I am a Yamla. I've been very open about the fact that I was not always good at making my relationships work. I have been divorced three times, twice from the same person. In other words, I have seen a lot and failed a lot in my relationships. So I am here to share with you what I learned along the way, because I did take copious notes. Welcome to the r Spot, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. I have a confession, and my confession is this,
I'm right and they're wrong. I am right and they are wrong always. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt that the person you are looking at is just totally off their rocker because they can't see it the way you see it, They don't hear it the way you hear it, And when you try to impose your rightness upon them, they go into resistance and defense. Yeah, happens, happens all the time in relationships. The way I think about it is this, at the center of each of us,
there's a core. There's a thing. It's like an onion. People think that it's the layers in the onion that make the onion stink. Make the onion make you cry. No, no, no, no no. It's that core all the way down deep inside that makes your eyes run water when you cut that onion open. And what we failed to realize is every onion smells different. We just think the onion is gonna make us cry and it's gonna smell back. No,
every onion is different. In other words, what's in your core is not the same as what's in somebody else's core. And while your core makes you right, their core has a totally different scent, which means they're gonna see it different, they're gonna feel it different, they're gonna hear it different. Here's the thing. You've got to understand that everybody has a right to their core. Even if their core makes you wrong, it's their core. And that's what my guests
and I are going to talk about today. Why your core makes you right and their core makes them right. Take a listen. Greetings, Tamika, welcome to the art spot and what is your relationship challenge, question issued dilemma today?
Hi, Auntieyanva, you're my auntie. You just don't know it.
Hi.
I've been following you since back in the Meantime book one day my soldiers.
Over, but I just want to say thank you, thank you.
So I have a dealing with my brother. We're three years apart. We've been very close. My mom recently died two years ago July thirtieth, twenty twenty. Normally I'm the black sheep of the family. My brother is kind of like the golden child. It's always been like that, kind of over that stuff, so it really doesn't matter. For my mom died, we able to mend our relationship. I was able to have an experience of actually having my mom there, which having my daughter five years ago, almost
six a good years ago helped. My mom passed away during that time, it was very she got sick, two months in the hospital. My brother was beside me. He really didn't help much. He had just moved back with his family from New York. After she died a week later. He basically flipped everything. And it was all my fault of basically leaving him out. I assumed that he was just kind of mourning a different way. Fast forward two years now, we live in the same state, very close
together in Maryland, my husband and him. My husband tries to be the middle person, but I'm to a point now I'm tired. I'm done. I love my niece and nephew. My daughter's a five month apart, I started a year apart. My father's still being a picture. He's starting to see my mom started to see before she died. But it is what it is. They kind of created that person right now. I'm trying to find peace. I want to
find peace. I want to find true freedom. It hurt very bad, but I know that that relationship one day come to something. Whatever that's un comes, but it hurts. I know that he wants me to show that hurt. I know he gets something good out of it. I don't really like to show it. He's very passive aggressive. There are times when my my husband recently has been invited to their house for a football party. I asked him, my busband asked them where the wives and children invited.
My brother said, no, long story short, women and children were there. My husband later talked to him about it three different times. When my brother just said he didn't know about it. He kind of lies about it, brushes it over. I just auntie jalla. I'm just trying to bind people with in myself because I know that people like this will kind of happen throughout life, and I just want to be okay with him.
Okay, you're everything that you're saying. I'm just a little confused. Yeah, I heard you say. I'm close to my brother. I'm in the black Sheep, He's the golden chot. Yes, And mother got sick. Brother didn't help me.
Yes.
And now I'm still trying to figure out what happened when the sheep and the golden child got together. What happened?
