The Divorce Insurance Idea Nobody Thought Would Work by Ron Platt

SPEAKER_05 0:00

He goes, Hey dad. I'm like, hey, could you tell your friend to leave? He's like, okay. And he asked his friend to leave. He goes, What's up? And I went into his bedroom and I took out the suitcase and I started throwing all the clothes in there. And he's yelling at me, What are you doing? What are you doing? And I was yelling back, You you literally broke every rule I had in this house. You skip school, you're doing drugs, and I went through the whole list and I said, Clearly, you don't think this is a place you need to be at. I took all his stuff, opened up the front door, threw the suitcase out the door, and said, Get out of my house. Broke down crying hysterically because I thought I just failed this kid and called Amy up my support group, and she said, Uh, he'll be back in two hours.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

There comes a moment in every parent's life when the role they've known for years begins to change. The children they once carried, guided, and protected become adults. And suddenly the questions become different. How do you stay connected without holding on too tightly? How do you continue loving well when relationships become complicated? And while every family is different, no parent should have to navigate these questions alone. Each week, James Moffat brings together experts and parents who have walked this road before to explore the realities of parenting adult children. Through honest conversation and practical wisdom, listeners find hope for the journey ahead. Whether your relationship is thriving, strained, or somewhere in between, there is hope, there is healing, and there is always the possibility of a stronger connection. ABC's apparenting adult children. Helping parents navigate loving their adult sons and daughters well.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Hello and welcome to ABC's A Parenting Adult Children Podcast. My name is James Moffitt, and I will be your host. Our special guest today is Ronald Platt. Ronald Platt, how are you doing? I'm doing great today, and I really appreciate you having me on your show. Absolutely. I'm excited about the conversation we're going to have, and I'm sure that the uh listening audience is going to uh benefit from it. So go ahead and introduce yourself to the listening audience, please.

SPEAKER_05 2:11

Yeah, absolutely. So I am the co-founder of the National Association for Single and Divorced Families. I kind of like to think of us as the AARP for the divorce and single family community. We provide products, services, support, and resources for people who are in the process of getting a divorce, currently divorced, or have a single family household. And we have the only divorce insurance product on the market that guarantees child support and alimony for if the person who's paying dies, becomes disabled, involuntarily unemployed, or has to declare a business bankruptcy because of the economy, they have had to close their business. We will continue paying the child support and alimony payments for up to a year.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Wow. That is absolutely amazing. Uh many moons ago, when I first got married to my first wife in 1988, 89, I guess it was. Robin. We weren't married for that long. Thanks to the in-laws meddling in our our marriage. And uh we had a we had a son, Jeremy Moffat, uh, that came out of that relationship, which I'm very thankful for. But I went through an ugly divorce and uh her her parents went out of their way to make my life miserable and even decided that I would not have any rights to see my child. And I was working as a security officer making I don't know, eight or nine dollars an hour, if if lucky, if i it was that much. Yeah. Renting a room in a house, and I had to ride the bus to go to pick him up and see him. Anyway, I got an attorney and uh I I'm not really sure, even thinking back on it, how I was even able to um afford her. But she um she absolutely got me um visitation rights to my son. And I I kind of wish that your organization had been uh in in effect back then because you would have been a huge help. I'm sure that my listening audience probably has dads or moms that have been involved in separation, divorce, whatever, and uh child support visitation and all those topics are relevant to that conversation. So tell me how did you get involved in all that?

SPEAKER_05 4:32

So I was in the insurance industry about 24 years ago doing product development with my dad. People came to us for really niche type insurance products like hole-in-one insurance. If somebody hit a hole-in-one and they had a million-dollar prize, that that million dollars would be insured, keyno games in Vegas. I'm gonna date myself, cell phone warranties, things that nobody else was able to do. We were Lloyd's uh brokers, so we were able to place it through Lloyd's of London, or we found other markets for it. And my dad, I always said, was an idea man. He every day he'd walk in with a different idea. I'd be like, Dad, we can't do that. We can't do that. We can't, you know. So we're sitting, we're sitting we're sitting at lunch, and he says, you know, I always wanted to come up with a deterrence product that would guarantee child support and alimony. And I thought, well, that's brilliant. Actually, let me mark that one down. That's a better one. And I said, you know, we have an association that's being used for something else right now. Why don't we cater it to people who are getting a divorce and have a single family? And he goes, That's brilliant. And I went back to my computer thinking somebody must have already thought of this. And he went back to his to think, you know, there has to be an insurance product out there that does this already. And we both came back and said, No, it's this is crazy. There's 26 million people out there that are single and divorced families that don't have any kind of association to help them. They don't have any child support insurance that's out there right now, and two million people are getting divorced every year that need it. There has to be something. So, anyhow, I call my dad the the pit bull because he just wouldn't let it go. And he tried for 30 years. God bless him. He went to every insurance company. He went to insurance companies that did credit insurance, which is very similar to support insured, which is what the name of the insurance is. And they all said no, they didn't want to get in the divorce market. So we kind of tabled it, and then I came across probably about two years ago, an investor that said he was looking for several levels of residual income. And I said, How about one and you don't need the others? And I got this great association I want to start. And so I sent him the business plan and three, four months of questions and answers, and he came back and said, We're gonna pass. If it's so good, why hasn't somebody else done it? And I thought, well, we've tailored ourselves after AARP. If they've got 36 million members and 2 billion in revenue, why hasn't somebody competed with them? And he goes, Yeah, I know you've said that, but we're gonna go ahead and pass. So I'm I'm pissed because I've gotten excited, I've updated the business plan. You know, I've got I'm calling my little contacts again to see if they're still in, and everybody was excited that I was getting back in the business. So I'm driving home and I thought, you know what? My dad always said, you know, you got to put your money where your mouth is. So I came home, I asked my husband, we need to mortgage the house. Are you okay with that? And he's risk adverse. So he's like, well, tell me the pros and cons. I said the pro is we create a billion-dollar business and give three-quarters of it back to our society, to our community, to what I want, which is our uh uh advocacy towards foster care reform and family court reform, uh, and we give it back to our society. Worst case scenario, our mortgage payment's $1,000 more than what it is right now. And he said, Well, we can afford that, so you know, I know how long you've been wanting to do this, let's do it. So between that and about $150,000 in credit card debt, we we started at ASTF. And there you go. Shortly after that, an old buddy of mine who has been kind of in this journey with me, with this association, said, Hey, did you ever place the insurance? I said, No, he goes, I think I have somebody I want you to talk to. So he gets this 70-year-old underwriter on the phone, who I I love the 70-year-old underwriters because they were the original risk takers. And he said, What do you got? And I said, Well, I got this support insurance policy. I'm trying to get placed. Send it over, send me the rate, send me the policy, everything else. Two weeks later, he calls me up and he says, We're gonna do this. I like this. Why hasn't anybody done this before? I'm like, it's exactly what I keep saying. He said, No, let's go ahead and do it. I'll underwrite it for you. So, roughly about six months ago, we kicked off support insured. And I always say there's there's good news and bad news. The good news is I have no competition. The bad news is I have no competition. So you really have to start from scratch. You really have to inform the family law community, you have to inform the public. There's there's no uh hashtags, you have to create them. You have to start from scratch. And as much as it's beginning to pick up momentum, and everybody that I'm talking to about it loves what we're doing, loves what the product is, has begun to start selling it, wants more information on it, it's it's it's a slow process, but it is picking up and it's creating lots of financial changes for people who before had no other options other than life insurance.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Absolutely. Well, that's that's an incredible story. So you and your dad were just out at lunch one day and you were talking about investment opportunities. Of course, when it when did your when did you actually when was this when was this vision born? Well, that's when it was born, thirty years ago.

