Baggage Claim
Baggage Claim is a space for blended families, marriage, and friendship.
Here, we dive into real-life conversations about the ups and downs of relationships, from navigating second marriages to unpacking the baggage we all bring. Hosted by Greg and Jessica, who both have rich experiences with love, loss, and family, this community is about sharing stories, learning together, and growing stronger as couples and individuals. Grab a drink and join us as we unpack, laugh, and claim our baggage—one conversation at a time
Baggage Claim
Unpacking the Elephant
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The hardest part of a blended family is rarely the schedule on the calendar. It’s the unspoken stuff: the grief nobody names, the loyalty kids feel in their chest, and the pressure adults carry to make it look “normal” so no one asks questions. We go after that elephant in the room one bite at a time, with honest stories, a little humor, and a lot of real talk.
Greg and Jess unpack why so many stepfamilies avoid the word “blended” in the first place, and how comparison to a nuclear family model turns simple differences into shame. We talk about what blended families deal with that “first families” don’t: split holidays, shared custody logistics, family photos that take a miracle to schedule, and everyday tension points like clothes that disappear between houses. We also share why having clear goals for your home matters, even when there is no one-size-fits-all playbook.
Then we get into the most emotionally loaded layer: loss and loyalty binds. We explain why a child can miss the old family and still love the new one, and why adults have to model emotional maturity when kids talk about the other household. You’ll walk away with practical action steps you can actually try: naming one thing each person misses without fixing it, giving kids explicit permission to love stepparents and bio parents, and identifying the unspoken rules that are running your home.
If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with a friend in a blended family, and leave a review so more families can find the conversation.
Welcome To Baggage Claim
gregHey guys, what's up? I'm Greg. I hope you guys are ready to unpack and get into some good conversations today.
SPEAKER_03And I'm Jess, and this is our podcast, Baggage Claim. Thank you for joining us.
gregWhat's up, Baggage Claim? How's everybody doing out there today? Thank you for taking the time to join us as we jump into some fun topics. Baggage Claim is a place where we create some community, hopefully, and some conversations around blended families, marriages, relationships, and maybe a lot of fun stuff in between. So welcome. If you call Baggage Claim your podcast, your thing, you know what to do, grab your favorite drink, pull up to the table. I can tell you it's a Saturday and we're recording, so it could be a little off the wall, could be a little crazy, different than usual, and that's okay.
MichaelUsually we're here at like 10 o'clock at night recording. Now we get just midday Saturday.
gregYeah, it's midday Saturday. So it's it's gonna be fun. But I have a question for you for you two, producer Michael and uh Miss Jess Suka. I don't know. When you go to school, they call you a different name, and I call you Jess.
SPEAKER_04They call me by my last name. It's Miss Peck.
gregYeah, it's just weird. Miss Peck, our uh Mr. Johnson. It is so
The Elephant In The Room
gregweird. So hard for me. How do you eat an elephant?
SPEAKER_04One bite at a time.
gregThat's exactly what we're gonna do today. We're going to eat an elephant. And I'm gonna teach you how one step at a time. Um, some and so the idea is we're talking about what we call the elephant in the room. Now there's lots of elephants and lots of different things. There are a lot of different things. And elephants are cool. They're just really cool. If the ones in the room, I have to do it.
MichaelOh, I saw a picture of that. I mean that's some deep Facebook stalking.
SPEAKER_04You showed it to me weird. I did, okay.
MichaelThat's like from 10 years ago.
gregSo there's there's all kinds of weird things with elephants, like there's funcui of enough elephants in your room, if it's facing inward, outward, the decorative elephants. Good luck, it's bad luck. If there's two elephants facing the door, yeah. So there's all kinds of stuff with that. We're gonna talk about the ideas, we're gonna talk about the obvious thing in blended families that we don't talk about. And so we just, you know, those things that are out there that we know we should address, we should talk about, but we never really do uh in blended families. We're gonna get into some reasons of why we do that, why we don't do that, some some ways of how do we attack this elephant and eat it? Not say we're slow down, Peter. We're not promoting eating elephants on on our podcast. That is not the frame of this. Um, but the idea is that we can conquer this really big topic, really big subject, one step at a time. So before we get into that, we want
Lost Luggage And Frontier Chaos
gregto talk about. Did you know, this is a little fun fact for you guys, because I'm all about fun facts. The 7% of luggage goes unclaimed every year. That's close to 1.8 million bags in the world are lost around the world every single year.
