Catherine: Welcome to Backward Sweater, where I spill the tea about me and invite others to the room. In this episode, we're going to talk about God, Google, and my new found faith.

Singer: You mean to tell me it's been on backwards the whole time?

Catherine: Hey there, I'm Catherine. I'm a 59-year-old mother of seven and a Gigi to three. My journey has been messy, meaningful, and full of pivots. But everything changed when I shifted my perspective. When I turned my sweater around, this is a podcast where you'll join me on the never-ending journey of entertaining the what-ifs, finding that voice that had been silent, and breaking free from limitations, and finally living authentically with no itchy tag. This is where I'll spill the tea about me, and I'll invite others to the room.

Welcome to Backward Sweater.

(Music - Katie Henry, "Bad Boys")

Singer: I take a few steps forward, maybe one too sad. I've got a backwards sweater, and it finally fits right.

Catherine: Hey, everyone. Welcome. You know, I was thinking about love. And as I've talked about these things in the last couple episodes, I think about all the different things that I've been faced with in my life. And love is an interesting topic, because it's kind of been the epicenter of my life and what's driven me. And I think about the word agape love. And agape love is the kind of love that doesn't really require anything in return. And that's really the only love that I've been comfortable with in my life. So I think that in all of my relationships and my family, I've just relied on the beauty of that word, and almost to a fault. One of the ways that I knew that there was a God was through my kids and through that agape love that I felt for them, that I didn't really expect anything from them, that I could just give to them without expecting anything in return, because I was flawed. I had flaws as a human being. And I was still capable of loving. So I knew that there must be a God, because I was not capable of that. I also thought about love in terms of when people would say, I love you, and then they would treat you badly. So there's more on that later. I remember growing up, I would watch people relating to each other, or even currently watch people interacting and relating to each other, and how they seemed so comfortable and so effortless in their relationship. So like one story I was thinking about the other day is I saw this woman on social media, and she was out for a morning run. If you have to train for a marathon, you have to do long runs. And she was on her morning run, her 22 mile run, and she shit her pants.

And what does this have to do with love? Because she called her husband, or her boyfriend, or whatever, to come and get her. And as I watched that, I was thinking, well, I would find every reason to figure out how I was going to rectify this situation without anybody knowing, because that would embarrass me. And I realized that that has a direct correlation to me not allowing people to love me, or being able to be loved and not be perfect. So a pattern emerged there when I realized that she called her husband, and he had towels on the seats of the truck, and he greeted her with a towel to wrap around her. I'm like, well, wait a second. He still loves you?

I would have probably broke up with you if he would have called me and told me that you shit your pants on around and be like, ghosting you, not really, but maybe not, I don't know. But I was thinking about how limited I am and how love was performance-based for me, because I would find every reason to hide that and not tell somebody. Now, on the other hand, I would tell all my girlfriends, I would think that they would think that would be funny, but someone that would love you, someone that you would be in a love relationship with, I would hold that to myself. And I also noticed healthy relationships with partners growing up in high school and college, and over the years, I noticed that people who are really in love, they talked about everything, and they shared everything. And I was always really puzzled, because I always hid part of who I was, because I thought if I exposed those parts of me, or if I was really who I was, that they wouldn't love me. So when I talk about love,

I think that my love in relationships was really guarded. And I look at my daughter-in-law, I only have out of the seven children, I have one that's married, and I look at how she relates and shares with my sons. For instance, I'm so sorry, I'm gonna tell the story, she farts in front of him. I've never farted in front of a man in my entire life, except for my sons. And these things are little, but are they?

I think that when you spend all your life performing or wanting to look perfect, it's pretty exhausting. And then you wonder if you really are lovable, if you shared exactly who you were.

