Momfuel & Mindset - Episode 19: The Re-Connect Room Launch.

In this powerful and deeply personal episode, Jess is joined by her husband, Jim, for an honest conversation about their marriage journey, how they went from the brink of divorce to building a relationship that is now healthy, connected, and thriving.

Before we dive in, we want to acknowledge that Chrissy is taking time away to be with her family during a very trying time. While she is exactly where she needs to be, her heart is heavy knowing she’s missing this incredibly meaningful conversation. We’re holding her close and sending love as she navigates this season.

Together, Jess and Jim open up about the struggles, disconnection, hard truths, and inner work it took to rebuild trust, strengthen communication, and create the kind of marriage they once thought was out of reach. This episode is proof that healing is possible when both people are willing to grow, and that sometimes the biggest transformation starts within.

Jess also shares the heart behind launching The Reconnect Room, a space for women who are ready to stop waiting for things to change and start doing the deep personal work needed to show up as their best selves in their relationships. If your marriage feels heavy, distant, or stuck, this episode will remind you that change is possible.

Listen in, feel seen, and take your first step toward reconnecting.

If you’re interested in The Reconnect Room, let Jess know by completing this form! https://forms.gle/1tPGCqzovgM9rvnLA

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We're back. It's your mom friends. I'm not Chrissy, but I am Jess. And I have a special episode for you today. Unfortunately, I want to give a shout out to Chrissy. She has a lot of life going on right now. And one of the biggest things that we preach here at Mom Peel and Mindset is that we need to take care of ourselves first in order to be able to take care of others well. And her family needs her, her life needs her right now. And so she will be back soon, but she is taking a week off. And I appreciate her giving me the blessing to go ahead and do this episode. It's something that I've wanted to do for a while. And if you're friends with me on Facebook or Instagram, you saw that I announced the reconnect room. And the reconnect room is something that I'm super passionate about. I have poured a lot of time and energy and effort into it. And I hope that it gets used to help women reconnect in their relationships. And so I asked a special guest to join me on my podcast today. My partner, my husband, my best friend, and who better to talk with me about this reconnect space, this journey that we've been on than him to hear from both of us, both sides of our story, to get from where we were to where we are today. So can you introduce yourself and tell your listeners who you are?

SPEAKER_00 1:44

I am Jim and I am Justin's husband.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

And I want to give him a shout-out because I absolutely just put him on the spot and was like, hey, I need you to come record an episode with me. So we have not prepared anything. We don't have scripts, we don't have anything of the sort. This is just us truly sharing our heart with you, being vulnerable with you because change is possible. That is my motto. Disconnect does not mean broken. And if you are in a situation in a relationship right now where you feel disconnected, you feel like roommates, you feel like the divorce or separation is the only next step, I want you to listen to this. I want you to hear us out because we have a story to share and it ends in something super, super beautiful. So can you kick us off with sharing? If you had to describe what our marriage was like five, 10 years ago, at the peak of our disconnection, what would you say it looked like?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

I'd go ahead and say that it was in shambles.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Thank you for sharing so many words.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yeah, I don't know. Just it wasn't good. We weren't connected, we weren't getting along, fought and argued about lots of different things and even small things, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Like even the little things. I think that that was that's one of the biggest things that I talk about in the reconnect room is that the disconnect is made up of a hundred small things, not one huge fight, not one big life change, just a million little disconnects throughout every single day. That ultimately leads to this space where you get to and you realize that there is just such a huge gap between you, and you don't even know how you got there. It was, it was ugly. There was, because I will say this, and I've I've said this before, I've said it on the podcast. We got married, we met, we got married, we had kids, we had Degan, and then like a lot of life happened. He changed jobs. Me being a new mom who had no idea the emotion, the emotional toll that being a mom took on me, and I took it out on him. I didn't want to work. That was never in our cards. I had to work, but dropping my six-week off, six-week old off to my best friend to watch as I drove to work every day. Like it just takes an emotional toll. And we don't spend enough time working on our mental health that didn't even cross my mind. And I just thought, well, this is how the relationship goes. And unfortunately, we let emotions run our relationship and we let we wait for things to change. We hope things will change. We just kind of let life beat us up and we don't do anything to take control of it. And that's absolutely what's what was happening in our marriage. What was one thing that you noticed? Okay, so first, do you think that the separation, because I do get this question a ton, like, do you feel like we would have been able to get to where we are today without the separation?

