someone with a mental illness is stressful and you can feel frustrated and you can feel scared. And you have all these conflicting feelings that are not helpful to share with your spouse. Having this objective other person, this safe space to be able to talk about those things is a really important part of self-care. The other thing I would offer is support groups, there are lots of support groups for family members who experienced mental illness. And so I’ll give you two ideas. NAMI stands for National Alliance on Mental Illness, the other is Mental Health America. They have great support groups, including online groups during COVID, that would be helpful. And then the third thing really, you know, pace yourself and acknowledge your limits. Know when you need a break, know when you need to ask for help knowing when you need to say no.
Maggie:
And it’s almost like you need to build your awareness to a deeper level that maybe if you didn’t have a spouse that had this issue, you could sort of roll along and sort of being messy about it. And it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t affect you as much, but because you have this situation, it’s like, it’s a higher degree of self-awareness to say, Oh, have I been nourishing myself both spiritually, physically, emotionally, intellectually so that I can support this person. Yeah. So important. And one of the things I wanted to talk about as we were talking at the beginning of the episode about sadness and sort of the things we missed during COVID, which is, you know, we’re sort of all having this heightened experience together, which is definitely a stressor that affects us all in different ways.
Maggie:
And I’ve thought a lot about one of the things I see with clients is we have this moment where we realize things are going to be different with our spouse, whatever it is that is the situation we’re facing. And suddenly we have this realization that our marriage isn’t going to be what we thought it was, the picture we had in our mind. It’s kind of like when we think about 2020, we’re recording this in 2020 is like what we thought 2020 was going to be and what it actually is, right? There’s this grief around it’s not going to be what I thought it was going to be. And I find that we don’t talk about that enough, like grieving the marriage we thought we were going to have, and then experiencing that so that we can then have the marriage we could have with our partner. Like it could still be amazing. You can still have a thriving, loving relationship with someone with a mental illness, just like you could have a thriving, loving relationship with someone that has a physical illness. And so in night bloomers, you talk about grieving before growing. So can you share a little bit about that?
Michelle:
Yeah, that’s for sure. I think this is so important. So the principles for Blooming in The Dark in the book, you know, you really started out with you’re setting this intention that I want to be a night bloomer. And I can explain that for your listeners in a moment, but the next one in the order, this is so important is grieving before growing. And there’s this concept called toxic positivity. And I hear a lot of that going around in 2020. You know, this is our time and, you know, we should take on new hobbies and you become all you’re supposed to be. And we forget how hard it is to be in the dark. Having a loved one with a mental illness is a type of darkness, a dark place to be. And it’s important to take all the time you need to mourn whatever that loss is. And that happens before you’re able to do the steps and enable you to be able to grow. I think of it like a seed that’s planted in the earth and it has to break open first. The grieving is really that breaking open. It’s still painful, but it’s a necessary step to be able to grow and eventually to bloom.
Maggie:
And what I find is, and I’ll use myself as an example. So I’m like this sort of type a super focused, you know, very driven person. And I like want to get to the next thing, right? Obviously in my life coaching and then like understanding how the brain and the body heals. I have understood that you cannot get to the next thing without going through the thing you’re in right now which is what I try to teach everyone. But the tendency to want to get to the next thing before we just wait, this is where we are. Yeah. So when I’m coaching, I often tell my clients just slow down, just like literally slow down, breathe. This is where we are. This is what happened. Right. And then we can go and see, okay, what we want to create. Right. I think that that’s so, so important.
Michelle:
I do, I do too. And it is like I said, it’s a hard place to be because we’re all going for the part where you’re thriving and the part where boom and things are great. And we forget, it takes a lot of time just like going to the gym. It takes A lot of time at the gym before you get to where that tank top and have those great arm muscles and feel great about it. And so this is the same principle.
Maggie:
Yeah. If it takes a minute, it’s okay. It’s normal. And it’s actually a good thing. Right. I think that’s so, so important for people to realize. And then thinking about something that I have seen a common fear that people have, let’s say your spouse has depression and you’re sad about it. And you’re listening to us talking and you’re like, Oh, okay. It’s okay for me to be sad about it. You know, but I’m afraid it will consume me. What would you say to that?
Michelle:
The spouse is afraid the sadness is going to consume them?
Maggie:
They’re seeing their partner, you know, battling depression or going through this very difficult moment. And it’s almost like a puppet show, right. And this sort of type a driven person. I get the kids to school. I do the things I make sure everything’s in order. And it’s like, if I pause to feel my sadness, all of that is going to the fear. I’m not saying that all of that is gonna go away. But the fear that I see in my clients, which we kind of talk it through and like my approach to that is we need to feel it and we’ll figure it out as we go along if something drops because you pause to feel it, it’s because it needed to.