I look back during that time where my sweater was on backwards, and it was pretty itchy, and I realized I lived my life acting a certain way to be loved, whether it was for my dad, when he would come home from work, I would give him all the laundry list of things that I did in hopes that he would love me, or I would get an A on all my papers so that my performance would be one where I would be accepted. Or I would lose weight because my uncles then would comment on how good I looked. And so therefore, I equated that with love. So I was always chasing a better body to be loved or getting better grades, or looking a certain way, or relying on my looks to attract somebody. Love meant performance, it meant giving, over giving and generosity, but receiving was not part of the equation. And I think about how exhausting that was for me and how good it felt when I had moments of receiving something from somebody. So for instance, currently when my partner will carry my bags or do something for me and not expect anything in return, it's the best feeling ever. And it's something so simple to be able to receive from someone else and know that I'm worthy just by being who I am. But I am 59 years old and it has taken me all of my life to figure that out. When your experience was one that you had to perform, and again, I don't know where that came from. I don't know where it stemmed from and I'm not gonna blame anybody for it. It just was my life experience and how I saw the world, whether it was to be 20 pounds thinner or to not talk as much because I'm really talkative and here I am on a podcast just talking for hours and hours and hours. And then also to be a stay-at-home mom. You can't be successful.

If you're a mom and you stay at home, you can't work because you wanna be holy with your kids. You need to have babies, you need to do this. There was all of these kind of criterias that were performance-based for me that I felt like I needed to do all these things so that the people in my life would love me.

So this was, as you can tell, exhausting. I'm exhausted just thinking about how many times I tried to perform to get people to like me or to get my husband to like me. In fact, I would do so many things to try to get my former spouse to like me to the point of he wanted a truck. So I saved all the money that we didn't have and I went and bought him a truck and then I bought him a house out in the country saving money and robbing Peter to pay Paul, all these different things, but nobody ever did that for me. And I did that for my kids. If they needed something, I would make sure that they had it. And I never was really comfortable with anybody doing that for me or would I stop to allow someone to do that for me? But maybe, you know, I was like everybody else, maybe I was just trying to figure it out and for others it seemed effortless. I had friends that had long-term boyfriends for the time that they were in high school and they're still married and they were not obsessing over their perceived flaws or achievements, but they were just enjoying the company of another person, the partnership and the connection. And it seemed like it came so easily. Me on the other hand, when I went on dates in high school and even, you know, as an adult, I was a little better as an adult, but I remember this one guy, I'm not gonna mention his name. I'll never listen to this podcast, but he had a clinker in his eye lash

through the whole date. And I didn't like him because of that. And so I did not give him a chance because he had some kind of a little thing in his eyelash and it looked like it stayed there. It looked like I couldn't get it off. So I pretended I was asleep on the way home from the date so that he wouldn't think that he could get a kiss or a hug. And that was the end of him. I didn't even want to have anything to do with him. He really liked me. And I'm going to go into that a little bit more too, as the ones that really liked me and wanted to love me or care for me, I repelled. So with my friends that had these relationships, I actually noticed that there was no performance. They just were accepted and there was camaraderie. There was a security that ensued in these relationships. And I actually observed all of these friends through college, my high school friends, and wondered why I could not have the same thing. Even though I was trying to be myself, I felt like I was always coming up short. My siblings and my friends would probably say that I had a boyfriend a week,

but I did not. I might have had a crush every week, but not really true connections with other people. I was chasing the performance, you know, tried to be the cutest, even though it wasn't, because I remember I had a mustache and orthotics and I was always on a diet. But when I was dating in college, things got a little bit better. But again, I would find something wrong with each person. They prayed too much or they didn't like to have fun or whatever it was that I didn't give them the chance or if they liked me too much. They gave me the willies. Many of them were kind and giving and romantic and I would have killed for that in my 25-year marriage, 23-year marriage. But even if they breathed, odd. They wouldn't get a chance. No worries though, boys, the joke's on me because I snore and shave my face. So for those men that I was hard on, I'm very, very sorry. Even as I was dating early after my divorce, I just did not love men that loved me right out of the gate that wanted to do too much for me or that were easy. For me, love was hard. I had to give, love was performative, love was difficult. So because I was used to that pattern, I was kind of looking for that. So there was work that I needed to do. Plus there was the idea that there was no sex. You know, I didn't have sex before I was married. And so I knew that many men didn't really want to have anything to do with me because that would stop a hot make out session called turkey. After marriage though, that left me wondering even if I was pretty or attractive or desired, I never, ever thought I could course correct my love meter and my patterns in a way that was healthy. I feared that I was always going to be attracting a partner that I had to perform for or be someone that I wasn't. I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to be comfortable with the idea that I was worthy of love just because.