SPEAKER_00 4:19

No, not at all. I really don't.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

So the separation was necessary.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yeah. I our separation was a little bit interesting because we separated in June. And that following March, COVID hit. It was like, it was only a few months. And then we started co-parenting in the middle of a global pandemic. And so you kind of had to come together in a sense because we were, you know, we were managing kids' schedules, homeschooling. I was still working. You were home. Deegan was racing, don't tell anybody, but we were like escaping the whole COVID world to go down south to get a little bit of sense of freedom because you know the southern states were not living like New York was. Right. I did not go to Tennessee.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

You think Tennessee?

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yeah, I did not go to that one.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

But like even Virginia. We went to Virginia a few times, North Carolina, South Carolina, and nobody was living like that. Once you hit past Virginia, nobody was. And so, so that kind of almost brought us together in a sense of we were going and doing things together, which we had said from the start when we separated that, you know, I went through a nasty divorce when I was a kid. My parents hated each other. And I said to him, like, we're not going to do it this way. I want to do it right for these kids. And so just because things aren't working out between us doesn't mean that we don't still have to be, you know, civil, loving, a family unit for these kids, making decisions for them, for what's best for them. And so we did. People would comment on it all the time and be like, you guys are incredible. And the way that you co-parent is amazing. And I truly think that's maybe because there was still an underlying, you know, love for him and love for each other. And we just couldn't figure out how to, you know, grow as individuals so that we could ultimately show up the best versions of ourselves in a marriage so that the marriage would work. We were truly just letting life beat us up and and our marriage was taking the toll of it. So you believe that the separation was absolutely necessary. I do too. And I don't, I don't think that for everybody that that's necessary, depending on where you are. I think that we were just at a state where we just needed some space to breathe, to see what life is like trying to, you know, on our own, and you just give us that new perspective. But I will say I didn't have any intentions of getting back together. And I would say that to them. Did you?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

No. So either one of us had any intentions of getting back together and mending this marriage. I mean, honestly, we went to file for a divorce and they said because of COVID, it would not be an emergency. So they would put it off for a year to a year and a half. And we were like, well, we're not paying for a divorce that we can't ultimately have. So I myself started to, I noticed it wasn't just my marriage. It was the way that I was acting with my kids and reacting with my kids. And so even take, okay, so say take the separation, right? Like I thought that that would be a relief and a weight lifted off of me, and that would have solved my anxiousness, my anxiety, my overwhelm, my overstimulation, my overreaction. But that wasn't the case. I was still reactive with my kids. I was still super anxious all the time. And therefore, there's still another problem, right? It wasn't just my marriage, it wasn't the problem. I had to come to terms with I didn't want to feel like this anymore. So I still didn't believe that. I still didn't think that, you know, I was doing this for my marriage. What I found was that I was at a place where I wanted to start to take care of myself first. And so I hired a fitness coach, a nutrition coach. I started going to the chiropractor. I went to therapy. I just hired all of these people to surround myself with to ultimately help me become a better version of myself for me. And ultimately, I was thinking of my kids most. Like I want to be, this is not the kind of mom that I wanted to be. I couldn't wait to be a mom. And this is what I, this is what I turned out to be. Like this isn't it. And what I found was that as I started to work on myself, my perspective started to change on my actions and my reactions and the way that I had been viewing him. And I remember sitting in a coaching call with a coach, and I was telling her, you know, that I, my biggest struggle with him was that he wasn't, you know, he wasn't fulfilling all of these expectations that I had for him. I wanted him to want me to be his best friend. I wanted him to want to spend time with me. I wanted him to want to have these deep conversations with me and all this stuff. And she looked at me and said, Are you those things for him? And it was literally like the gates of heaven opened up and the lights came out, and I just was like, a light bulb went off in the greatest of ways. And I said, No, I'm not. He's not my best friend. I don't share all these things with him. I don't want, you know, like, and I I didn't. He was just my, he was, I think we have this like underlying notion that we go through the initial dating phase and the connection is something we constantly pursue. And we're always like we're always pursuing connection with this person. And then once you get married, it's like you, the connection's already there. You don't have to keep working at it. And I just had that mindset, like he'll always be there. But it wasn't something that we continually worked on. We had kids, we had another kid, we, you know, we went through life, we had, we experienced grief and loss and all of these things that can change your perspective, that can wear you down, that can, you know, definitely change your mindset towards things. But we never stayed connected in, like, hey, we're in this together. And when she said that, it was like just this overwhelming, oh my gosh, my whole everything I'm angry with him about, I have no right to be angry with him about because he's not getting that from me. And so as I started to work on myself, I started to see a perspective perspective shift towards him. And and I remember going to him and having a conversation. We were taking the kids on vacation because that's just something we did as co-parents. And I was like, I don't know that this is over. Would you ever consider working on this marriage together? And what did you say?