Well, I thought we were close. I mean I think at one point we probably were. He had my face tattooed on his arm years ago in his late teens, But there was still an underlining, like I was to say, like you know, in high school and stuff, where like I said, my brother he was the gold child. To me, it was always the one with the issues. I was the one that kind of wanted truth, and they kind of pretended like things was one way when it wasn't. So I always ruffled their feathers still to this day
with my father's same thing. So I understand that I'm very straightforward, and I know that sometimes I've learned that a lot of people do not like that about me. My mom he got to know me once my daughter was born, because she wanted to have relationship with my daughter. A lot of times he or she would just cut me off if I didn't like if she didn't like what I said or didn't like that I did something. So when my daughter came in the picture, it got to a point where we may had an issue, but
we were able to get through it. We were able to speak our truth to send move past it. She didn't like cut me off. So I guess throughout the years, I thought that I had this relationship with my brother, But I'm starting to see when I look at myself and look back, I never asked him of anything. I just was being a big sister, always helping and being
there for him, covering him, protecting him. But I guess somehow in the mix, I'm starting to see that maybe this is how he really felt about me all along.
How does he feel about it?
I really don't know, because we oh, I know you were gonna do that to me. My experience with him it has been that he's he doesn't like it's just like my we were raised, you know, it's kind of like looked like the Cosby family, but behind closed doors you know, Mika, you're the issue. You're the problem anything if there's something between them too, I've become the problem even if I'm not the problem.
Okay, so let me ask you this, What made you the black sheep? Where did you get that from? Because that's old.
It's I'm the.
Black sheep because.
Okay, I'm the black sheep because I like to really speak truth. I wanted to get to the core of an issue they like to keep on the surface. What else, I'm the black sheep because I'm the black sheep because Tmika doesn't know anythings.
So I'm dumb. I'm stupid. Is that it?
Yes, Okay, they think they know me, but they really don't really know me. And all I can say is thing got that before my mom died, for those six five years almost she was able to know me. She was able to know who I was, and the relationship became different. I really I hope I don't sound like I'm the victim because I'm really not trying to play a Vista the role.
But no, you're not the victim. You're the black sheep. You're the black sheet. Now what makes him the golden child?
Because he's PJ that's his nickname, but he's PJ. He whatever he says, it's golden. You know, like Taanika's been working in marketing, communications and TV production for years, but he comes in and he has done something in marketing as well, which is still good. But because it's him, Oh, it seals the deal. It has gold on it, it has its shimmered with gold. Whatever he says, it just comes out to fruish and Tamika. He kind of ruffles out feathers. That makes us feel quite uncomfortable.
Is it possibly because he's the baby.
It could see. Oh, I mean it definitely could be. I would say, like in high school and stuff, it was the same way. Like, for example, got to the point where if I needed a ride to Waldorf to go to work, I had to pay him for gas money, and he had a car and my car was down. I'd pay my parents are gas meaning so it's kind of like I can't. It's kind of like they would do things for him, but they would not do it for.
Me because you're stupid. You are stupid enough to give your brother gas money.
You know. It's like it's kind of like, well, I would have to do it for my parents. It's kind of like him. It was different. They didn't have them to shoot with him. For some reason. They gave him. He gave them a comfortable ride, I guess. But for me, I did not make them feel comfortable. I guess that's how I would. I would definitely look at that.
Yeah, and because he's the baby.
And because that's because they saw themselves in him. So they would both say, oh, you know, your brother's like me. Yeah, your brother's like me. The mom would say that, Dad would say that, your brother's like me, you're like your mother, You're like your father. I'm the one that they don't really want. They see things in me that I guess remind them of the other spousand.
You know, I was the one they didn't want. Wow, that's deep, and that's in your heart. I'm the one they didn't want. They wanted him, they don't want me. Now he doesn't want me.
Kind of Yeah. I felt that once my mom died. It was like the spirit of what I felt from my mom years ago, of sessoning God to to have a mother relationship with her, and once I was able to get it, God trunk. It's that feeling of not being good enough.