MichaelOkay, first off, the fact that 7% is 1.8. Did you say million or million?
gregYeah, I think it's million. It could be either way.
MichaelLet me look just to make sure.
gregYeah, you got the glasses everywhere. Thank you. For my blind self, and it is gone. I don't know where it's at. All right. Yo talks amongst yourselves while I Google that again.
MichaelThe fact that seven percent is one point million anything.
SPEAKER_04That's why I said in the word.
MichaelYou know, I was thinking like pounds or you know, you're talking about weight, but simply the fact that it's 1.7 million bags, that's insane.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's a lot of bags.
MichaelAnd that's just within one year? No, I say U.S.
greguh airline was roughly two million bags. U.S.
SPEAKER_04airlines. This is in America.
gregUm merchandise roughly a year, while globally air carriers mishandle around 36 million bags annually. So a lot.
MichaelThat's a lot. And that's only 7%?
gregNo, that was a different. Okay, U.S. rate roughly 5.5 or six bags are mishandled per thousand passengers domestically. Globally, it's six point three bags per thousand passengers. I mean success rate's ninety-nine point three percent.
MichaelThat's pretty good. So most of you people are getting your boat luggage. But still, if you've been on that, what, 0.7% of life, it's rough.
gregSo we were on a trip, we were supposed to go to um Mexico and we flew the good old what was that? Frontier.
SPEAKER_04Frontier.
gregFrontier. Yes, yes, it was Frontier. Do not fly Frontier uh International. No, I can clearly say no.
MichaelIt's like I will gladly say that.
gregYeah, I will gladly endorse, don't do that. Well, we and a bunch of our other friends went to the international terminal at Atlanta because it's an international flight.
MichaelRight.
gregWell, Frontier doesn't have an international terminal, and they don't tell you that. So we're so we finally get the bus, we get back over there. Well, the time we get over there, we're waiting in line. I tell the guy, hey, we're flying to Mexico, here's where we're at, our flight leaves here. And he goes, just get in line. I was like, but our flights about. He goes, just get in line. So I get in line. Time we get up to the counter, she goes, Oh, I'm sorry, we're not boarding that flight anymore. It's already done. Well, I've been standing in your line for 35 minutes.
SPEAKER_04And we literally have tickets for it. How did you fill it up when you're there was like a dozen of us standing there with seats for that?
gregAnd so along there was a bunch of other people that did the same thing as us, and they were behind us. So I can hear the uh colorful language coming from down the aisle of people banging the desk. And so I took a different approach.
MichaelMm-hmm.
gregLike this sweet lady, and I was like, ma'am, she goes, We can't. I was like, what's the fastest way for me to get to Mexico from right now? What's the quickest way? And she on her little computer and she goes, I can have you tomorrow tomorrow. I can have you there tomorrow at eleven in the morning. Yes, okay, I'll do that. What do I have to do? You have to go to Denver tomorrow.
SPEAKER_04Go to Denver right now.
gregLike it's leaving in uh less than an hour. Can you do that? And I was look- I looked there and I was like, Absolutely. And so I looked at Jez, I was like, get what you need out of your bag.
SPEAKER_04And I'm panic stricken. I don't do well with surprises like that. So I just froze like a deer in headlights.
gregI was like, get what you need. And then we're gonna we're we're going to Denver tonight.
SPEAKER_04And so we literally Meanwhile, we had already checked our luggage. Our luggage was in Never Neverland.
gregYeah, it's already gone.
SPEAKER_04All we had was our little bag to carry on.
gregYeah, so we Hang on. So you'd already checked luggage at this point. Yes. Yes. Well, no, at that point we could take our luggage, but she said, here, get what you need out of your luggage. I'm gonna check it. It's gonna be in Mexico waiting on you.
SPEAKER_04That's right.
gregShe says you can't go to Denver with you. And I was like, I forgot about that. Fine. So we get what we need. She checks it, goes. So I'm getting on the phone trying to figure out, hey, oh, because we had a transfer from our airport to our place. I'm getting all that sorted out. And then I get on the I get on the World Wide Web, thank goodness for internet. And I was like, if we're in Denver airport, where can we stay? And it's like, oh, there's several hotels that run shuttles from the airport to their hotel.