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

You're a great guest.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

No, no, I I was open to it, obviously, and knew that we had things to work on.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

And so, what are the biggest things, biggest shifts that you started to see in me that you thought, okay, maybe we could, maybe this is actually something that we could do?

SPEAKER_00 10:37

The sobriety.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah, alcohol was a huge, a huge divider between us for sure.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah, that was huge. That was probably the biggest thing, really. And just working on each other, you know, being each other's best friends because we weren't that.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Yeah. So I think that I will say that alcohol is a huge, huge thing. So so getting and I did, I gave up alcohol because it negatively impacted my anxiety. I didn't give it up for him. I didn't give it up for the kids. I gave it up because I'm a better person without it. And once you, it's like you can't unsee it once you do. Once I had so much time without alcohol, and I was like, oh my gosh, like life is better. But I think so much clearer. I don't wake up like anxious or my heart racing 100 miles an hour. And so it did allow me to make much more clearer decisions. I just felt better. And when you feel better, you're able to connect with yourself and you're able to feel real joy. And that's something that, you know, I think that him and I struggled with for a long time because we kind of get to a place in our marriages where they just exist and they're not really fun. And we forget that we're like friends first. We enjoyed each other's companies first, and we lost that art and we lost the piece of that that created this whole family, this whole life in the first place. And we have to get back to being each other's friends. And that's what we did. We started like dating again. We started spending time together, just us. We started just, you know, really prioritizing our time together in a fun friendship. Like now, we're not talking about the the struggles in life, which we do and we did, but we made it a point to like get to know each other again, ask the most ridiculous questions. Uh I just shared in the reconnect room a lesson about how uncomfortable and unnatural it can feel to have conversations that you normally don't. You've gotten to a place where you just don't talk about certain things.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Let's not let's not forget that we didn't do anything together once we had the kids. Right. It was kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, kids. And I was more probably more guilty of that than anybody. Like I had to spend every day with the kids and every night, and that's what I wanted to do. And made no time for the two of us. Zip zil zero. We didn't go on date nights, we didn't do things together. It was the four of us constantly. Not that that's a bad thing, but I think one of the biggest things we've learned is you have to make time for yourselves. We just went on a date night not long ago with some friends, but no kids. And like we had a great time. First time in Idaho. Gonna do it again soon, whether they know it or not. We're gonna do it again though.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