SPEAKER_05 9:14

Thirty years ago, okay. Yeah, it wasn't an investment, it was an idea that he had. Right. And and we had sought investors we about probably about uh twenty eight years ago. There's a funny story that goes with this. So I'm also a realtor. I I I left the insurance business, became a realtor. I'm working for a different company than I am now in the design district in Miami, Florida, and it's a storefront. So I'm there on a Saturday because you know, realtors work seven days a week, and there's somebody banging at the door, and I go to I look, I'm like, who is that? So I open up the door, and it's these two really burly guys, and one of them says, Yeah, we want to see the restaurant next door. We're interested in getting into the restaurant business. And I'm like, Yeah, come on in, let's have a conversation. So I'm looking it up, and the guy's looking at my business card, and he's studying my business card, and he looks up, he says, You're supposed to be doing something else besides real estate. And I go, Yeah, I'm trying to start this association and and get this insurance product in place. And he goes, How much do you need? Back then I needed five million dollars. And he goes, looks at his buddy and he goes, We can do that. I'm like, What? He goes, Yeah, we know we know people. And I'm like, Well, who are you? Right, exactly. Well, I we call him Joey the bodyguard. So Joey was the bodyguard for the wealthiest people in Miami, and this guy frickin' knows everybody. And if he doesn't, he'll figure out how to how to reach out to people. So we came pretty darn close. Uh we had somebody who was in, and about two days before he was supposed to fund our business, he called and said his wife just asked him for a divorce and he has to hold off on the investment. So once again, it was tailored, everybody was very disappointed. Joey's been staying with me during this journey, and he's the one that picked up the phone and said, Did you ever place the insurance? And he is the one that had that contact for me. So we again, my dad and I were not able to, we didn't have five million dollars, you know, uh to do this. And it doesn't cost five million dollars now because the insurance company that took it over, that's the majority of where the money was going for. So if you're still we're still looking for investors, if you're out there, of course, we don't need five, we'd be happy with a million to go ahead and really blow this nationwide, but we're making progress. But we've got a great publicist that we just hired, and she uh is gonna be putting me on the CW channel starting this week. Uh we're trying to get it to the Wall Street Journal, trying to get into Time and uh Newsweek and all the other major uh periodicals. I'll tell you what I do need. I'm gonna do a call out if you if I may. Yeah, go ahead. People with contacts in the credit card business. I am looking to develop a credit card specifically for legal fees, mediation services, and court costs. There's a credit card called Care Credit. I don't know if you've heard of it. Synchrony Bank is the one who initiates it. They only cover for cosmetic surgery and pet care. It's kind of an odd combination, but that's that's what they do. I need a niche like that. I need a credit card that would only cover these three things with somebody that has a 550 credit score because we have a lot of members whose partners control their finances and they've decided they want to go ahead and file for a divorce, but they can't take the money out of the account without telling the partner, and of course they're not going to release the money because you know they don't want them to go out and hire an attorney. So if they go for free legal advice, that organization's gonna look at the revenue between the two of them as to what they both make, and most of the time they don't qualify. So this person is stuck. They either have to go to families or they have to go to friends to ask for the money for the $5,000 to hire the attorney. And we've heard this so much that we've said, you know what, let's establish a credit card specifically for that. But I don't have a lot of connections with credit card companies. So if anybody in your audience does, hit me up at info at nasdf.org. I'd love to hear from you. Info at what? N-AsDF.org.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Cool. And we'll put that in the show notes as well. So let me ask you, I know you adopted a son. Kind of tell me about your your family dynamics and how that came about.