Michelle:
Right. Right. My clients do the same thing. They’re afraid if, I actually feel this. I’ll never get out of it. And the truth is, if you don’t feel it, you will always have it in you, you know, it’s stored, it’s going to come out in other ways, likely unhealthy ways. So we need to feel it. The other thing I tell my clients is that there is a beginning, a middle, and the end. And when you’re in the dark when you’re in a time of suffering, you’re in the middle of your story, there is an end that’s coming. But all the action happens in the middle, but all of the kind of darkness of, I don’t know what’s going to happen next. And this just feels like it’s going to be like this forever. That’s what’s happening in the middle. So sometimes it’s helpful to have that outside person, whether you as a coach, listen, I’ve watched so many people down this path that you’re in the middle, I promise you an end is coming, you’re just in the middle right now.
Maggie:
Yeah. And that ambiguity of not knowing how the middle is going to turn and learning the resilience. So we both do cognitive-behavioral tools that we use when we’re working with our clients in different ways. And it’s like, wait, the middle is cloudy. It’s like a cloudy day. The sun will still come out. The sun is still there, even though you don’t see it and hear, take this umbrella, right. Walk through it today, get to where you’re going. And then the sun will still come out. Right? Yeah.
Maggie:
I think that’s so, so, so important. So, you know, I talk about perspective all the time on the podcast and how important it is to think about our thinking, to think about how we’re looking at things, the meanings that we’re making. What do you think is a perspective that someone who is trying to support their spouse during a difficult or challenging time, maybe they have a flare-up like maybe it’s someone who like, has your anxiety sort of managed or has their situation kind of, you know, they’re functioning, but something happens, right. A parent passes away, a pandemic comes, a job is lost. And suddenly they have a flare-up of this thing. What’s the perspective that you find really useful when you’re trying to support a spouse through something like,
Michelle:
Yeah. I love your focus on perspective. And I’ll tell you a very hopeful perspective that I sort of came to when I went through my divorce in 2013, the perspective of a night bloomer, I can share with you. So I was about a week into that, my separation, and I got this text message from my friend. It was this beautiful flower pink flower. And the text message said night, blooming, cactus. I’ve cared for this cactus for years. And it finally bloomed last night, I paused and had a thought that what, like there are flowers that bloom in the dark? And then my second thought was that there are flowers that require the dark to bloom. And then my third thought was, Oh my goodness. Like, I think there are people who require the dark to bloom and I’m one of them, I’m a night bloomer.
Michelle:
And I realized that my greatest growth and transformation has always happened through a period of darkness and loss and suffering. I can’t say I like that. That’s true. It’s true. For a lot of us. I think there are a lot of us night bloomers out there. And that doesn’t mean that when we go through these difficult times, transformation is guaranteed a lot of intention and determination and perseverance, but it is a possibility. And this helped me so much to frame my own process through the divorce.
Michelle:
I decided if I have to go through this, I am going to be a better woman at the end of this, because you’re like, when you invest your money in the stock market, you’re not going for a zero return rate. Like I want to get back to normal. That’s the year of all those feelings, just to get back to where I was. I’m like, I want a good return on my investment. I want to be more than, yeah. So this idea of blooming in the dark I’m saying to people, Listen, when you’re going through a really tough time, it is awful, you are going to grieve before you grow. But the hope here is that if you do these certain things, you could actually end up in a place that you could not have gotten to without the darkness.
Maggie:
It’s so powerful. I love that much. You end up in a place that you could not have gotten to without the darkness. I absolutely love that perspective. And that’s what I see sometimes. I’m thinking about a couple of clients where there was infidelity in their relationship. And it’s kind of like, nobody wants that, right? Unless you’re in an open marriage where you’ve agreed to have that like nobody actually wants that. And yet it is often the catalyst that brings a couple closer than they’ve ever been and completely change the trajectory of their relationship. And is that blooming in the dark it’s like, had we not had that dark moment that propelled us to get really real about what are our values? What do we care about? What kind of life do we want to live? You know, what kind of relationship do we want to have? They sort of would have been on autopilot without that. And it actually made the relationship better. Even though no one would say, Oh, let me go have some terrible thing happen to me.
Michelle:
Exactly. Yeah. Growth is intentional. Growth doesn’t just happen. It takes intention and effort. And so that’s what those couples are doing.
Maggie:
Exactly. And I love thinking, one of the things I teach my clients is you can have breakdowns that lead to breakthroughs, or you can have breakdowns that lead to more disconnection. And you get to choose what kind of breakdowns you have. Right. The breakdowns still might suck. That’s, that’s just what it is. But you get to choose. Is this going to make you more disconnected? How do you want to show up for it? Or is this an opportunity to draw closer together and to make your union even stronger? Yeah.
Maggie:
So you told us a little bit about a night bloomer. You mentioned earlier that there’s a step one in the book, the night-blooming, the book is called Night Bloomers. Right? Right. Okay. So in Night Bloomers, step one is choosing this identity and I love doing identity work. We do this often as like when they talk about the five-star marriage, that’s like the identity, you can choose for your marriage. You can choose a five star. You can choose a motel. What do you want? Right. So tell us a little bit about the identity in step one.