It's true, but I think that you know, society sets this standard of like what being good parents is and what a family should look like. And that includes, you know, your kids take over, they become everything. And you to to set boundaries and and prioritize your marriage first, you will actually get a lot of feedback that that's not true. That's not the case. Like, you're how how dare you say that your kids are not your first priority? How dare you say your husband is more important than your kids or your wife is more important than your kids? What are we showing our kids? Like, we have to understand that what we're what we were showing them as a healthy family and marriage was completely something that I'm trying to deconstruct now. Like, I want them to see us, you know, I want them to see a healthy marriage in us by the way that we communicate with each other, by the way that we handle conflict, by the way that we, you know, interact with each other. What kind of affection do we show each other? What kind of how do we talk to each other in front of them? That all matters because that's what they're absorbing and that's what they're going to grow up knowing as a healthy marriage. And I'm, I'll be honest, for that first eight years of Tegan's life, he did not get a what a healthy marriage looks like. He got a mom who was overstimulated and overwhelmed and would go through this cycle of I wouldn't say anything, I wouldn't say anything, I wouldn't say anything. And then all of a sudden something little would happen and I would blow up. And then we would start the cycle over again. And I'm absolutely guilty of that. If it's if there's one thing I could go back and change, it absolutely would be this. But I can't. And so the only thing I could do is be open and honest and share my story and share our testimony. And and my kids are well aware of what it is. We talk about it a lot. So that ultimately I hope that they can grow up with healthy relationships and and the understanding of what a healthy marriage looks like. So you would say that our biggest shift was the removal of alcohol? Is that what you would say?

SPEAKER_00 14:55

I don't know if I mean you just changed a lot when you know, when we're it's it wasn't about right? Like we I always joked that like, can't you just have one drink? And you're like, no.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Because I'm not fun with just one drink.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Right, like and it's like, okay, like it's so alcohol is not a horrible thing. But if it comes with in if it comes between you, it becomes a horrible thing. Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

You know, it was just so do you think that the changes that you were seeing in me, were they were they provoking change in you? Was it like inspiring any kind of change in you?

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yeah, because I felt like I was getting my best friend back. I mean, and so right, and then when I'm feeling loved and liked and wanting to spend time with me versus all your friends drinking beer for a long time makes me much happier that when we're spending time quality time together.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

And I think that well, it is true because a lot of times in relationships, we wait for the other person. And what happens is the disconnect be continues to grow because nobody's willing to take responsibility or nobody's wanting to say, I'm a part of the problem, and and really owning what they are capable of doing right now. And so what we do is we sit and we wait and we wait for the other person, and the other person waits for us. We are not willing to have a good attitude until they're willing to have a good attitude. And guess what? We're both sitting across the room, not doing anything because we're waiting for the other person to initiate. What I've learned is that we have to be willing to, the only person that I can control is myself. And if I want to be in a loving, healthy marriage, then I have to show up as somebody who wants to receive the same type of energy and behavior that I'm willing to give. And so I can't expect him to do something that I'm not willing to do because that's an unrealistic expectation. And that's just not fair, nor is it real life. I think that this is something that I've learned that I think is I go into more detail in the reconnect room, but it's that the guys tend to be the initiators. Any movie, any Hollywood store, you know, storyline, lifetime movie, book, fantasy, romance book, you know, the guy tends to be the initiator. He's the one who reaches out, he's the one who sets the date, he's the one who picks you up, he's the one who opens your door, he's the one who pays for dinner, he's the one who initiates it. And then when we get married, we still expect that same kind of pampering and love. And we don't, we refuse to be the initiator. So if if we're waiting for them to come to us after a fight to make up, if they're coming to us to ask for what they need, anything of the sort, we're waiting for them and we're not, we're not willing to be the ones to initiate because society says we're not supposed to. But if we are in a partnership where we want a loving, healthy marriage, then we have to be willing to be the own our actions. And sometimes that means being the first one to say, hey, I'm sorry. Hey, I I didn't mean it the way that it came out. Hey, I would like this from you, or I need this from you, or hey, I appreciate what you've done. One of the things that I love that we do now that we never did before was being grateful for the little things. Hey, thanks for unloading the dishwasher. Hey, thanks for taking the garbage out. It's something little that makes me feel good because I'm I want him to know that I appreciate the little things because it does take things off my plate. And I and I know that it makes him feel good because he reciprocates it. Hey, thanks for picking the kids up or doing the laundry or whatever. And those are little things that we've just gotten so far away from that are super easy. I think that people think that when you get to a place of disconnect, it just means your relationship's over. It's ran its course. We've grown apart, we've changed. Well, you're right, you have grown apart and and you're supposed to change. Let's say that. We're not supposed to be the same people we were 15 years ago, 18 years ago. We're supposed to grow. We're supposed to change, we're supposed to think differently. You know, life has happened all through this that affects us and changes us. And I want you to know that that's a good thing. It is a good thing to grow. We have to figure out how to close the gap of the disconnect. Just because you've grown it grown apart or grown into different people or changed doesn't mean that the relationship is over. What would you say? What does our relationship look like today versus 10 years ago?