It's well, your mother raised him. So all of those old ideas that she may have had about you, about you being the black sheep ruffling the feathers, everything is your fault. It's your job to fix it. Maybe she didn't get a chance to correct that in his hard drive before she left him.
No, she didn't, and she saw it. Yeah.
Yeah, so that's where he's operating from.
I'm trying not to go back there in the test, Panti Yama.
But that's where you live. Everything you said. You talk to me about high school, you talk to me about being a teenager. You didn't talk to me anything about present day. You are in the past, and that's why you're experiencing what you're experiencing, because you bring in the past with you into this current moment.
What I feel like every time I feel like I've learned something or grown or for gay to another level than life, she comes in and it takes me back, like I felt like I was able to have a level of protection where I lived my life before I had kids and before I got married. I lived my life and I waited until thirtie years oldcause I wasn't really sure up on the kids. I wasn't real struggling to get married, and I feel like I had a
level of protection there. And then I get married and then I have kids, and then it's like, I'm so family oriented that, you know, I want my family to be connected, and so, you know where I didn't go to the house that my father isn't today because I was raised in it and to me, it didn't feel like a home and bring back very bad memories. But I was willing to look past that because I wanted my children to have relationship with my father. You know, like, I don't know. I think I had a decent life.
I think I was psychologically emotionally abused, and I think they did what they thought was best at the time. But it seems like because of having these kids and having a husband, it's opening up doors that I can no longer control, and it's making me so vulnerable and bringing back things that I thought that I had handled, but now I have to handle on a different level. And I don't know what to do. And I just want peace with them myself because I know that I can't control no one else but meat.
Huh, take a breath. We'll talk more about it when we come back, Welcome back, I am I'm learing this is the r spot. Do you cook?
Yes?
Have you ever cut an onion?
Yeah?
And when you cut an onion and half, what do you see?
Sometimes it's a sometimes you have a white feel motive it or sometimes a very strong smell that can make you cry mm hmm.
But do you see the layers? Yes, if you cut an onion, it has that skin on it, right, and you peel that skin off that's on the surface. Now you've got this little white ball. And if you peel that off, it's over there and it's doing its thing. But you still got a little white ball. So baby, you are just peeling layers and under every layer doesn't mean that the piece that you peeled off isn't good and useful. It just means you got some more layers to go through. That's all that means.
I thought, of forty three, I'll be finished with the layers.
Well I'm seventy. I'm seventy and I still got the brown skin on the outside of my onion. Ness.
I guess maybe I thought it's twenty five years old. Reading your books, I thought learning to Forgive that I was forgiving, But I guess you know.
Well, see, you may have done the forgiveness work, but you haven't experienced forgiveness yet. There's a difference in doing the work of forgiveness and experiencing forgiveness. What do you mean, had you truly experienced forgiveness? Meaning get deep down in there, go to the core of the onion, because that's where the stink is. That's what makes you cry. It's not the layers, it's the core. The core is what makes
you cry. And if you get down in there, deep enough, down into the stink of it, you experience Oh, okay, that's who they were, that's how they were, That's who I was, that's how I was. This is who they are, and that's how they are. This is who I am, And it's all okay, it's all okay. That's what the experience of forgiveness is. Let me tell you about my brother, my older brother. He was sixteen, cross addicted to drugs and alcohol, brilliant, beautiful man, but his core was so stinky,
his relationship with my father, his image of himself. And I was the baby, and I was the healthiest one in the room most of the time. So like you, it was always my job to fix stuff. But I was also stupid. I was also dumb. I also ruffle feathers because I was clairvoyant and Claire audience, and I could see through their shenanigations. And I had the misguided gift of speaking it out loud instead of keeping my
during mouth shutting. Yeah, So all through his life, I was always saving my brother, picking him up, bringing him to live with me. Blah blah blah blah blah. He would call me every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, every New Year, sometime on my birthday, high as a kite or drunk, either one, and want to rehash our childhood. And I had done my work, so I didn't see my father the way he did. I didn't see our upbringing the
way he did. So one year I said to him, if the only thing you want to do is call me and talk about Daddy and Aunt Nancy and all of these people, I don't call me. Don't call me and ruin my Christmas, my Thanksgiving and my birthday with these stories because I don't see it like that. He said, you know, you so stupid, get on my nerves and he hung up, and I didn't see my brother for five years, five years?