SPEAKER_04There's no hotels at the end of the day.
gregDenver is in the middle of the house. It's in the middle of nowhere. Literally in the middle of nowhere. It's like they went out in the middle of the desert and built that airport. There's a lot of conspiracy. I've never had to sing over the night at Denver. But we had this idea because Georgia was playing and we were traveling. So I was like, let's have a beer from every single bar in a Denver airport before we catch our hotel. I don't think there were that many. Oh, there's a lot of things. There's more than you think. There's more than you think. But we we had an iPad and we had the Georgia game on because we I mean, thank goodness the YouTube TV, because it goes wherever you do. We're watching the Georgia game. We had crowds of people, which is crazy. There were Georgia fans at Denver Airport.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we made friends everywhere.
gregWe were chitting on, watching the watching the game. And we yeah, we turned it into a fun atmosphere. The problem was it was 30 degrees in Denver.
SPEAKER_04We were dressed for Mexico.
gregYeah, I was going to the beach. So needless to say, that was a really crazy travel baggage thing. We wound up getting there. We crashed, we get to the airport, and we're all we're all good the next. When we got to Mexico by 11 o'clock, and our luggage was there waiting on us.
SPEAKER_04I was thoroughly surprised. I did not think we were going to get the stuff. We're going to hit up the gift shop when we get to Cancun.
gregI was like, all I need is a t-shirt and a bathing suit, and we're good to go. So but we I say all that and we tell the story simply because this is some heavy baggage that we're trying to unpack here. I mean, these are some big, big subjects. These are big topics. And so I understand if this is hard. Um, I understand if these are conversations that are awkward to have, but they're worth having. I can
Why Blended Families Hide The Label
gregtell you that. So we're going to talk about that elephant in the room when it comes to the blended family, because so many times in a blended family, we want to treat it like it's a normal family, but it's really not the normal family.
MichaelYeah.
gregUh there's a big difference. I won't say a big difference. There are distinct differences of what that is. And so the elephant in uh for us is going to be so many blended families don't even like to address the fact that they're a blended family. Uh they don't they they just don't say that, uh, which is it's interesting to me. I get the idea. I know why you don't.
SPEAKER_04There's a negative connotation to it. Yeah.
gregAnd every but the crazy part is is that it's it used to be this really weird outlier. If you're in a blended family, you were different from everybody else. But that's becoming w the norm now of there's a lot of blended family. You meet people all the time and come to find out they're like, oh, they're blended family also. Cool. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_04Now, why did you never tell me that? Yeah.
gregAnd you just you just don't know. So we're gonna address the topic of why do we not address that? And then what are the pitfalls for that? What are the well, you know, what can happen because of that, but what are the goods of it? And because it may feel like we're talking out of two sides of our mouth to today. I don't want it to be that way. I'm not trying to be hypocritical. I'm trying this, I'm just saying there's a lot of baggage here, and sometimes it's so difficult to unpack that it seems complicated.
MichaelYeah. In in my opinion, like hearing what we've talked about and preparing for this, is you can have so many, whether you want to call it guidelines, filters, the way you say things, the way you treat things. Um, it can be very, very important, but not always is it a one size fits all. Correct. Um we were talking before and just the idea of this concept before we even chose it. And I just got to thinking like many times it's the heart behind what you do more than it is following a set of guidelines. Right. And when you do that, because the reality, like the world is not black and white, it's not. There's a lot of vague areas, there's a lot of um gray areas in that sense to say, okay, well, what do you do when you hit those kind of moments? Okay, well, it's the heart behind it. What do you want the end goal to be? What are you going after? Right. And so I think that as you say that, yeah, there's some things that may sound like you're speaking out both sides of your mouth, but at the same time, when you look at the heart and the goal that you're going after, it's still consistent. Yeah. And so I think this conversation helps define how you balance that and how you set your guidelines and how you set the heart behind it.
gregYeah. And you gotta have goals. You gotta have some goals and some some things you're heading for with your blended family. Like you gotta have those in your family. You gotta have them in your family, period. Whether you're blended or not, it's very important because if you're not, if you don't have anything to aim at, what are you gonna hit?
SPEAKER_04What are you doing?
gregYeah, what are you wearing?
MichaelWell, what's the saying? Like the Chinese proverbs is like you uh if you're not aiming at the target, you'll miss it every time. Right.
gregYeah. So I mean it's just it's one of those silly, simple kind of truths, but it's so real. Um so we want to talk about the the normal family comparison. Like, um, do you have do you have something you want to read for us?