SPEAKER_05 13:07

So I was so I was in a toxic relationship for 14 years. This was prior to before the LGBT community could uh get a get a uh marriage license. I got into a relationship that was similar to my upbringing, which was uh conditional love. So that's what I'm used to. That's what I'm gonna get into in my first relationship, and no matter how much I did or how much money I made or how much love I showed or what have you, it was never enough. So I'm a little I can be a little dumb sometimes, and it took me a long time to get through that relationship, but when I finally did end the relationship, and I can that's a whole other story I can get into. I went to a visit a friend of mine in LA, and I get off the plane and he says, Hey, our plans have changed. I'm getting my foster kid today. And I was like, Oh, he says, Can you take this journey with me? And I'm I'm an yeah, I'm up into everything. So I watched his this is a a kid that he had been mentoring for two years prior to him deciding to become a foster parent. And when he got the kid, when you when you're a foster parent, they give you the a book, a binder of their history of what they know about this kid. Right. And there were two books, two binders, and he gave me one, and I gave he was looking at one, and the kid is on the floor coloring and doing his thing. And when you read the book, it was the kid acts out, he speaks in tongues, he he fights, he he's bad in school, all this kind of stuff. And I'm looking at the kid and I'm reading the book and I'm looking at my friend and I'm going, Did you experience any of this in the three years you've known him? He said, No, none of it. And I said, How's he doing in school? He says, Doing pretty good. I'm like, okay. So we're watching, he invited other foster families over to celebrate the fact that he was getting this kid. We wanted him to feel good. All this I watched the whole experience and it was nothing but love. And I thought to myself, I never thought I'd have my own children, but this would be a great outlet for me. I was a youth group advisor when I was in my 20s. I I had 15, 13, 14-year-old kids that I was advising, and it taught me a lot about them and and of course my own experiences. I thought, I could do this. So I get back to Miami, I go to a networking event, this woman gets up and says, Hey, I'm I'm opening up an LGBT foster program that takes in LGBQT uh kids, foster kids. We need to match them up with a single and coupled LGBT families. And I thought, I looked up at God and went, really? Like, okay, clearly this is meant to be. I stepped up, I said, I'm in, what do I do? So we were part of the first group that children and family services had put together to really handle these kids that were either being abused or were being mistreated in their foster homes. And I went through the program the day I got my license, Amy handed me my license. She goes, Here's your license, there's your kid. I'm like, Whoa, wait a minute. What kid? What I can I like to meet this kid? She said, Yeah, he's homeless. You got three days. There he is over there. I'm like, okay. You know, so anyhow, so I met Michael, which was his name back then, uh, who was 13 years old, and he was homeless. He was staying at a f at a uh another foster family's home. And uh and I took him to lunch, we hung out, we went to dinner, uh, spent about two days with each other. I took off for work to really get to know him. I said, Look, I don't, you know, I've got a two-bedroom, one bathhouse. I wasn't expecting to bring anybody into it. Uh the second bedroom is empty, let's go shopping for a bedroom set. And he went, A what? I said, A bedroom set. He goes, I I've never had a bedroom set before. I said, Guess what? You're gonna go ahead and we're gonna go shopping and you're gonna pick out a bedroom set. And he was like a kid in a candy store. Oh. Picked out. Picked out a set, it was delivered to the house. We had to buy sheets and everything else. He came to me and came to me with all of his clothes in a in a plastic bag, which is unfortunately very typical of foster kids. They go from home to home putting all of their belongings in a plastic bag. First time he had drawers, he had a nightstand, he had was able to decorate it however he wanted to. And it was it was a very challenging experience because he came with baggage. He had been in the system for nine years. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, he was he had been in the system for three years at that point. He got in when he was nine years old. And his mother was a drug addict, his father was a drug dealer. They had had a good family life up until he turned nine, where his his father had a good job, his mother had a bachelor's degree, she had a good job. They got involved in drugs and everything fell apart. And the reason why he got into the system was because he was home taking care of his mother, who had overdosed, and he had been out of school for three or four days and they wanted to know where he was, and somebody sent him to the house, and and family services picked him up and took him and put him in the system. So it was not a good situation, unfortunately. And before he got to me, he was at another gentleman's house who said, I will keep you forever. And it was the first time he actually felt comfortable, and then that person changed his mind. I don't know what the situation was, but again, he was back in sit in the system. And then I get him and say, You'll be here forever. Of course, he didn't believe that. So there were a lot of challenging moments. Sure. At one point, we had had we had very specific rules. I'm gonna be very honest with you. I, you know, I knew he smoked pot. I wasn't gonna stop it, but I said, look, you can't do it during the week. You know, you've got to be able to do it. I don't want you on the streets doing it. You know, do it out in the backyard on the weekends. I need you to be completely with it when you go to school Monday through Friday. Um, I want you to get a job. He was turning 14. I lived two blocks away from a busy street where there were restaurants and clothing stores and everything else that it was a very LGBT community. I knew most of the people that own those restaurants and stuff. I went to them and said, could you give my kid a job? They were more than glad to do it. It was a great environment for him to be in, taught him responsibilities. I got him out of a school where it was a school for kids, troubled kids, and I was able to get him into a better high school, uh, which was a new thing for him. There were a lot of changes going on. He challenged me at one point where he was skipping school and he had been doing drugs, and his sister called me and said he's at home right now, you know, he skipped school, blah, blah, blah. And I said, Okay, and I came home from work and I walked in. I see, he goes, Hey, dad, I'm like, hey, could you tell your friend to leave? He's like, Okay, and he asked his friend to leave. He goes, What's up? And I went into his bedroom and I took out the suitcase and I started throwing all the clothes in there, and he's yelling at me, What are you doing? What are you doing? And I was yelling back, you literally broke every rule I had in this house. You skip school, you're doing drugs, you're and I went through the whole list and I said, Clearly, you don't think this is a place you need to be at. I took all his stuff, opened up the front door, threw the suitcase out the door and said, Get out of my house. Closed the door, broke down crying hysterically because I thought, I just failed this kid, and called Amy up, my support group, and she said, uh, he'll be back in two hours, I promise. And two hours later, he was knocking on my door. I opened it up. He says, Can I come in? I said, Come on in. We sat down from across from each other and he said, You said you'd never throw me out of the house. I said, Correct, as long as you follow the rules. Like this is my house. At the moment, you're a guest. I would like to make this more permanent, but I don't care if you are my kid or my foster kid. We have rules in this house. And you just basically blew them all off. So that's what happens when you when you uh blow off the rules. You you get thrown out. Do you want to do that again? He's like, No, and I said, Great, then let's stick, let's create a new program. So I think it happened one more time, about six months later, and then he really got it. But to be honest, between you and me, the the breaking point was, and I did not realize this until he was much older and he shared it with me. About a year into it, he got arrested. He went to visit his mom. She gave him a Xanax. He was hanging out with his sister. They uh went to the metro rail station to go somewhere. He decided to jump on off the platform and down to where the rail was. They had to close the entire system throughout the county, and they came and arrested him. And they called me immediately and I went down there and I saw him and his eyes were bloodshot. And I looked at his sister and was like, What the hell? And she says, I I guess my mom gave him a Xanax or something. I'm like, why? Why? And she goes, I I don't know. And when I picked him up from jail later that night, I went off on him. I mean, I'm banging on the steering wheel, I'm screaming, and you take a lot to get me pissed. But when you get me to that point, I'm like spitting and I'm yelling and I'm banging. I'm like, you know, I'm trying to give you a a security, a secure home. I'm loving you unconditionally, I'm I'm there for you. You know, we're we're good doing all and I'm like, I'm like just I'm having it. He told me it was about three or four years ago, he's now 37. He said, When you were yelling and screaming at me in that car, that's when I knew you were in. Because somebody who didn't love me would not have gotten as angry as you did. And that's when things really changed for me in my relationship with you. And I thought, wow, thanks for challenging me. Like, that's what it took.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Wow, what a story. That's awesome. So your foster. Child. He was he was already LGBTQ. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:03

When I can't when I got him. Yeah. He identified with that. Yep. And that's part of why he was being abused. That's why uh the kids were beating him up and stuff. And he now might, you know, he's a big kid. So I mean, there's a picture of he and I. I'm in my twenties, I think, in my late twenties, maybe my mid-30s. And he's 13, and he's about um four inches, five inches taller than me at 13. Wow. Yeah. So he was slender and tall.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

Right. Well, it's um nice to know uh and it's comforting that that there is a support system out there for those children. And it's nice that the community that you are in was able to to help him and that he was coming into a situation that he was familiar with and felt supportive or s felt supported as an individual, as a as a child, young man, whatever you want to say. Interestingly enough, my first son, Jeremy, he passed away in uh January of 2025. He, at some point, I don't know what point it was, but anyway, at some point he did he came out as as being gay. I remember while his mother was still she has since passed from some sort of kidney disease. I think it's been probably five or ten years now. Anyway, my son was going to get married to some guy, right? He and I were not real close because I think in uh October of 1997, uh the job that I had at Herman Hospital as a network engineer uh got dissolved because they sold it off to his Com Disco up in the northeast somewhere, and all the regular employees scattered to the winds, and I was left with a contractor as a boss, and we left. I went to Atlanta, Georgia, and went to work for Del Delta Airline uh as a contractor, as an IT contractor. And so, in retrospect, that kind of blew up my relationship with him because, you know, out of sight, out of mind, you know, hindsight's 2020, always is. And um he came out as gay at some point, and he his mother, Robin, uh, was in and out of relationships after we got a divorce. It was a bad home environment for him. And I I take full responsibility for my part in all of that. I was not there in his life physically like I should have been. And, you know, I I kind of wished I'd have done it different, but I didn't. So he told his mother that he was, you know, she got married uh to uh this fella that was working with the VA. And uh he had a you know, he lived in Sugarland, Texas, had a nice house, been with the VA for a long time, director level, blah, blah, blah. So he was very stable and he brought uh a stable home uh for Robin and Jeremy to be in. They were married for, I don't know, ten or fifteen years, I guess, before she passed away. And anyway, he told his mom that, hey, I'm in love, I'm getting married to this guy, whatever his name was, and ex-wife, yes. She she was active in the Southern Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist Church, and that denomination was not supportive at all of you know LGBTQ plus I can't get all the alphabet soup stuff. But anyway, uh she was not supportive, and she said, you know, and they were very close. They were very, very close. And she said, she says, I can I can tolerate a lot, but that I will not tolerate because of what the Bible says, blah, blah, blah. And she says, I will not support you in that marriage. I will not show up at your marriage, I won't be have any part of it. Well, because they were so close, that kind of tore him up. And he had a he had a very difficult time with that, and that didn't add to his mental stability at all. And he and I had a conversation. I talked to him on the phone, he he asked me to borrow some money here and there, and I I loaned him what I could, or i.e. gave it to him, and it wasn't much, you know, and he was struggling with keeping a job and all of that. Uh, he had multiple partners. And I I talked to him on the phone. I said, Jeremy, I said, look, I was very honest with him. I said, I don't understand the lifestyle. You know, a lot of circles, there's a lot of debate as to whether it's a lifestyle or you're born into it. I don't know. I'm not an expert in any of that.