How did that make you feel?
How did it make me feel?
Yeah?
Initially I was angry that he couldn't see it the way I saw it. And then I was hurt that he didn't appreciate all that I had given to him and done for him. And then I got clear that it wasn't about him, it was about me. And then I did my work, and over the course of the five years, I got to the place where I said, my brother is an addict, my brother is a wounded little boy, and I will I will never understand the depth of his pain. All I can do is have
compassion for him. And then I got to the point where I could say I loved my brother just as he is. Nothing about him needs to change. Because I experienced forgiveness, not of him, but of myself. And in one day. It was his birthday, March thirty first, two thousand and two. On his birthday, my mother raised us, we never worked on our birthday. He went out on his birthday and got high and had a heart attack
on the eve of his fiftieth birthday. I had experience forgiveness, and I accepted my brother just as he was for who he was, and made the choices about how I was going to participate in our relationship. He could ask me anything and I would give it to him, but I wouldn't put money in his hand. Can you hear me?
Yeah?
You got to accept your brother just as he is for who he is and choose to participate or not. Your mother raised him with some distorted ideas about you and never got to heal that in his hard drive before she left. So he's functioning with some distorted ideas and the only way those are going to change is if he chooses to change them, and if you are willing to make the effort to let him know who you are today. It's not who you were as a teenager.
Like I'm composing in my head because I'm thinking, like I thought we had this relationship. I thought we had this closeness. But now that go back, I look at it as I did a lot of things for him, and I'm quite sure that he was appreciative of it. But I never asked or anything from him because I'm not. I just never did. No reason why. So I feel like I'm mourning the loss of the relationship that I thought I happened. Maybe I just never really had it I just created in my head.
H yeah, that is quite common that we're having a relationship with somebody that's different than the relationship they are having with us. And you spoke it right out of your mouth. You did a lot of things for him because it was your fault and it was your job to fix it. That was the role you chose in the family. It was your fault. He's the golden child. I'm the black sheep, are you right, And it's my job to fix it. He never asked you for that stuff,
but he'll ask you for some gas money. Oh yeah, you holding him responsible for what you made up and what you did based on the chip in your hard drive. I'm the black sheet, piece of golden child. It's my fault. It's my job to fix it, based on your role in the family. Of course, he doesn't know who you are now because you haven't shown up. It's who you are now. You've shown up as who he knew you to be as a teenager.
No, and I kind of said things like that when I saw certain things, but it was more so it was just a lie. And then then after that it's like, Okay, I don't want to go in the argument of oh, you're lying. I know you're lying. You know I'm not. No, I'm not, like, I don't do that. So I just like, okay, I leave alone because it's like, I can't make someone be honest with me. They don't want to be honest with me.
Honesty isn't based on your perception of what's going on. Even though you know they're lying, though, but maybe it's not a lie in their brain. Maybe it's not a lie to him, Okay. And it's not so much what you say, beloved, it's how you say it, how you say it, And the minute you make somebody wrong, they're going to go on the defensive.
Yeah.
And once they become defensive, you know, you're like shocked because I'm like, you're on the defensive and nobody is even attacking you, but you are in your speaking because you're functioning from the black sheep posture, and whatever your position is in the matter, it's going to determine how you see it. Okay, So what do we do now? We'll talk about that right after this break. Welcome back to the R Spot. Let's get back to the conversation.
It could very well be that you're having you had a relationship with him that he's not having with you.