Stop Measuring Against Nuclear Families
SPEAKER_04I do. Um it's a little bit deeper insight to when we were discussing this earlier. Um, is this a fundamentally a measurement problem? Most people don't grow up with a mental model for what a healthy blended family looks like. They grow up with a mental model of a first marriage, nuclear family absorbed from their childhood, media, and culture. When a blended family doesn't match that model, like holidays split across households or a kid who calls two people mom or a stepparent who isn't sure what authority they have, that gap gets read as a failure rather than a difference. And that misreading is what drives the hiding. Families aren't just avoiding the label, they're avoiding the discomfort of being measured against a standard that was never built for them. So comparing yourself in a blended family and comparing that with a, you know, I don't know, traditional is not even a how you would describe it. A nuclear family anymore.
gregYeah, I don't even know what you call normal family or nuclear family.
SPEAKER_04Like measurement system or whatever.
gregBut it's even like a lot of people who are in marriage, like you came out of a marriage, uh, you had rhythms, you had routines, you had language you used, uh, you and then I did too. I was married for 14 years, we had rhythms, languages, things we did, and then all of a sudden we find ourselves in this blended family when it's like, okay, do we bring those along? Do we not bring those along? Do we lose those? Do we grab them? Like it was very confusing as to what we do. Uh uh and and it it really is I mean, a lot of people do feel it just view it as as failure. Um I this was a huge struggle for me when I first uh got divorced because I was involved in the the church, a church. Um for a long time I was made to feel like I was less than because I didn't figure out a way to make my marriage work. Like that was an issue to where it was like you should have you know you should have stayed no matter what, you should have done this. And so it was a lot of guilt and it was hard and it was frustration. You didn't feel welcome because you feel like, oh, you're a failure. Well then so many times we take that into the the marriage or the relationship that we marry into and we see if it's not just like what we had in the in the past.
SPEAKER_04It's still a failure.
gregYeah, it's like no, it's not like that. And that's a I mean, that's a hard thing to to overcome and to deal with so many times. Because what are some of the things you deal we deal with in that you never dealt with before?
SPEAKER_04Well, sharing children.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04I mean, that was the number one thing and uh sharing a schedule with uh you know, another family when she got remarried. We had like just sharing our time and not being able to just uh plan our life with our kids.
gregYeah, everything was planned.
SPEAKER_04Everything.
gregEvery single thing was planned. I do remember that. Yes, it was so much communication that it it's like if you didn't communicate, you're doomed to fail. So we had to overcommunicate. I remember one thing that was a huge deal. It became it was a huge deal at one point, but we wrestled it to the ground was uh clothes sharing. Clothes. Oh my gosh. Clothes were if you're in a blended family, you know it's one of those things you never deal with really. You may in a marriage, like if your friends go, but like you buy your kid clothes, you buy them, they they want this favorite pair of jeans, you buy them those jeans, those shoes, they go to their other parents for the week. And it never comes back. They show back up without those clothes. So then you're like, okay, how do I handle this? Like, um, hey, we bought those. Yeah, I just forgot them over there. Well, then it's like when do they go back over there? It's been another week. I mean, they're again, they're kids. Yeah, they they're gonna forget things. And so it's like, I can't hold them. It's not a personal attack on you to um be that. Our kids started doing that, and what we try to do is like when they brought clothes over, be like, hey, is this your mom's stuff? And they would wash it, fold it up and put it right back in their bag.
SPEAKER_04I got them these big bags to try to help. She got bags and monogram them, of course. Duh. But um we would try, like, you know, you brought this like I would know what I did and didn't purchase for the kids. So I would wash it, fold it, put it back in their bags so they it they took it with them.
MichaelYes.
SPEAKER_04Because I wanted to respect what she had spent money on too. Um, but that was very hard.
gregA lot of times that does not go both
Real Life Friction Points
gregways.
SPEAKER_04No.
gregThat's one of those things in a normal marriage you don't deal with uh from time to time. So there's lots of those things that are out there, but they're not failures. Like it's not a failure because you don't get to spend every Christmas together. Christmas may come on New Year's, I mean not New Year's, but I mean it came.
SPEAKER_04I mean it could, yeah.
gregYeah, it's kind of sometimes it's just like you pack it all in there. It's just it's about the day uh for us, it's it became more about the time, not the date.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
gregUh whatever that time is is what the date was.
SPEAKER_04So And it's kind of like when you were talking about like you, you guys had, you know, your rhythm, your you know, way you did things, and then I did too in my family. Uh it's not like a copy-paste template. Like it it can't be.
gregNo.
SPEAKER_04It just literally cannot be.
gregNo, not at all. And there's language we use in our house that we would not use out in public.