SPEAKER_05 29:37

It's been proven to be part part of how you're made up, it's part of your brain. There's scientific evidence to show that it is part of who we are as as a physical being.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

I got you. Well, you know, my my conundrum was that Jeremy's my son, right? Mm-hmm. I love him. And I said, I may not understand your lifestyle or your choices, but I said, I can still love you as your father. I'll still be here, I'll still support you. I said, my my hope for you, Jeremy, is that you're healthy and that you're happy. And whatever that takes is fine with me. I said, your relationship with another man is none of my business. I said, that's we all we all wind up at the pearly gates the same way, and we all have to answer for our life, right? Yep. And so it's not my job to judge you, it's my job to love you. And and that's what I told him. And I and I hope he got that. I hope he understood what I was saying was from my heart, and that I meant it. I meant it. I said, and if you get married to some guy, I may understand it, I might feel kind of weird, but I'll I'll be at the wedding, I'll I'll support you, you know, because ultimately this is your life, and I want you to be healthy and happy. And um that never happened, as far as I know. And then in in uh January of 2025, he wound up in the intensive care unit with RSV of lungs. I guess that's an infection of some sort, and it turned into full-blown pneumonia. He was in the he was in the ICU for five weeks, and I was in contact with his father-in-law and his best friend's mother during the entire five weeks. This was like uh the first part of December in 2025, and uh I was hopeful that he would get out of the ICU, go into a long-term care facility, and at that and at that point that I would be able to make the trip from Charleston, South Carolina up to Michigan, where he was, and visit with him for a week, you know, and try to uh rebuild, you know, build a bridge and rebuild our relationship. You know, something that'd be manageable or whatever. And uh well, it never happened. You know, he and he weighed a lot, he was like over six hundred pounds. And uh I think I think ultimately he had a he had a couple of heart attacks one night, and that's what did him in. Yeah, you hear that. Yeah, and so I I have had a couple of well actually you're the second LGBTQ plus uh member on this podcast, and I know I don't know. I don't get a lot of engagement from my podcast audience. I think I've gotten two comments in the last three years on on uh whatever platform Apple Podcasts or whatever. And so I don't have I don't have a lot of engagement, so I can't really tell what the demographics of the audience is. But I can't help but feel like that there's a mixed bag, that there's, you know, people from all different you know demographics.

SPEAKER_05 32:40

How do you say that? So, you know, I when I finally sat down and told my grandmother I was gay, she was probably the last person on the list. And on ever I was sitting at her kitchen table, she's eating breakfast, and and I leaned over and and I said, uh, this is a woman who went through the Holocaust, who was in hiding in an attic with my mother who was five years old, who lost her husband to our to be being killed in Auschwitz, who survived it, remarried, and I'm sitting across from this woman who's in her 80s, and I'm about to tell her I'm gay. And I and I leaned over and I said, Grandma, I have something I need to tell you. And she said, What? And I said, you know, I'm I'm gay. And she she looked up and she said, Um, my love, what goes on in your bedroom is none of my business. And that word, that those words verbiated in my head because that's what it really gets down to. You and I are the same person, and and I don't want to know what goes on in your bedroom, and you shouldn't want to know what goes on in my bedroom, and that's it. You know, other than that, I'm I'm man, I'm masculine, I'm run two businesses, I run an organization that is non-political, non-uh, you know, uh religious. We try to be as middle ground as possible because we want to help as many people. That's it. I'm a human being. You're a human being. And that's what it breaks down to. And then she, of course, said, by the way, is so-and-so your partner, and I said, Yes. She goes, I like him. She was, it was like, and she went on eating her breakfast like it was no big deal. And I think good. That that's how a majority of the people should be handling it because it really isn't. You know, when we so my mother-in-law, I've since gotten into a I'm in a 16-year relationship. I'm loved unconditionally, I've found my soulmate. And my mother-in-law did not come to our wedding because she is Baptist. And she did not, she didn't like me at the beginning. She didn't want to be a part of it, she didn't like the fact that her son was gay. And she and I, she has since come around, and we have been able to have a conversation. And I said to her that that really the Bible stuff that you're studying, that that was all changed in the 50s. Prior to that, there was nothing mentioned about gay, there was nothing mentioned about one man shall not lie with another. You know, the whole context in the Bible, one man shall not lie with another. There's there's more to that line than the way it's interpreted. And once the once it was changed in the 50s, they realized that they had made a mistake, but it was too far, it had already gone too far for them to change it. So I always tell people, you know, you need to look a little further in the Bible than what you're reading in front of you. And when you say, well, it's God said no, and I said, Well, which version of this Bible are you reading? You you gotta understand that not everybody's gonna fit into a cute little box. You know, not ever not everybody's gonna have the lifestyle you want. Not everybody, you know, your daughter might come in with blue hair one day and you're like, oh my God, nobody has blue hair. Right. More kids these days are fluid than ever before because it's more about the connection with the person than it is about the sexuality. And I think it's hard for people to get out of their comfort zone. Like they keep saying, I'm not comfortable with that. You don't have to be comfortable with it, right? True. Your parents weren't comfortable with half the stuff you did. You know, I look at my the way my son is raising my granddaughter, and it I want to pull my hair out because he's like, Oh, that's not going to affect her. That's not gonna affect her. That everything affects her. I remember my mother changing my diapers when I was a baby. So I I have a great memory. My granddaughter is freaking brilliant. She's six years old and she sets shits with me. We saw each other because they live in Coral Springs and I'm in St. Pete, which is across the state. But we I saw her a couple weeks ago and she sat with me and she said, Dad has a really bad mouth on him, uses a lot of cuss words. I wish he'd stop. And I said, Yeah, I've talked to him about that. She said, Maybe you should take a belt to him. And I looked at her and went, Oh, what? And she goes, Well, you need to do something. And I'm like, he's a 37-year-old grown man. I can't tell him not to, but you can. And she has, and she knows, and he knows it bothers her, and it drives me nuts that, you know, I've said, You've got to watch your mouth around her. And he's like, Oh, it won't affect her. I mean, she's gonna talk like a sailor someday, and then it's gonna suddenly affect you. So, you know, I can't change that. He's not raising her the way I would like him to. I can't do anything about that as a grandpa. So I always say, in the most uncomfortable times in my life, that's when I've grown the most. And every time I get comfortable, the universe shakes me up and says, You're not done yet. You've got more to do. And it's going to get a little uncomfortable before you see the see the light at the end of the tunnel. So for those people out there who are like, well, I'm not happy that my kids are LGBQT, I okay, get used to it. You know, it's it's it's how we are physically. They have science has proven that there is a part of our brain that is different than yours. And it and it just is what it is. And if you look at my family lineage, it's on my dad's side. So it's not, it's definitely heritage, it's been inherited. I have cousins. I have my sister came out later in life. It's they've got he showed me a picture of this uncle of his that probably a great-great uncle that killed himself that stayed single his whole life. I mean, it's you can trace it. So if you can trace it, it's not a lifestyle. Believe me, I would not have chosen this lifestyle. And I have dated men and women, and in my body, I am just more comfortable with men, and that's it. So it's really none of your business. Other than I need to be able to have a support team. These kids are out there, unfortunately, in abusive homes where parents are not accepting of it, in foster families that are not accepting of it because of the religious element of it, and they are being physically and emotionally abused by it, and that is sad. Right. So when I was able to bring my foster son in and say, you are in a safe environment, and I introduced him to people in the LGBT community who were attorneys and doctors and teachers and tradesmen, and said, There is a life out there that is normal, that is safe, and you can be a part of it. It gave him a foundation that he had not seen before. And I think it's made him a stronger man because of that. So it's never been an issue. And what I also find interesting is that I've had friends say to me, You seem very comfortable saying that you have a husband. And I said, Because I am. And I think the more I say it, the more it becomes natural. And the more people and and if if you've got an issue with it, then that's your problem. And we can not, you know, have a relationship. We it's okay, you go your way. Or, like my mother-in-law, you delve into it a little deeper and say, Why, why is it? And and I by the way, I still have these deep conversations with my father-in-law, who's a military guy. And um, and and my brother-in-law came out, and he has a really hard time with that. And I've sat with him and said, What is it? Like, why are you so affected by that? And he looked at me and he said, I don't know. I don't like it. I go, I get that you don't like it, but why are you so adamant about it? And he stares at me and he goes, I have to think about that. I'm like, Yeah. Because it really doesn't affect you. It's not to say that your son's not going to have children someday. They can definitely have children. He might have a normal life. I he's doing phen I said, your son, not my husband, but your other son, is doing phenomenal. I mean, I I'm so proud of my brother-in-law and what he's accomplished. Why aren't you focused on that? And that's what it really gets down to. So yeah, that's my take on it.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