Yeah, because I mean it's like little things that they put their pictures up, family puts on the wall, and I was like, hey, my husband's not in any of the pictures. And three years later then they bought a house, they added more pictures, and still no pictures, but they added more other people.
But did you ask him, did you forget the picture with booboo in it? Whatever your husband's you forgot to picture with booboo in it?
No? I didn't ask.
But why is that important to you that your brother doesn't have a picture on his wall in his house with your husband in it? Why is that important?
I guess it was important because it's important because it's like, honestly, it's like it's a fake and phony thing, and I want it to be not fake and phony.
No judgment, judgment. It's not important to him, so why should he put it on the wall in his house. It's not important to him. It's important to you, it's not important to him. So in essence, my love, you're doing the very same thing to him that he does to you. You make what's important to you his priority.
Well, I'm trying to figure out where my place is and see that me mean, because it's so fake, it's so phony.
It's like, from your perspective, it's fake in phony to you. From your perspective. It was crazy to me that my brother would stick a needlefull of heroine in his arm. I don't even drink. That was freaking insane to me that my brother, this beautiful, brilliant man who could add columns and columns of numbers in his head. He was a mathematical genius, and he would put heroin in his arm. So from where I'm sitting, that is crazy. But I didn't know what was in the core of his onion. I didn't know.
Oh no, I don't know what's to dunk.
So I had to stop expecting his onion. The smell like my union.
What happened to other people?
It hurts you, that's because you taking on. Like I said, I made a simple request of my brother, don't call here talking that I don't want to hear it no more. He didn't want to hear that from me, so he hung up and separated himself for five years. So be it. You can't have it both ways. You can't stand in what you value and then expect other people to line up with it if they don't value the same things.
I just I just thought that when you genuinely care for someone and you want that relationship with that person, you all can sometimes agree to disagree. You have a talk, so you often come to a common ground.
But that may not be what he wants, or it may not be the way he wants it. And it's okay. I want you to do. You have a pencil and a piece of paper, Yes, write this down. I want you to write down two things. First thing, I'm gonna spell it for you, okay, okay, s E now if that's the first word. Second word r I g h T e O U else what is that? Spell?
Self? Rightous?
Uh huh? Makes you blind?
Uh? Yeah?
Now you think that everybody sees it the way you see it, baby, They don't. He's got a malfunction in his hard drive. Based on the way you all were raised. You've grown up, done some work, stretched in, but you're still a functioning from that place, and you think everybody's gonna see it the way you see it. They don't. Your mother didn't, your father doesn't. He doesn't, your brother I.
Don't mean to be self rightous.
Well, just something for you to consider. Just that's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. It's based on our next word. Okay, write this down? What is my now? I'm a spell this word? P O S I T I. Oh. And what is my what? What is my position?
Position?
What is my position? Am I being self righteous? Am I expecting somebody to see it the way I see it? Do I think my opinion is better than theirs or stronger than theirs? Am I trying to get them to see what I see?
Well?
Yeah, you've got to ask those things.
I get it. Yeah, I guess I being self righteous because I thought that the love was the same more when we were both on the same level of having that love and relationship that I thought that we had years ago, and that now that we're married and we have kids that were close in age, and because we're in the same state and we grew up with a big family being closed, I thought that he would want the same things.
Have you ever asked it?
No? Because things kind of stay on the surface. Mm hm. Because it seems like if I go below the surface, a ruffle feathers and I'm kind of tied a rufference.
Who appointed you to be the surface digger? Nobody asked you to go below the beneath the surface.
It's just who I am. I like to stay below the surface, but I'm trying to I've learned, I guess in my early thirties that I go quite deep sometimes and sometimes you don't want to go deep.
Yeah, right, And so.
I'm trying to learn to stay on the surface to me, because some people just don't want that deepness.
Yeah, but that's self righteousness. I go deep and they want to stay on the surface. How about it. I have a different consciousness than they do. What's my position? I'm looking straight up with my hands outreached and they looking out. They left eye with one hand and they pocket. Not right, not wrong, not good, not bad, just different. You call it deep in surface?