So I shared my first love after my divorce and then my first episode. And even in that relationship, I saw patterns repeat themselves that I knew I needed to deal with. I still had two left feet in many respects, but I do have his first declarations of my beauty and who I was as a person saved in a text message. And I read those over and over again because it was the gateway to breaking the patterns for me. Being able to be in a relationship with a man who just loved me in my broken divorced self without having to try, without having to list my achievements or without having to over give, to know that I was actually beautiful. And in my brokenness, I was valued and I couldn't have been more broken. Bankrupt, seven kids, divorced. I couldn't have been more broken, but I made him happy just by who I was and in our partnership and the camaraderie that we shared. And he told me I was beautiful. And again, I've saved that text and I read it over and over again because he wasn't a real wordsy guy, but he took time to tell me that because he knew that my marriage and my patterns were something that formed me. So took time for me and changing these patterns, but, and it took time for him. But unfortunately, one day I realized that I was truly in love and I was capable of love, but then he dropped dead of a heart attack on March 23rd, 2020.

I tell this story about the day that he died because it has such a love in that day. And the way that I responded, I knew that I had broken patterns and that I was feeling the grief as it measured and related to my love for him.

I was the first day that we were all home for COVID. The kids, I had three still in high school at that time. And the night prior, I had been at his house watching a movie and talking about the mower blades being dull and how he was gonna help me fix it. We had spent the weekend with all the kids doing all different things. I think one night we worked on the brakes on my son's bike. I don't know what they did to it. They bled the brakes or something like that. And the next morning we went to the shooting range with my youngest Gemma. And then we got pizza with all the kids. And then Sunday, all the boys went out to ride with him and Gemma and I, we all went out. And so the love that swirled in that home that weekend was beautiful.

Normally his son would be with us too, but he stayed with his mom due to basketball or something. So my kids got his attention the whole weekend all to themselves.

So that Monday morning when the kids woke up and they didn't have to go to school for the first day, I decided I was going to have a PE class with my daughter Gemma and we were gonna go out for a walk. And we went past a road sign that had his last name on it. And she wanted to take a picture of it and send it to him. And I told her that he wouldn't get it until he got out of work because he was a counselor at the prison. And so they weren't allowed to have their phones with them. We got back around 10 or so and I got a call from his ex-wife. Normally I don't really know why she would be calling me. I think maybe we connected in the whole five years that we were together, maybe once or twice over birthday parties for my son to attend for her son. But she had called twice. And so the second time I thought, well, maybe she needs me to watch Trey. So I picked up and she said, is this Catherine, David's girlfriend?

And I said, yes.

And she said, he's just died today of a heart attack.

The guttural scream that was released from my body that day, that moment on March 23rd, 2020, the pain,

the forever moment of loss tied up in that time, that moment is frozen in my mind. Where I was, the smells, what I was wearing, my children, their faces

is etched into my memory

and that he was gone forever. That this wasn't a joke, that this wasn't fake, that he was gone.

I still remember my daughter's face and her scream because he was like a father to her. He doted on her. He bought her cakes and things like Takis, things that I never ever bought. He called her sweetie and my sons, their inability to handle the overwhelming emotion of the moment and them retreating, not knowing what to do, calling my work, letting them know I wasn't gonna be available. My oldest daughter coming home from the hospital after seeing and witnessing all of it firsthand because she's a first responder in the emergency room.

My sons stopping all of their jobs wherever they were and traveling to me in that moment,

all because of love.

I would never say that I wasn't in love in my first marriage because the way that I knew love, I thought that was love and my children, so I would never negate that experience of love. But I knew love in a way that I'd never known love by that day and that moment.

His five years of showing up to me and showing up to my kids, so that I could just rest and to be myself,

knowing he wasn't gonna leave me or stonewall me or do anything to complete acceptance. He and I weren't really a typical couple because there were a lot of players in this game, he was very conscientious of my kids as he was about his kids. And we were not the typical couple where we were planning on getting married or moving in together anytime soon because we had a huge job ahead of us raising our kids. But he loved me in my brokenness and I will never, ever forget that day and how that day showed me that I was capable of changing.

And I will never, ever forget the mark that he left on my heart. I have the last time that he wrote my name tattooed on my left arm.

He ushered me into the beginning of understanding love through his death.