I think that there's been such a stigma attached to uh people being gay through the centuries, through the decades, whatever. You know, especially in the like you said, in the 50s and 60s, uh people just didn't come out and it was just wasn't discussed. And I'm a child, I'm a baby boomer, I'll turn 65 this year, and I remember way back when in the six seventies, I guess, uh late seventies, early eighties, one of my cousins came out that he was gay. And I don't I don't think my dad's side of the family appreciated that. And I don't believe I don't think he went out when my grandmother was still alive. I don't I don't believe he might have showed up at a couple of Christmases, but for the most part I think he kind of stayed to himself. I didn't really know him. I was a child at that time, and I didn't really understand all the dynamics of all that. I just knew that my grandmother was the glue that kind of held the family together, and everybody showed up at Christmas, you know, to be with her and to see her and love on her, and and of course after she passed away, that kind of all fell apart. But same with us, by the way. Huh? Same same on my family. Right. So in the sixties and seventies, and maybe even the eighties, there was a huge stigma on on that community, and I know that since then there's been a lot of changes. There's been a lot of changes in the courts, been on just a lot of changes that have allowed the gay community to enjoy some of the privileges for now. Deny them. For now. For now. Unfortunately. Well, I just uh I'm just trying to be as transparent. Yeah. No, I get it. And honest as I can be.

SPEAKER_04 41:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:00

You know? I'm I'm straight. You know, I've been married to my wife, who's straight, you know, for the last 35 years. And I'll I'll even and by the way, I'm cool with that.

unknown 42:09

Good.

SPEAKER_05 42:10

Good. Thank you. I mean, I have my straight friends out there too, you know. God bless them. I I've learned to accept their their lifestyle.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

There you go. Well, I just I I I have because Jeremy was was gay, you know, I've had to broaden my horizon horizons uh mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And I go to a I go to a uh a non-denominational church here in the Charleston area, uh coastal community church. And I remember we we've been there about 15, 16 years, I guess, and the church has just exploded since then. And we we met in a the fellowship hall, which was our main sanctuary at that time, way back when. And I remember that gay female couple, they didn't corner the pastor or anything like that, but we were all, you know, just milling around and talking after the Sunday dinner, and she one of the one of the ladies said something along the lines of Does your church approve of gay relationships or gay marriages or something like that? And I I was I was not part of that conversation, but I was like within listening distance over my shoulder. And I don't I don't know what my pastor said other than I think what he said was very acceptable to them. If you're not denominational, they they're usually pretty open. Their message is that of love, that God loves you. And and they from time to time, we'll talk about sin a little bit, you know. The ultimate message is that God doesn't care who you are, what you are, wherever you've been, what you've done, he loves you. And there's room for you at the foot of the cross. The whole time I've been there, I have never heard him make a negative comment about any group of people, you know. All groups of people have their issues, right? We're none of us are perfect. Nope. We're all born into sin. We you know, we need Jesus, we need his love. And how you how you make your way to the foot of the cross, if you do or don't, that's totally in your in your It's up to you. It's a relationship, right?

SPEAKER_05 44:12

I So anyway, I'm part of the A member of the Chabad organization that belongs to a Chabad is a a sect of Judaism that tends to be more religious-based. And I helped one of the rabbis in Miami buy a house and I got to know his family and everything else, and then he asked me, Are you gonna join my shul, my temple? And we went for coffee, and I said, you know, I I I've been affiliated with the Chabat in Coconut Grove. I felt a little uncomfortable there. Uh I want to make sure that you understand I'm I'm gay. And he looked at me and he said, Aunt, and I said, Well, you know, I know you're more the religious side, so he says, Look, Chabat is all about bringing Jews and back into our fold, regardless of your belief systems, you know, or who you are sexually or physically or whatever. We just want we want our people back, and that's and that's what it breaks down to. So uh he he went a step further and invited my husband and I over to dinner, and then invited us over for dinner again, and then my my husband and his wife hit it off, and it's it's been an accepting community, and I and I like their belief system. It's like we don't care. We just want you to be part of our temple, and that's what it really breaks down to. You know, everybody's different. And if you got to accept people's differences, or you don't, and just you know, stay in your little box. That's cool. But don't but don't dislike me because I'm outside your box. I I think that's part of what the uncomfortableness that we're experiencing our in our society right now is that people don't want to be uncomfortable and they don't they don't want to broaden their their mindset. They don't want to think that there are other people that have different faiths, that have different ways of living, that have different belief systems, different ways of loving, and it's uncomfortable for them. And it's a shame because not everybody if if everybody looked the same, if I lived in a neighborhood where everybody looked like me, I would hate it. You know, I intentionally moved into a neighborhood where there's a lot of diversity because I want to be able to say hi to all my neighbors and and learn from them. Because if I if I just hang around people like me, I'm gonna be bored to tears.