Yes, well I thought I was them.
No, you're calling it surface. And it may just be their capacity based on what's in their hard drive. You call it surface and deep. It may just be about capacity. Oh God, okay, oh God is right. Let me tell you something, and you want to talk about deep. I can sit in a room with people and read them like a book. Tell you what color drawers they got on and who they screwing and what they did and
when they lie and tell them. You can't go around talking to people like that because compassionately, I know they're at their capacity. This is what they can handle. Not right, not wrong. Everybody isn't clairvoyant. Everybody doesn't have to give to die. So I'm not going to impose my perspective on everybody. Get to choose.
Wow. Okay, I look at things with my parents from the past. They did what they thought was best at that moment, you know, at that point, and so that way I didn't you know, I was trying to find ways to not carry that on and look at them as being human too, because they had to. They had their own separate journey.
Respect their capacity and don't be righteous about where you are. Wow, and don't see them as less than, and don't see you as more than. Don't see them as wrong or right. Write this down, h I s underline that. Okay, what is not what I want, what it should be, what I think it should be, what they should be doing. No, no, no, this is what it is. It is this. I'm having a relationship with my brother that he is not having
with me. Okay, let me see what kind of relationship he is with me, and let me shift my position or how I want to participate. Okay, this work is your work to do. Belove it. I really want you to look at self righteousness, not from a condemnation. I want you to look at how you think or how you may expect people to see everything the way you see it, do it the way you do it, feel it the way you feel it. That's a form of self righteousness. Okay, whenever you get in that place, look
at Okay, what is my position? What am I saying should be happening, What am I saying isn't happening, What am I thinking they're doing? What is my position? Because your position is going to determine how you see the experience. And then I want you to learn to look at what is going on and make a clear choice about how you want to participate, if you want to participate. Because I hear everything that you're saying. But I got
two things in mind. Your brother has a malfunction in the chip in his hard drive as it relates to you, and that you function from the position of he's the golden child, you're the black sheep. It's your fault and it's your job to fix everything. And finally be willing to let five years go and you don't speak to.
Your mother, afraid, afraid that if I just let go, let go meaning of the outcome of it, what happens and it hurts me to my core.
Well let it hurt and weep about it, cry about it, and then forgive yourself, not your brother, yourself, forgive yourself for making stuff up. Work with those things that I've given you. And I promise you if you if you shift everything that's going to shift, and stop being the durned black sheet, go get your red dress or something.
I'll do that. I'm going to look at how I see myself. I'll figure that out. Because I feel uncomfortable around them, my brother and my father, I do. I don't feel safe, so I do put a burial one. I guess when I get around them, it's like I have to put this, you know, kind of armor one to protect myself emotionally from them.
Well, no wonder they can't get in to learn who you are today?
Well, yeah, wow, do some work.
Give me a call in a couple of weeks and let me know how you're doing. Thank you, auntie, jama I will okay, sweetie, all right, and go back to forgiveness, go back to that book.
Thank yoga. Wow.
There are two important things to understand when we're experiencing a breakdown or some level of discord in and even relationship. The first thing is this, your position in the matter will determine how you perceive the matter, how you stand in the matter, how you address the matter. Your position determines your perspective. That's number one. Here's number two. It's all about you, boo. It's all about you. It's always about you, no matter what is going on. The other
person may never change. The other person may never see it your way even though you're right. But if you don't shift your position about the need to be right, about seeing it your way about what they need to do. If you're not willing to shift your position, that doesn't have anything to do with them. It's all about you, and the discord will continue until you handle your pisiness.
I hope this has been helpful to someone, and if you have a question about this or any other relationship issue, you can call me live at seven seven five three zero seven seven seven six eight now be sure to follow me on social media for all of the calling times, and until then, stay in peace and not pieces. The R Spot is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.