SPEAKER_04Um not ugly language.
gregNo, not no, not that. Um but like we don't use like we just didn't use the word stepfamily, but sometimes people would get confused, like uh, but we did we did that intentionally because it felt like it was separation, like that created division, it separate it created separation. Yeah. And we didn't want that. So we're like, no, we realize, we acknowledge, and we'll get into that in a minute, that you have a you have a mom, you have a family that you do life with there too, and you have a family you do life with here also. We want to make that as seamless and easy as we can. Um, what was that the time the woman ran into Cali?
SPEAKER_04Um I had asked Callie to stop by the grocery store to get something that I've forgotten for dinner or whatever. And she got home and she said, This lady was talking to me and saying, You know, I know your mom and I love seeing your pictures on social media. And I said, Who was it? She said, I don't know. And then she said, but then um she kept talking about your mom, your mom, and Callie finally said, Which mom? And then she's like, Well, they said your name Jess, so I don't know who it was, but it was funny because she was like, Which mom are you talking about? Yeah, it was cute.
gregAnd that's kind of the what we said at our house, but there was no like, hey, Jess is replacing your mom. No, that she's here.
SPEAKER_04We always just Callie and Cody didn't call me mom.
gregNo.
SPEAKER_04And that was never an expectation, but because of the way we did things, they knew that I was the mom of that house and you're the dad of that house, and that's yeah, what we worked really hard on.
gregSome action steps around this.
SPEAKER_04How do we, what are some things that can actually be done to try to manage this or well one thing that is like an elephant that may be uncomfortable for a lot of people, maybe like write down a few things that are really really different from the way your first marriage household worked versus what your current blended family household how that functions, because they could be really different. And if you don't talk about it, it can get more and more uncomfortable.
gregYeah, be very specific, like when you share these that would be my suggestion.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we did that. Uh one of the first things that we did that with was Christmas traditions, because I mean, obviously, families have their own special traditions, and we tried our best to combine those.
gregYeah, Thanksgiving, Christmas, all those. Yeah. Just hey, what's something that you loved that you you did at your you know that you guys used to do?
SPEAKER_04Um, another thing you can do too is think about one place where you've been performing like a normal traditional family, um, like how you introduce each other or um a holiday gathering or even a photo instead of naming what's really going on. So, like, for example, anytime we've ever had family pictures made, it is a pain to get everybody together, especially when they were young. Because, you know, I would schedule the photographer, typically my friend Brandy, and work with her schedule, and she would say, Okay, we'll have these two dates open at this time. Okay, well, now let me check the family schedule. And so just because you see a beautiful family photo doesn't mean it was really easy to get there because that that's not the truth.
gregNo, because we had a go had a sh a Google Calendar, shared family Google Calendar, the head when kids were there, when they weren't there, sporting events, all those things. So we knew trying to schedule around all of those when we had all of them and no one was playing a sport to take a picture.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
gregIt was crazy.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So for me to pretend like, oh, we just took a family picture like a normal family. No.
gregYeah, we didn't pick and just go out and do it. No, we did not. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
gregSo it was a very different thing.
SPEAKER_04It was.
gregSo here's here's one thing that I feel like do you have any more to add, or is that you think this is good? I think the another big segment of this, the reason we don't address this a lot, because this is one of those topics we're really scared of or hard to navigate, but it's loving the new family without betraying the old family. Because so many times you go into it, the as the couple, you're really excited. And you're just like, oh my gosh, this is awesome. You know, because you know, you're you have this newfound love, and then the kids are like, Wait, what? Yeah, they're very hesitant and be like, wait a minute, can I still talk about my mom? Can we not? Can I talk about my parents? Can we talk about the fun stuff we did? All those things, like, do you have a deeper insight too? You'd like to As a matter of fact, I do. Okay, go for it.
SPEAKER_04Um, this is a little bit longer, but it's really important to think about these things um because this is where loss and loyalty collide. And it's often the most emotionally loaded point of the family, even though you don't really know that it's really happening. Um, and this conversation really does you need to give it some room. But every member of a blended family, adults, kids, all of you, um, we're carrying some version of a loss. Could be a marriage that ended, a family structure that didn't survive.
unknownUm
SPEAKER_04The version of how things used to be that doesn't exist anymore, or a death of a parent. Um, researchers have used this term. It's a fancy term. Are you ready? Yes. Disenfranchised grief.
gregOkay. Wow.