The sheer weight of grief during COVID was indescribable.

There was no funeral, there was a visitation weeks later when I saw him in a suit, which was ridiculous because I never really saw him in a suit ever. I wish that he was in his racing gear, he was quite the motorcycle racer. But the pain of loss surfaced again that day when I saw him in a casket and I had to revisit the wound of losing him. My oldest daughter and a dear friend who had gone through her own pain of losing two husbands helped me as I sobbed. Tucked a note into his suit next to his cold body so that when he was cremated, those ashes and that note would be together, part of me would be with him.

I have a forever family with his sons and his friends. I also have a friend who lost her husband who was a suicide and she had fortunate children. And right after I lost him, she came to me and she told me, Catherine, you just need to move, just need to move your body to move grief through your body.

So I did, I walked and I walked and I walked and I walked which helped me move grief through. Then as my sons told me so eloquently, and actually I agree with my sons now that it was too soon to date after he died, but I quickly started to date. And I know that hindsight is 20, 20, it wasn't really a good move. I settled for a man that was a good man, but he wasn't capable of loving me. And I noticed that. And so I was so proud of myself for standing up for myself and not getting into another pattern.

So I decided to work on myself, heal my heart and start working out. And that then I leveraged my grief to change my existence. And this is where the next level, I should say, or layer of my transformation of my mind and my heart happened.

I challenged every part of my soul, my why,

who I was.

What if I wrote a different story and started making different choices? And what if I started being more of who I am and who I want to be?

So I would have to say that in the death of losing someone that I loved profoundly,

I experienced a chance at a new life,

but not really a new life, a coming home to myself and a remembrance of who I was, because I forgot who I was. In his death, he gave me the greatest gift in my life. And I often sometimes think about Christians and how they think about how Christ's death renewed their life. And I look at there's so many similarities to that now. Don't worry, I'm not saying that he's like Christ. That's not what I mean. I just mean in his death, I was able to recognize the gift of the grief and the transformation and the leveraging it for good in my life.

So after some in-depth work and some solitude, my brother said, "You need to get out there again." All I could think of is, "Ew, that's just gross." Like, I mean, I'm telling you, it just was sheer grossness when he said that. But I knew he was right, but I worked from home, I worked out at home, and I had my groceries delivered. So unless the UPS driver was cute,

actually he was cute, but he was married to my hairstylist. So there's that. I was not really ever going to have a chance to love again. Even though I knew I could finally show up to love in the way that I should and the way that it's supposed to be, I really just did not want to do it, but I did. So I got on that thing called an app. And at that time, I learned so many things that I'd never learned before. And I had to rely on Google again in my life to help me understand what E&M was, what Polly was,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all these things I had never known about. And the amount of people that presented differently than the way that I was, you have to weed through them. But for this old school girl that really struggled to get on the app and was more of, "I'd like to meet you over the produce section" kind of girl. And I don't share people. So it was probably going to be more entertainment for me than the thought that maybe I might find someone. So the battlefield was real.

That conversation with my brother, shout out to my brother, his name's Michael, but I call him Pick. Shout out to Pick for calling me forward in this process. Four months later, I decided that maybe I might take his advice. So I went to Hawaii with my dear friend, Marilyn, who's in her 80s. I go every year with her and it was in May. So four months later, when I was coming home, I decided to download that app. I act fast, as you can see, four months later. And on that app, after I downloaded it, took me a little while to understand it. I saw lots of men with bellies and holding fish