Michelle:
Sure. So that’s really setting an intention, an intention for who you want to be through this process. Right? So one of my intentions had been, I want to be a woman who loves much and love, well, I want to be more courageous in my life. I want to take more risks. I want to be a better friend. And so I kind of came up with a list, with my blooming in the dark list. This is the woman that I would be so proud to say I am, and this is what I’m working towards the next year or whatever it might be.
Maggie:
Yeah. I love that so much. That’s so good. I think that obviously, your book is for anyone who’s going through any adversity of any kind, but it’s really perfect if you do have a spouse is going through a mental issue. This could be like on your bedstand to give you comfort and to give you hope because it kind of like, I kind of have two thoughts about hope. Sometimes hope is good, but sometimes hope without a plan is not enough. It’s counterproductive. I’d rather that you have a practical application then hope. But this book, I just feel like it would be like that close friend. You could just have on your nightstand that when you’re trying to figure out, it’s kind of like your spouse might be going through a night-blooming of their own, but because they’re the closest person to you, even if you’re not going through that night, blooming suddenly you are there too.
Michelle:
I wrote this book because it’s truthfully the book that I needed when I went through my own blooming process and I wanted to provide all the tools. And then based on what I know on psychology and mental health and resilience, I want it all in one book. Yes. Very laid out practicals short chapters. When you’re in grief, you don’t have, you know, the reading span for long chapters. I wanted it to be really doable for someone who’s in the middle of the dark would be like you said, like the companion that walks them through.
Maggie:
Yeah. I love that so much. So well, we will have Michelle back just to talk about the book. So stay tuned for that. Tell me a little bit about, you already mentioned some resources to support. It’s like looking for a group and look for, you know, someone who can help guide you, whether it’s coach therapist, is there any other resources that you want us to be aware of if your spouse is going through a mental health issue?
Michelle:
Yeah. So just to reiterate that the NAMI national Alliance of Mental Illness, Mental Health, America, there’s a depression and bipolar support alliance. The National Institute of Mental Health is another good one. If you were looking for information to learn more about your spouse’s illness, whether there’s treatment involved, what are the expectations, and for support groups? And then a couple of books that I think are must-haves are When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron and Emotional Agility by Susan David.
Maggie:
Oh my goodness. I totally have a crush on Susan David. Michelle, and I will talk behind the scenes about why Susan David is awesome. And I’m going to ask Michelle to send us the links for the places she just mentioned. So we can include that in the show notes. So we’ll have that. So don’t worry about rushing to get a pencil and all the things we will have that in the show notes, that’ll be at maggiereyes.com and you’ll have everything listed there. So one of the things I started doing with my guests is I pick a fun question for the questions for couples journal and it’s at random. So nobody knows what I’m going to ask. I don’t know what I’m going to ask. And this is what I came upon as I was going through the pages and I think it’s a fun way to end sort of a deep and serious episode, which is what is your favorite sexy or romantic movie?
Michelle:
Oh boy, Dirty Dancing. Funny story. So I came from a very conservative family and I was in grade five. When I watched this movie, I snuck it at my best friend’s house. To this day my mom doesn’t know I watched it. And I can remember watching being like, this is amazing. Like, I didn’t know. I didn’t know this was out there.
Maggie:
Yeah, but you can actually dance this way. Right? That is so fun. I love it so much. Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap up today, Michelle?
Michelle:
Yeah. I think just a couple of thoughts and endings. You know, when your spouse is suffering, you’re both suffering. So to approach this, as we’ve been talking as a team and we talked about, you know, really needing to take care of yourself, reaching out for support. Whether from someone like you, you know coaching, a mental health professional, and knowing that part of self-care is that your perspective really matters. Remembering that you might be a night bloomer, and this might really be your chance to bloom in a dark. And finally, if you or your spouse needs help, please reach out to someone and because neither of you has to do this alone.
Maggie:
I think it’s so important. And one of the things I learned in running The Better Marriage Club that I was mentioning, just closed is how many people need community, right? We need a community. We need each other. We need places that feel like safe spaces, where we can talk and then we can share. And there are places online now that we’re in this very sort of lockdown chapter of our history as a planet, but both at a professional level. And just in having a friend to listen, right. Is so important. So it’s like, however, you reach out, reach out. And all of us go through night blooms. not all of us are night bloomers, but all of us go through night blooms. So it’s also important to remember when you hear people like Michelle and me talking and we’re like thriving and all these things we have had the dark nights of the soul.
Maggie:
We have gone through all of those things. Right. And we want to talk and have these conversations. So you know that it’s okay to have those moments. And like you said earlier, there’s a middle, there’s an end. You keep walking. So yeah. Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you, Michelle. It is such an honor and a pleasure and a delight to have you on. Thank you for your beautiful book that I know is going to bless so many people it’s called Night Bloomers. Absolutely. You must get that book and we’ll link to it in the show notes too. So thank you for being here.
Michelle:
Thank you, Maggie. Such a pleasure being with you.