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Um much better.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

What is your what are things that we do now that we didn't do before that you believe are huge factors in why we have a loving, thriving, successful relationship today?

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Appreciating each other, being each other's best friend, going out and doing stuff like you know, we both being able to both wanting to spend time together. I mean, we both work from home now, so now we're together probably a little too much. But you know, just I mean, I don't even know that we've have we even gotten one argument like since we've been here. Like because we're spending so much time together. I mean, if I feel like if we spent this much time together ten years ago, yeah, it wouldn't have been good. It wouldn't have been good.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

I don't know that we've had like a massive we I couldn't tell you the last time we had any kind of like major probably when I bought something. Yeah, probably. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

You know, it says, I don't worry about my husband's wandering eye for another woman. I worry about his wandering eye for like Kevin from Marketplace who's selling something that he thinks he needs, that we most definitely don't.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

No, we do. We definitely do.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

You were right. And there's times that so we are two totally different people. He very much is the the dreamer, can think, you know, years and years ahead, who's always working on that next thing, who's very green. Anyone who who's done the color personalities or knows about the color personalities, I am very yellow, so I am just like the warm. I don't like confrontation, I like fun, I like to live in the moment. He's very green, so he's very organized, OCD mindset, loves details. Give him all the information. He will research all the information. And to me, that's super overwhelming. And so for a long time, that would clash in our relationship because he would try and talk to me about certain things, eat purchases or you know, uh, business ideas or the next vacation you want to take and and all those things. And it would be so overwhelming to me, I would shut him down. I wouldn't listen. I'd be like, I can't, I can't do this right now. Or it would turn into a fight because I would combat with all of the reasons why we shouldn't do these certain things, but I wasn't thinking clearly. I was thinking from a place of overwhelm and stress and running on E. I wasn't taking care of myself.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

And so let's think of not well, last November I had a conversation with a gentleman on the phone. He was telling me about he wanted to sell a business, yada yada yada. And I hung up and I yelled from the other room, Jess, we're buying the wheel business. That's all I said. And then her reaction was, tell me more. Like, like totally embraced it.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Ten years ago would have been like, the heck you are.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

It probably would have been a lot worse than the heck you are. Because I've learned that about myself. And when you learn about yourself and you get to know about how you respond and react, then you can do it differently. Because just because We were wired a certain way up until this point doesn't mean that we have to be wired the same way moving forward. And so even when he comes to me now with, you know, some kind of idea or thing he wants, for the most part, for the most part, I will I'm laughing because I told her that I'm selling my side by side, our side by side and buying a new one.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

And she said, no, no. And yesterday she was at the dealership sitting in it.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

