Native Lampard is a production of iHeart Radio in partnership with Reason Choice Media.
Welcome.
Okay, everybody, this is our mini pod for this week. We got abandoned super Many. It's just a duet and it's a NA. See what I did there.
It's R and R with an A, rod Real with an A. It's kind of cool. We should maybe have a podcast here. I was thinking.
Earlier this week about you know, well, often I think about this. I'm like, oh, I really I feel like I've done so much of what I wanted to get done in my life, but the place where I have not is family, like being married, having kids, and it's something that I really really want. You have three very special young ones who I have adopted, and you were talking about spring break on our main show, and I would love for you to talk to me, your sister, about kind of the ups and downs of parenting and
some of the joys. Like you guys didn't have a super easy journey to parenthood, but now you are fully in it, so I'd love to hear that, and like some of the things that you've had to sacrifice along the way that you know may have been difficult but worth it.
Well, I will say the journey to getting pregnant and staying pregnant was heralding, such to the point where I didn't want to know when Jay, you know, after after the third miscarriage, I just couldn't. I wasn't functioning properly. I wasn't. Every phone call in the middle of the day that was her was traumatic, you know, the phone,
you know, buzzing or whatever. And because my aide, Angela, would interrupt me in meetings and she's say, Lady Gilliam's coming, Lady Gillam's coming, that's what she called r J r
J didn't really favor that title. But so I was on I was on pins and needles about it, right, And so we talked and we were at the point of adoption, or you know, we had in our minds said, well, we still want to give the gift of us, you know, and we want to get the gift of what it means to shape and mold and watch this, you know, this baby turned to a human or this young person, this little person turned into a full slize adult. And as soon as we had set our minds to that,
Jay got pregnant again. Because this is we we had IVF, which again a lot of people think that's then you're guarante. I did, and it is not. It is not. I think you and I talked about the shots. Oh how I am. I can't take shots myself. I definitely can't give one, but I would pass out. And then Jay had to have these shots every day, and you know, we worked out something with the neighbor who come over and help us out, and so on and so forth. I never still to this day, gave her a shot.
I just I felt for her health. I might fall over in the middle of it, and you know, Lord knows pull the thing. I don't know. So the journey to getting there was incredible, incredibly heartbreaking, the lowest of depths, but also the highest of high when you think it's gonna work and it's going to be possible. And that's really what I wanted to not experience anymore. I didn't want the lows. You know, in politics you deal with lows a lot. This was very personal, so slightly different.
But I feel like I can psych my mind out on the valleys, but the mountaintops, I couldn't really fake it, you know, I couldn't really fake what it felt like. Being like, oh my god, lord, I'm about to be a daddy, you know, and I'm about to you know, have this human race that I couldn't fake. And so I felt that every time, and I was like, I don't want that anymore. That's the thing I don't want. If I could cutterize that, you know, we'd be all right. And I didn't want to see Jay hurt anymore. It
was the hardest thing. I mean, the first time, I think we were both were just so broken. And in the second time, I was broken, yes, but I was broken for her because you know, regardless of what people say right about how mischaracters happened and so on and so forth, I know that there is a big burden that lies with the woman. And there was nothing I could do to interrupt that. There was nothing I could do to you know, I felt like there was nothing
I could do to stop it. And I didn't want that anymore either, her heartbreak and I didn't want my eyes from it. The most amazing part, especially now, because you you know, we've got pictures of you, and they love their themselves, some aunty angela, and they put themselves in places where you and I have been that they ain't never been Oh when we were there over night, No, you ain't been there. That wasn't you? And that was me and whatnot y'all for the for the record, and
Angela is the most amazing Auntie Funty. I said, it's funny, not unto most amazing Funty because she basically outfitted the whole house for the babies when she knew the twins were coming, I mean just bought up all everything. But in truth, watching the people they like are becoming and actually tracing it back to like I started to see this and I got a sense of them very early. And you know what, that characteristic has not changed. It's
like just coming in the greater blossom. But it's also like wearing your heart and your most sensitive appendages outside your body, not protected by anything so inclement weather, an accident, at anything. I'm I'm on pins and needles from the time that they're out of my sight to their back in it.