SPEAKER_02 46:19

Right. Well, let's let's circle around, circle back to the foster children sort of thing. Yep. So you've worked closely with single and divorced families. What are some of the biggest challenges parents face once their children reach adulthood? Great question.

SPEAKER_05 46:34

At what point do you stop being a parent? You don't. You don't ever stop being a parent. You don't. Nope. I think it actually gets harder once they become adults. I've heard certain parents say, I want to be a friend to my my kid, and I get that, but uh that's a good that's good to be a friend when they're an adult, but as a child, you need to be a parent.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

Right.

SPEAKER_05 46:52

With my with my son, there are still a lot of challenges that I have. He Has issues with addiction, mental uh mental health. Uh, he's able to support himself. He's able to be a good father to my granddaughter. Uh, but and and he's been sober for I think over a year now. But it's kind of like this wave that we go through that we know that there's going to be really good times and then there's gonna be really challenging times. So I'm I definitely still have to be a parent to him, be more of a sounding board. Uh I hope that when your parents, when your children grow up, that you become that sounding board. You become a place that they can go to for advice, that you are, that you keep yourself updated enough as to what's going on with society, what's going on with the trends, everything else, so that you don't say, well, back in the day, which we're all going to do, is say, you know, back in the day, we didn't handle it like this. But be able to say, you know, I know things are different now, so here's here's my opinion. I think people have to adjust to their kids becoming adults, and that you can't necessarily control them as much as you used to. Right at all. I think that's a challenge. And by the way, it's completely different when you become a grandparent because then you really get frustrated. And I've hung out with other grandparents going, I am going nuts. And they're like, all of us are going nuts. Right. We all want to parent our gr our grandchildren differently than our kids are doing it. But it's definitely sometimes a reflection of how we raised our children is how they're going to raise their children. So hopefully you do a good job. And I always say, make sure to have two funds, one for college and one for therapy.

SPEAKER_02 48:23

That's funny. What are some healthy ways parents can set boundaries with adult children without damaging the relationship? Don't enable.

SPEAKER_05 48:31

I learned that now. You have to let them make mistakes. As much as you want to be able to try to save them, coddle them, prevent them from making mistakes, it's only until they make mistakes that they learn. They're not going to necessarily follow the way you want them to follow. They're self-thinking individuals. They're going to come up with their own ways of doing things. And and you know what? Many times their ways are better than ours. And it should be. And there's many times when their our ways are better than the way they're doing it and they're going to make mistakes, but you got to be able to sit back and let them make those mistakes and then be there to help them get out of it sometimes. You know, with me, I've always said to my son, you know, I'm here for you, but don't come to me for money because you still haven't learned how to manage that part of your and I've shown him how I co-parent with this other person, with Amy, who actually put the program together, and I can get into that whole conversation later. But she has shown him how to how to manage his money, and he still doesn't get it. And it's like at some point, you gotta drop to the bottom before you understand. I mean, I had to hit bottom financially before I figured out how to handle money. My parents, my dad was an entrepreneur, my mother had a uh got a paycheck every two weeks. So I got to see both both ways of how they lived, and unfortunately, I inherited more of my dad's side of the finances, but uh and I've always made good money, but I've never known how to manage it, and it wasn't until I lost everything and had to start from scratch that I really got it. So I've said to him, You're gonna have to hit and he has hit the bottom a couple of times, and he still doesn't get it. And I can sit there and verbally show him and I can physically you know show him how to do it, but the kid's gotta learn on his own, and he's 37, so I can guide him, but I can't enable him. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 50:17

Oh, absolutely. I I remember well, I remember two things about money. The first thing was very shocking when I got my first paycheck. In my head, I was like, okay, I worked 80 hours this week and I'll make X amount of dollars per hour, so I should see you know, my net income should be that amount of money. Right. Well then then I discovered that Uncle Sam had his paws in my money and was taking 20% of it. Yeah, he had a business partner. I was like, what? I was mad. I was mad as a wet chicken or mad wet wet hen, whatever. And and so that was I remember that. That was a slap in the face. Yep. And they're still doing it. Yep. Uh to a large degree. And luckily I'm making a lot more money than I did back then, but still there's the more you make, the more they take, you know? Yep, yep, yep.

SPEAKER_04 51:07

So unless you got a good CPA.

SPEAKER_02 51:13

So so um the second thing I had to realize, uh that was very important, is you have to budget for your living expenses. If you don't if you don't pay your rent, they kick you to the street. If you don't pay your car payment, they come take it. If you don't pay the light bill or the water bill or whatever bill it is, utilities, uh, if you don't make those payments, they come cut you off. And you're sitting in the dark going, How did this happen? And you you you know, that's how you learn. You like, uh, if if I want to continue to have lights 24-7, I need to continue to pay the light bill every month when it's due, or make payment arrangements arrangements on it, or whatever. Most creditors work with you if you just talk to them, right? To a certain degree, they will. Uh but those are the two things I had to learn the hard way, you know. And once I learned that, I learned how to budget. You know, I got a spreadsheet, you know, I w I know everything that has to get paid and when. Yep. And those things get paid. Yep. And then what's left over is is for me, you know, that's my play money, that's my podcast microphone money or whatever, you know. And uh so anyway, it's an important skill.

SPEAKER_05 52:21

My son was getting ready to buy a car and I said, Okay, so we're gonna get a used car. Let me send you, go over to Auto Trader or KBB.com and let's shop. And and I, you know, showed him he wanted something with low mileage, something to da-da-da. And I went through this whole thing and he's listening and he's listening, and and he shows up at my house with this newer looking car, and I get in the car and he goes, It's used, I promise. I went, uh-huh. And he goes, Look, it drives by itself. And I said, uh huh. So that's you know, that's 2025 technology. Mm-hmm. Like, how dumb do you think I am? And once again, you didn't learn the lesson, but okay. So it's it and the car eventually went back to the uh the the company that was financing it for him. It's you can show, but they gotta make their own mistakes.

SPEAKER_02 53:05

And it's it's very frustrating. Absolutely. So how do single or divorced parents navigate maintaining influence in their adult child's life, especially when family dynamics are complicated?