I'm just not convinced that we need. But again, my only concerns are, you know, like make sure it's a good purchase that's going to last a long time and all of those things. And and there was a time when I did not trust him. And that I think is where the reactions were rooted in was I did not trust him to make these decisions and make them wisely. Now I have a different perspective on him. I know that he's so detail oriented that I don't have to worry about something because when he makes a purchase or he makes a decision, it is very thoroughly thought out. It is very thoroughly looked after. And he's done his research. And so the cow's hockey. Right. I tend to, I now have a different trust and outlook on him that he is capable of making those choices. And he's doing them for the best interest of our family, which is something that I've is a learned skill for me. It was not something I knew. I was not, I didn't grow up in this, you know, having a healthy marriage outlined for me where I knew that this was could be a healthy family dynamic. And so I'm learning this as I go. I'm learning as I grow. And so that peace, that trust piece between us has absolutely grown, grown. And now I know that I think that that's where my my the peace comes from when he comes to me with a decision or an idea that I just trust that he's going to do the necessary legwork to make sure to make that right choice for not just himself, but our our entire family. I also think so, I also think I'll say that for myself, the biggest, the biggest change in us is our communication. Our communication was horrible. And I think that there's so many reasons that I could unpack why that was. But I'll say this that it's almost easy to pour your heart out to somebody in the beginning. Like you're young, you're you're just it feels easy and efforts effortlessly. He's always been a great listener, even in the beginning, and he's always been super thoughtful. So, but as life happened and as life kind of beat us up, and as we were going through this, and as the disconnect was growing, I will say it is harder to communicate with somebody the more disconnect because you don't feel like you can be vulnerable. You don't feel like you can share what's actually going on. And so I did sit across from him when we decided that we were gonna work on our marriage, and I said to him, we are going to do things differently. We have this really cool, unique opportunity to change the story. And so we get to decide from here on out what this marriage, what this relationship looks like. And that means we're gonna do things differently because you can't do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. That's the definition of insanity. And so we, I said to him, like, this is really cool. Like, we get to decide what this looks like. We get to prioritize our relationship. We get to say no to things that we don't want to, we get to say yes when we do, we get to re-rewrite what a healthy relationship looks like to us and to our family, not based off of anybody else. Because to be honest, when you separate for years and come back together, people do have things to say about it. That'll never work. I can't believe you guys are doing that. And what's change? Nothing changes. And we get to, we get to prove them wrong still today. Every day we get to prove people wrong who think that you cannot come back from a separation or from an extreme disconnect. And we're walking proof that you actually absolutely can. And I will say that communication requires getting uncomfortable. It get it requires sitting down and being super vulnerable and saying, this is what I need moving forward. This is how I see things. When you do this, it makes me feel this. When I do this, the reason I get upset is because of this, and really understanding where your emotions are coming from and telling them, explaining to them. We tend to keep quiet and keep things in and we don't want to, and we don't share enough and we don't communicate enough of what's actually going on in our side of our bodies. Because honestly, sometimes we don't even know where they're coming from, which is why we have to work on taking care of ourselves and and learning about ourselves and connecting with ourselves first before we can connect with somebody else. What would you say to a husband or a wife who feels like roommates right now with their spouse? Where would they start? What would your advice be?

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Communicate. Communicate. I mean, figure out where the disconnect is and I think you hit the nail on the head with the communication part. I mean, you have to have that open line of communication and be able to talk to each other and listen.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Without getting defensive, without getting right, like just shut up and listen.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Right. Just for the when I when I would say, I'm gonna do this, and then I got no. Now I'll be like, I'm gonna do this, and you're like, no. And you thought up with a laugh.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

It's just a force of habit. Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Right. So but you know, it's it's been a big change. Like I said, I said we're gonna you know, we're gonna buy this business, and you know, she was all ears, and it wasn't long before we bought the business. So I think the communication part of it, and can't lose the communication. And if you have, you have to start communicating, you know, and like you said, sit down and have a heart to heart.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Get uncomfortable. You have to get uncomfortable. How do you feel about the reconnect room?

SPEAKER_00 27:40

I think it's great for you. I think it's something that you have a lot of passion in. And I see the work that you're putting into it. I think it's pretty cool, and I think it's gonna help a lot of people. And I hope it does help people because then it's gonna make all the work that you're putting into it that much better. And being able to share that our own story, you know, is eye-opening to us and a lot of people. Starting it.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for letting me tell our story because I don't I don't know that that's something that I actually ran past you before I just started blabbing it.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

So uh yeah, it's about an hour ago.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