To be truthful, we watched that happen. We were in Where were we, Andrew? We were in?
Where were we in Texas?
Yes, we were in Texas.
We were for Afrotech and we were recording a podcast. You got a call from Jay. You guys did not know where the boys were, right, yeah, and they left their eye as At Andrew got up from the podcast set and I was like, get his stuff.
He gotta go.
No.
I was like, Jay, I can't understand. You have to stop. You have to stop crying. We have to communicate. But that's what it is, right you can reason goes away and I said, Jay, calm down and then we you know. And I could only do that because we were in Texas, Angela, and.
You ran the hell off the set.
But I only speak to her.
I want to help.
I could only speak to her that way. And then Lord, as I got off the phone and I look, I didn't even have to get back in the room. All y'all had come out of the room. You but Cary Tiffany in the hallway like everything okay, everything's okay, Angela. I pray for you and your desire. I never know because I have, you know, friends from college who are single. They one was married is now single, had a plan to have a child with their spouse that didn't work out,
but she continued forward. Wanted a baby anyway, and as an incredible mom, and she's doing her thing. I know it is out of maybe the vision that she thought, but I can't imagine how I experience her and observe her that it is any less fulfilling the way that it has come about, Sarah Gus, you know, the whole process or whatever. I am probably most terrified that, like the moments that I have with it's like just us and them, that I've had more of those those days
than I will have going forward for the twins. That upsets me a lot. And I think what it causes me to do is like ride out with Davis. Davis at the grocery store with me. David's going to the post office with me. He don't want to go Lord, he wants to go home and get on his daplet. I'm like, David came yeah. I'm like, please, please, please, you want to go to the park afterwards, we'll go to the park and we'll just you know, so that's you know, and we'll go to the park because that's
the thing he wanted to do. And I drug him along with all my stuff. It's making me spend more time there.
Do you feel like you have cleave to them as your friend?
Source too? Like I feel like growing up with my mom. She would I mean she used to. She would tell me like I was her best friend. I'm like, no, girl, you need some of your friends too. And I and I loved Art like all her mommy daughter time. But like, do you feel like you're cleaving to them as like now they've replaced some of your best friend circle, especially in a regular routine kind of way.
Well, they've replaced him because I don't have time for the other I mean, they all got schedules in I'm bus driver. No. In fact, I had to tell Jackson the other week that I'm not your friend. It kind of hurt me to say it, to be honest, Yeah, I said, I'm not your friend, Jackson. I'm your father. And just because you don't like what I told you you have to do doesn't mean you can snap an attitude with me and snatch something. You might choose to do that with your peers and with your friends, but
that's not our situation. And Angela, you would have been heartbroken because I was chastising him the other week about a quiz grade that he had gotten, and he was on his way to basketball practice and he had gotten so upset because I chastised him about it, about what I wanted to see. Basically, like, you didn't go from an A in this class to a quiz that you couldn't even complete. That doesn't tell me that you are a applying yourself to your highest and best potential. You
could have all seas. I just want to know that you worked really hard to get them, meaning you put your best wood for it. But tell me, honesty, did you know? So he gets upset. I've got to go get Davis. I come back and Carolina is bawling, crying in the kitchen. I'm saying, what's the matter, Caroline? She says, Jackson yelled at me. He was so mean. And he's there with a real blustered face. And I say, Jackson, you need to gather yourself and you need to apologize. Anyway,
He doesn't gather himself in that moment and apologize. He goes outside. When I go outside, he is drowning in tears. Upset. I pull him to the side. I say, Jackson, if you want to talk, I'm here, and he says, I hurt Caroline. And he's apoplectic because he hurt Caroline. But what he says to me about this whole quiz, because that's what this is really about. He's mad at me, but he's taking it out on her because he can't take it out on me. And he says, I'm just
mad because I said, you're crying so much. Jackson put it into words, and he says, I'm just I just failed at life. Oh girl. I went from like hurt at the same time to terribly angry, and I liked, you aren't. I said, you don't have life experience to tell me that you have. I'm insulted that you think you could form your lips to say that you failed that life. I needed to yank him out of that thing. I couldn't coast him into that. I didn't want him
to think that that was any way nearby acceptable. I'm sure there are therapists who would tell me I did this wrong. But all I could think of in that moment was he plays with all these other little, other wonderful, you know, wonderful kids, and things get dramatized and they think they're at their end of the rope, and then there's nothing left at the end of the rope. I needed him to be shocked into knowing that you're not even qualified for this conversation. We are not having this.