SPEAKER_05 53:17

God, I wish I had the answer for that one. I think it's uh it's patience, it's deep breathing, right? Right. And it's an understanding that your kids aren't imperfect. I'm trying to think what I do is I kind of have to like I keep saying, I have to sit back and let him make mistakes. And try to advise him when I can't. Yeah, it's I'm gonna ask you that question. What are your thoughts? Exactly. It's a hard question to answer.

SPEAKER_02 53:42

Yeah, life is messy. Yeah. And and families are messy. There's a lot of emotions. There's socioeconomic parameters that have to be dealt with. It doesn't matter, gay, straight, you know, it's all the same. Yeah, absolutely. How do you navigate maintaining the influence? I would say that hopefully you have developed a close relationship with the child as they were growing up, that you were mentally, emotionally, and physically available and present in their lives. And if you if you have that basis, that base relationship, and you're close to them and they know that you love them, then you want to tell your children, especially your adult children, well, you know, preteens, teenagers, those are ripe years or times in their life where they can really screw up. And so, you know, I'll tell you, like I told uh one of my other guests the other day, I had a daughter who showed up, she was 16, 17 years old, 15, I don't know. Uh Katie and I were in the in the kitchen by the stove, cooking hamburger helper and talking about our days, whatever, you know. And I out of the corner of my eye, I saw my daughter walk into the kitchen. Half of her head was shaved, the other half was full blown hair, and it was purple. And I thought to myself, what in the fruit loops is going on in my mind, you know? And I just kind of raised my eyebrow and just didn't pay a whole lot of attention to her, and then I looked at her and said, Okay, so that's that's what's happening today or this week, huh? Yeah. And she was like, Yep. And uh, and and I was like, I wasn't happy with it. I didn't approve of it. I don't know where the hell she came up with it, but she was she was, you know, coming into her own, and she decided she was going to cut half her hair off and color the other half purple, and she was gonna be happy with it. And I wasn't necessarily happy with it, but I was like, okay, uh that's that's the that's the flavor we have today.

SPEAKER_05 55:48

Self-expression. It's a blessed thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:50

Yep. Yeah, and so and so those moments are gonna happen. They're gonna come to you and say, I'm gay, you know? And you're gonna have to figure out a way to navigate that and and still love them.

SPEAKER_05 56:02

So there's uh scientifically, it shows that a child's brain, boys' brains are not formed until fully formed until they're 25, and girls' brains, I think, are 21 or 22. When you understand that concept, it gives you a little bit more understanding of why they're making the decisions that they're making. And I try to advise other parents the same thing as like, why is my kid doing that? He's being so stupid. I'm like, how old is he? He's like, oh, he's 21. I'm like, yeah, they don't get smart until they're hit twenty-five.

SPEAKER_02 56:27

Yeah, the female gender seem they their frontal cortex seems to, they seem to mature a whole lot faster than the males.

SPEAKER_05 56:34

Yeah, and and I'm sure you came home and did something your dad thought was crazy. I know I came when I got my ear pierced the first time, I'm sitting across from my dad. I'm like, what do you think? Expecting to get a rise out of him. And he said, I was thinking of getting one. I'm like, okay, I guess I gotta try something else. But you know, it's I mean, overall it was a pretty good kid. I didn't really step do that much that was out of out of sorts, but you know, I kept trying to get a rise out of my dad, and he was just like, Yeah, you know, I thought about that too. I, you know, and sometimes that's the best way to handle it. You know, maybe your daughter when she came home, like you turned her and say, Hey, uh, what do you think if I did that? I I was thinking of cutting my hair and turning it purple. What are your thoughts? And she'd be like, Oh, dad, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 57:11

You know. Well, I have to confess that I'm somewhat old-fashioned. You know, I was raised by a very affectionate. I'm 60, so we're not far off in the U.S. Well, my dad was a drill instructor in the Army for 26 years. My mother was Austrian descent, and so she was raised in Europe. Yep. Over in Europe, and they were there was no such thing as latch key children in Europe. Uh a lot of times the grandparents lived with the parents and took care of the kids while mom and dad were off working or education or whatever it was that they were doing. And so my my parents really expected a lot of perfection. Kids were to be seen, not heard. We'd go over to our relatives' house for whatever reasons, whatever celebration, and we would sit on the couch with our hands in our laps, and we you don't speak unless you're spoken to. And if you got out of line and you acted like a child would running around, you know, then we'd get a uh whooping, good old-fashioned whooping when we got home. And uh sometimes you didn't make it out to the car before you got that old-fashioned whooping. And uh so that's that's that's the that's the childhood I had. I think that parents, one of the ways that parents go sideways is that we have a picture in our heads, we have expectations for our children that may or may not be realistic. You know, if you're my dad was a TV man, that's how he made extra money to put food on the table after he got off of his day job, he had a big shop out in the backyard with you know, back when TVs had gas tubes in them and all that stuff, and transistors and capacitors and blah, blah, blah. And uh I learned quite a bit about it when I was a teenager, and he wanted me to be a TV man. He wanted me to inherit his business. And I was like, hmm, no. I had no desire to be the TV man in Quinlan, Texas when I grew up. And uh I think that parents go sideways with and there's nothing wrong with having some expectations. There's nothing wrong with expecting your your offspring. One of my friends calls them loin fruit loin fruit. There's nothing wrong with your expecting your loying fruit to be uh a productive member of society. You want them to be God-fearing, you want them to be law-abiding, uh, you don't want your child to turn into a drug dealer or pimp or a prostitute or whatever you know you can think of. Right. So we so we have this vision of our in our heads of what we expect our child to become. Uh and uh all of that's kind of encapsulated in that, right? And and so if you're an attorney or you're a doctor or you're a phlebotomist or plumber or whatever, whatever your whatever m pays the bills, um, just understand your child, they've lived around that and they've seen it. That might that might not be them. They may go, I don't want to be a plumber. I don't want to be a doctor, I don't want to be a whatever. I want to be me. And that's fine. So, so tell your child, I don't care what you want to become, just become it and do good at it. Do the best you can. Be the best plumber, the best police officer, the best doctor, the best whatever, whatever trade or profession that you want to engage in, we're here to support you and you do it. But you're not gonna be in my basement at the age of 38 years of age playing video games on my internet and eating all of my food. Exactly. So, so so there's got there's gotta be healthy boundaries. Yeah. Right? And so, and I and I hear I hear a lot of I have a lot of support groups online, and I read a lot of diatribe, you know, paragraphs. You know, these they're not even paragraphs, it's just they start at A and end at Z, and it may be 50 lines of of text of all the stuff that the parents are just twisting around in their head and and just spitting on my microphone. I've got to quit doing that. But anyway, you know, they're just they're just all balled up in anxiety and and and kids do stupid things. Kids break boundaries, they push buttons, they they have friends you don't approve of, they like to drink and smoke pot, they all this stuff, you know. But but at the end of the day, they're your kids, and you gotta love them. And and as they grow older, they you're gonna have to give them you're gonna have to give them space to become become the adult that they're gonna become. You may not like it, you may not approve of it, it may not be your bag, but it's their life.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:53