and holding a beer, trying to get my attention. And I was not really interested in bellies or beers or fish, unless they came separate. Maybe a belly had a baby in it and a beer was used to cook. And fish was salmon on a platter. Oh, and on a boat too. A lot of them were on a boat. But I did see this one really, really handsome man on the app with a smile that could light up a town. And I matched with him. And the only reason I matched with him, if you're familiar with apps, is to kind of match with people in the area and things like that. Now, remember, I'm the type of person that when you wanted to, back in the day, when you wanted to go with somebody, you wrote them a note or you called them on that phone, which was attached to the wall. So this is just all really an interesting kind of setup here where you just right click or you swipe them. You just push them to one side or you push them to another side so that you can let them know that you dig them. So I guess I super swiped him, which means you like double do it. So on his end, he saw that I super swiped him, but that's the story and we're sticking to it. I really know what that is. And I don't know if I did it on purpose, but I really liked him. And so it picked him up because I was coming across the ocean there in Seattle. Otherwise we never would have matched serendipitous moment. So I don't know if it was a smile or the fact that he was good on roller skates, but I super swiped him. And he is a really, really tall, bigger guy. And I tell you what, if there's one physical characteristic I like, it's taller because I ain't no tiny person. So I love feeling petite next to a man, not a deal breaker, but you know, it's kind of nice. We started talking and I have no idea what we talked about because I don't have any of those messages because once you get off the app, it all goes away. But we just clicked and that was two and a half years ago. This man, I don't want to say too much. I'll be modest in my explanation of him because I know if I go on and on and he listens to this, he will give me a side eye because he doesn't want me to make him out to be grandiose because everybody will want to take him from me.

(Laughs)

But he has everything.

I've dreamt safety could feel like safety to be myself. He has coached me in areas that have been hard for me. Like, let me carry your luggage. I'm always jumping to action. Wanting to fix things and give and give. And he always says, this is not a call to action, meaning I can just receive. I can sit while he does dinner in the dishes. I don't have to do those things because I've spent the greater part of my adult life doing that. I have to pay him back for things. So for the long years of providing for my family and being hyper focused on planning and driving it all,

he is my resting spot.

He allows me the independence, the autonomy to chase my dreams, to do these things like podcast and talk to the world and write a book and do all these things. And he also plans travel for me all the time. We have trips out till 2027. We eat, we have this thing where we send direct messages of food places from all over. So have we gone to LA for pizza, just for pizza for a day? Yes, we have gone to LA just for pizza for a day because we work like that and we laugh and we talk daily, but he expects nothing from me. He allows me to show up as I am.

So I am not perfect in my evolution of my heart and my soul, but it has been nothing short of a miracle.

I'm a work in progress in this area of love. And I see patterns that sneak back that perform or that I wouldn't wanna share about shitting my pants on a run, but I'm getting there. I wonder how many people feel the same way about that as I do. And I'm aware of it and that's half the battle.

So if you get to experience love in its truest form, it's beautiful. And if you experience great loss, it's horrendous.

However,

it is beautiful in ways one could never imagine.

I know David would be so proud of me.

I know he would be so proud that I'm finally using my voice because sometimes he would say to me, "You're a girl that is so smart and so strong. I'm so surprised that you didn't speak up." So now I know he would be proud of me that I would be using my voice. I know he would want me happy. And to be honest, the ability of my current partner to honor the grief part of my journey without jealousy

and my ability to recognize the day that he died as a day that I think about and ponder as a huge green flag.

I didn't get to do that with others. The ones that I dated briefly, if I mentioned it, there was feelings of being threatened or feeling insecure. That was another beautiful part about being able to

feel safe in my current relationship was that the inclusion of that part of my story, I never had to leave it out. But I know that my younger self,

the person that I'm talking to, I know that she didn't know better, but if I could have told her something, I would have told her to not worry what everybody else is doing.

Find the home inside of yourself first. It's so cliche. We say that all the time, but it's so true. Don't forget who you are and who you were meant to be in this earth. What your purpose and what your passion is. Find what you like and find what makes you happy and full.

And then love finds you because you can't help but draw those people to you. And if you lose yourself sometimes and you forget who you are, I know now in my fullest expression of who I am, that if I start to forget who I am, I remind myself.

And then I pull that part that's maybe sinking back into old patterns or doing things the old way to where my brain felt more comfortable. I can just gently, gently pull her back.

And I know that I've added so much value to my partner's life.

I didn't know that before. I didn't know my existence of who I was and how I showed up added value. I was too busy performing. So here's to love. So loving fully to fully expressing and being unapologetically real

and unwavering in my commitment to that.

My heart and my love depends on it and so does yours.

So till next time friends, when we talk about my policing era, which was one of the most interesting eras of my life, make sure your tag is in the back. And if it isn't, just enjoy the itch. But most of all, don't forget who you are.

Singer: There's still time now

I take a few steps forward Maybe one, two, side I've got a backwards sweater And it finally fits right I take a few steps forward Maybe one, two, side I've got a backwards sweater And it finally fits right