But that's my hope. That's my hope and my goal for this whole the reconnect room is a app that you can download. There's going to be sections for you're gonna be able to download it for free. There's gonna be stuff that you can access for free. There is inside of the reconnect room the reconnect framework, which is a eight module, 32 lesson video, PDF. You just get to you get to learn. You get to open your eyes and your heart and your mind to learning a different way. If you truly feel like this relationship is something that you're not finished with and and you just but you just don't love the the direction that it's going, know that at any point in time you get to change direction. We try to control things in our life that are completely out of our control. And we devalue the the things that we actually can control. And this reconnect room, the goal of it is to is not marriage therapy. It is not to husband bash, it is to work on you. It's to open your perspective, it's to get you reconnected with yourself so that you can reconnect with your partner. And ultimately, my goal for it is is to help women and moms everywhere, even if the relationship is irreparable, that this is going to help you tremendously in your own life, in your own world with your family. Yeah, it has to be. Yeah. And it is. It is. Can't leave out the guys. That's right. Can't leave out the guys. And actually, a lot of the lessons in the Reconnect room have things that, you know, it's getting, it's learning about yourself and it's learning about your partner. Because I think sometimes we do lose sight of that. They're humans also. They're going through their own struggles. They have their own wiring. What's happened in their life that's got them to where they are right now. And can we see them differently? Can we see their perspective differently based off of that? So learning about yourself, learning about your partner, and then coming together and learning about each other. I hope that anybody listening to this can know that it's not over. And I say that it's easy for us to say because we did the work and we're sitting here, but I know that there's so many relationships that think that they're at the end because they just don't know how to find their way back. And my goal for the reconnect room is to help women and moms and guys, they should, you know, the couples together come back together, relearn what a healthy, healthy relationship in marriage looks like. Because if we can change that for our next generation, if we, if our kids can grow up in healthy marriages, healthy homes, what an amazing opportunity we have to change the next generation of what family looks like for them. And I think that's my goal is to just be a resource for families. There's a lot that goes into this. It is a huge mindset shift. It is a huge learning. These are learned skills. This is not stuff that you are born with. You should not just know how to do this. And if you don't know how, it doesn't mean that your marriage is over. It means that you have to learn these skills and learn these character traits, learn these abilities. They're like muscles that you have to exercise. I don't, we don't always get it right still. But where there's an awareness now that was never there before that allows us to say, you're right, like, okay, I didn't handle that the best, or I'm sorry, or hey, can we talk about what just happened or the way that we handled something with one of the kids? We're able to come together and do it in a calm, cool, collective kind of over date-night dinner conversation of what happened, how did it, where did that come from, and how do we do different moving forward? And that's what we're two imperfect people who have committed to creating a life together. And that is when we take that divorce and separation off the table and we say, okay, we're just imperfect people trying to wade through life and get through life and create something amazing for ourselves and our kids and future, future generations, grandkids, great-grandkids. It lifts a weight of, well, this just doesn't work because we've grown apart. I want to remind you that you're supposed to grow. You're supposed to do that. So I'm excited about this reconnect room. I really am looking forward to it. I submit the app here soon for publish approval. There's coursework in it, there's calls, there's group calls, there's one-on-one calls with myself, there's journals, there's community conversations. So people who are going through the same thing. And I think I want to make that clear that if you're somebody, this is a touchy subject for a lot of people. So I get a lot of inboxes where people aren't comfortable sharing publicly what's going on in their lives. This can absolutely be something that you download and do just yourself. Just you, just you and your partner. You don't ever have to interact with other people if you don't want to. On the flip side, if you are somebody who's looking for community, who's looking for people who are in the same situation as you and who want to grow and learn and change, then this also is a community-based app for you. So there is opportunities to connect with other people, to hear other people's stories, to share, to ask questions, and to just be relate relatable. So there is that opportunity as well. There's links to all different kinds of resources in there. And so I'm I'm really looking forward to the release. And if you want to be on the release email, so when it goes live, you will be the first to know. Be sure to reach out to me directly, comment on this video. And I ask that you share this with a a friend, a family member, somebody who might be in this situation in a relationship that could use some support because that's my goal is to be able to be reachable. I would like to thank James for joining me today. I really appreciate you sharing your side of this. And maybe we'll have you a guest again when Chrissy can join us.

SPEAKER_00 33:52

Oh, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

All right, we'll see you soon.