It it's interesting you mention this. My husband was brought up with a father who was in the military and then became a fire chief. His mother went to work for the county shortly after she got out of high school. So they got a paycheck every two weeks. And here comes my husband, who's a creative and wants to do different things, and every time they bring he bring it up, it was no, no, no, no. He says, you know, I want to be that. No, you can't be that. You gotta, you know, every single time he wanted to do something that might have been creative, it was a no. So he goes to college, and it his dad comes home with uh two applications, one's for the police department and one's for the military. And he says, Which one? Now my husband is pursuing his degree, you know, he's uh I and he had to sit back and say, Well, I don't want to be in the military. Okay, so maybe I can do some good if I become a police officer. And he became a police officer and uh two or two years into it, he realized this is not for me. And then he meets me and who grew up with an entrepreneur, and I and I and I watched him put on the uniform. I'm like, you're not happy. And he's like, No, I don't enjoy my job. And I'm like, go do something else. He's like, Well, I can't. I mean, what else am I gonna do? I whatever you want. He goes, Oh, I can't. You know, I I I've got to do this. And I said, So let me introduce you to my sister, who's a career consultant. I want you to work with her and let's see what happens. So he worked with her for two months, and she got him to understand that all those things he wanted to do as a kid, he could do those. Those are all occupations that pay. Nobody's saying no anymore. And he allowed himself to explore and and and left the police department and actually became a fashion designer, went from being fashion design to management. He has both a business brain and a art brain. So I mean it's unusual. Usually you're either an artist and you're bad at business, or you're good at business and you know there's only one half of the brain that you're he can use both sides. So he's got this unique pattern of being able to be good at business and artistic at the same time. And he's gone off to do lots of different things. And what's interesting is that his parents are watching. And yeah, they didn't like it when he left the police department and decided to become a fashion designer. And they really thought, oh, you're gonna fail, it's gonna be miserable, you're gonna be poor. But then they watched him succeed. And as much as his his dad didn't like it, his mom suddenly had to realize. I remember when she retired, she said, I finally got my getting out of jail card. And I thought, so wait a minute, you've been working for the county for 30 somewhat years, and you thought that was jail? Like you hated your job so much you you thought it was jail. So now she watches her son explore, and it suddenly her mind begins to explore. Like, wow, what else can I do now that I'm retired? And then her her other son just they never said no to him, and and he got into the arts and decided when he went to college he was going to go to California, but got his degree, and now he's working in Hollywood, and he's a dancer, and he's a producer, and he's a writer, and he's an agent. And because they allowed him to explore that side of him, he's gone through this whole process. And my husband, who's 10 years older, is still going through that process, but it was because of me saying, you can do whatever you want. You know, figure it out. So it's it's interesting that the influence that our parents have on us. My dad said was very adamant I was going into the insurance business. My mother was adamant I was going to do anything but insurance. And I ended up going into the insurance business, working with him, not kind of fell into me working for him when I came out of college. It wasn't what I intended. And then I became more successful than he did at a younger age. And instead of instead of appreciating and taking pride in it, he became very envious. And I eventually had to leave his company and open up my own firm because he just could not accept the fact that I was making it at a much quicker age than he could. So here's two dynamics where one kid went into the parent's business and the parent was, you know, just was not proud of it, but envious of it. And you had another kid who went into what his parents wanted him to do, got out of it, started exploring what he wanted, and then the other parent said, huh, I wonder what else I can do because of the influence of her children. So I think it's pretty cool to see the two dynamics.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:04

Absolutely. So I'll make this the last question, okay? Can you share a powerful story or a moment from your experience, either through N N A S D F or fostering that really changed how you view parenting? It's got to be through my own kid.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:19

I always try to bring him up with unconditional love. That he's gonna make mistakes, I'm still gonna love him, I'm not gonna make my love for him conditional. But when he had asked me to adopt him, he was not at a good place in his life, and I said to him, I will adopt you when you love yourself as much as I love you. And that process took about another three years before uh we went through with the actual adoption. And years later, during COVID, I'm in therapy and we're talking about conditional versus unconditional love. And I s and I said, Well, I raised my son unconditionally, and I even said to him, you know, I'll adopt you when you love yourself as much as I love you. And my therapist stopped me and said, That's conditional. And I thought about it and I thought, yeah, you predicated your love for him on a certain standard, as opposed to just loving him for who he was. And I realized I screwed up and I called my son up, and he's now he's 37 at the time, I think he was 34, and I said, Hey, I gotta have a conversation with you. And he said, What's up? And I said, I screwed up. He goes, What do you mean? I said, You remember that conversation we had when you asked me first to adopt you? And he said, Yeah. I said, Do you remember my response? And he said, I do. And I said, So that was conditional love. And I screwed up. And what I should have said is, let's go through with the adoption. I could have handled it differently. I want to know, I want you to know that I apologize for that. And he got really quiet. And he said, Do you know how much that means to me? And I said, We have to understand as parents that we're not perfect beings and we do things to our kids that sometimes we just have to apologize for. Right. And I don't I don't care if they're adults, if they're kids. I grew up in a very violent household. My father never hit my mother, but he sure did beat the crap out of my sister and I more than he should have. And it would have meant a lot if my dad had said, Yeah, I didn't handle that correctly. I should have done better. I never got that response I got, well, we did as best as we could. There was no manual, and you know, you know, it is what it is. And it would have meant a lot for my father to have said, Yeah, I screwed up, I should have done better. So that's my advice is your kids will have a great deal more respect for you when you s when they realize that you're not perfect and that you have faults. And if you apologize to them, it allows them to realize that they don't have to be perfect, and it's okay if they do things and they apologize and they recognize it and they want to do better. That's huge. And that's probably my biggest advice.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:47

Absolutely. That's wonderful. So, Ron, thank you for being on the podcast episode today. I really enjoyed our conversation. And to the listening audience, I want to say thank you for the privilege of your time. Thank you for listening to the ABC's Parenting Adult Children podcasts. Parenting adult children can be challenging, and becoming a grandparent sometimes adds a whole new layer to the relationship. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who's a parent is parenting an adult child or navigating life as a grandparent. And remember, parenting doesn't end when they turn 18, just changes. And if somebody needs to get would like to get a hold of you, Ron, how would they do that? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:26

So you can go to our website at nasdf dot org. You can email me at info at nasdf.org. All of our social media sites are just the same without the dot N-A-S-D-F-O-R-G. That's Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. We have some great podcasts on there. We have some great videos on there if you want to get to know who we are, if you want to get to see who's working with us, check us out on YouTube. Again, NASDF.org, and you'll also see the support insure tab on there on the right side. If you click on that, there's a whole question and answer. There's a way for you to apply right there online. The premiums are on there. It's not expensive. Consider becoming a member today. It's only $19 a month, and you get about, I don't know, six, seven, eight thousand off.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:12

All right. Ron, thanks again for being here. It was great talking to you. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on your show. All right. Bye bye, everybody. And uh we'll we'll see you again next week.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:24

Please tune in next week for another episode of our podcast on parenting adult children.