I say right now, this is command and control your mother, and I command and control you. When you start living is when you get to make decisions for yourself and then get to execute on those decisions without our input. You don't have that life. We command and control you right now. I just had to hear real basic with on the edge of little. But you would have been hurt because it was such a range of emotions and you're always fearful that you might be doing it wrong.
What do you feel like you were prepared? And if you don't, what do you think has prepared you the most? For parenthood?
For marriage?
Oh? That was two different things.
Now it's both. I want to know for both.
Well, I'll say for parenthood, the decision to be present and it wasn't one that I chose it. It was delivered to me, frankly in the election results of twenty eighteen. The first time I after the election was looking at pictures of them and not really being not remembering when they grew so much and when hairlines curls went to like straight and then curls at the end. Not remembering that stuff just took a toll on me. So so
for me, it was like, Okay, God's delivered this. I'm going to just I'm gonna be here whatever the moment is. I'm going to be present marriage. When I realized that I didn't have to be right and that I didn't want to be right in the arguments anymore.
I might need to put that on a mirror.
It's so God I needed it. I was fighting, so you know, in the fights, I was going to you know, you were going to come out of this seeing it the way that I saw it, experienced it, and you're going to you understand exactly why I responded the way I did. You're going to be in that frame of mind. And then it was like no, but she's going there, but it's begrudgingly and now there's resentment and there's all those others. So okay, I don't have to be right.
I just want us to be happy afterwards. I want us to smile.
I had a well I'm still if I hope she runs that thing back. But Angela Manuel Davis is she was a soul cycle instructor and she started her own company. But we really call her like a fitness evangelist. She's done stuff for Oprah. She's incredible. And Angela would say, Ange would say, like on the bike, the way you do one thing is the way you do all things.
And you know, as we like really round out this mini pod, Andrew, the one thing that I want to commend you for is watching you as a husband, watching you as a father, watching you as a brother, as a son, as a candidate, as a mayor, as a as a commissioner.
You really.
Do all things with the same amount of vigor and discipline and desire to be great at it. And I just want to publicly thank you, brother, because you are someone who I deeply admire across the board, because I know it's got to be hard to I don't even say balance everything, it's just a farce, but to carry everything, not let a ball drop, and when you do let it drop, to go back and pick it up gracefully, even if it means picking Jackson up after the other side of that quiz.
Well, thank you for letting me for being really generous with that comment, because as you know, the balls that drop are my cell phone. It could be in another sick you know, put away for the weekend and I'll see it on the other side, you know, because there are sacrifices, right, there are things that you listen. What you hope is that all your friends are going to be like you, which is they're not going to charge it to you know the.
Heart, but well it sometimes I do, well, I know.
But you usually come up out of it. How can you get through your fields? You come up out of it. And I have the patience for that now, and you're going to be incredible as you have always been in your life as the leader, the mentor, the mother, the caretaker, the person who gives all the love. And what I want for you back is for you to get triple times that and to feel it and to know it when you see it.
And you're not going to make me cry here, but it's right here. I know I'm going to.
Well. I don't know why I recorded Ricky smiling at the end of such a tender moment, but Ricky, shout.
Out to you.
I wanted you all to get to see another side of my dear brother because he works so hard to carry the things and and he does it really well. So shout out to our my sister R J. Gillow and to the kids I need to see them soon. Davis Jackson, Carolina, love y'all.
So Angela get to interview you next, Okay, so they just know that you're mine for no, I get it for the next pod, for the next, for the for the mini and the for.
A n A on the R n R.
That's on the rn R.
That's it, all right. Well, welcome home, y'all.
Welcome to the Tender Moment, brought to you by the A Team, not the B team.
Tell them we said it.
Can't nobody. Setting Up by.
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