SPEAKER_04Yes. It's a loss that's not socially recognized or given space to be mourned because often when you acknowledge it, it feels inconvenient or threatening to the people that are in your life now.
MichaelWow.
SPEAKER_04Yes. Um, I have a little bit more.
MichaelOkay.
SPEAKER_04So in blended families, that sense of loss gets tangled with loyalty. A child who feels close to a step parent may unconsciously fear that that closeness is a betrayal of their biological parent. An adult who still feels a pain without the old version of family may fear that that feeling threatens the new marriage. Family systems, here's another fancy phrase. You ready? Family systems theory calls this a loyalty bind. When caught between two relationships where honoring one feels like you're dishonoring the other. The bind itself isn't the problem. The problem is nobody says it out loud. So it just sits there quietly shaping your behavior even when you don't know it.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
gregThat is so true.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
gregI would say this is the one thing blended families really suck at doing.
MichaelYes.
gregWe are really, really bad at this. Uh I've seen it so many times. I've talked to couples who deal with this. Uh usually because there's when the adults, there's frustration, there's anger. We've talked with couples who just like, I don't care what they do, I hate them. Yeah. It's like, okay, you can't say that in front of the kids. Like that's not helpful for anybody.
MichaelNo.
gregBut people the adults do it all the time. Yes. They buy the kids whatever they want, whenever they want, because they feel like there's one fun parent, one non-fun parent. You can't talk about those things, what fun things you did, what fun things you didn't do. They always have fun over there. It's because your dad doesn't have to pay for anything. He doesn't ever have you. He blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Your mom, your mom, I give your mom tons of money. She ought to be able to buy you whatever you want. Like we make those statements. And so the kids read into those and they're like, okay, not sharing that.
SPEAKER_04Right.
gregNot going to talk about those things. And we we allow those walls to be put up, which is so sad. We try to. This is really awkward. I think I don't know who struggled with this more. If it was Cody or Callie. I don't think it was Callie. It may have been Cody. But we would ask them, they would come on and be like, okay, tell me something fun you did with your mom this week. I didn't do anything. Yeah, that's not true. Tell me something fun you did. Like, what'd you do that you had fun with your mom with?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
gregLike tell me something you guys did that you enjoyed.
SPEAKER_04They both went through phases where they did not want to talk about it.
gregNo, they
Loss Grief And Loyalty Binds
gregfelt like it was awkward. They was like, can we do this? And I'm like, no, I want to hear what's going on.
SPEAKER_04Like you're still my kid, even when you're at that house, and I still want you to have a fun life.
gregYeah, you were there for about did you go to spend the night at anybody's house? Did you do because what happens is say I have we had the kids and we dealt with this a lot. You had the kids for seven days. Um you only have seven days, so you get half their time automatically.
MichaelThat's it.
gregIt felt like every sleepover, every spend the night birthday party fell on our weekend that we had them. So we would have them on a Friday night and it'd be like, oh, so-and-so's having a spend the night party.
SPEAKER_04And you're like, Well, my goals win the last night. All right.
gregI hope you have fun, but that's another night that's taken from you. But as a blended family, you're just like, I'm not gonna tell her no. I'm not gonna tell them no, because then it's like I I'm taking away from like I'm limiting that because they're with me. A lot of people would say, No, you're with me, you need to spend time with me.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and back to the normal versus blended comparison. Normal families don't worry about that.
gregYes, that's true.
SPEAKER_04They just don't.
gregYeah.
SPEAKER_04Like I I would have never even thought about that had I not been in a blended family. Like, oh, if Thomas has gone to a sleepover, cool, I'll see you in the morning, you know. But like you just said, in a blended family, it's actually a big deal.
gregYeah. Yeah, those those things are big deals. And so being able to say, because there was frustration from time to time. I would be lying if I said there wasn't frustration. But we and we never voiced that in front of the kids. It was just Jess and I would go to someone's like, are you kidding me? Like, do I need to call your friends and say, hey, you can only book sleepovers on these days.
SPEAKER_04So I need to text so-and-so's mom. I will.
gregSo it's like, oh there was that, but we never showed that to the kids. I always wanted the kids to know, hey, we love you, we support you, whether you're with us, whether you're with them, where there's events that they're doing when the weeks there aren't with you, we show up and we support.
MichaelYeah.
gregUh that seems like a natural, normal thing you would do, but a lot of people don't because it's uh, I don't like them, I'm frustrated at them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Um then that goes back to the loyalty that we were just talking about. That the children feel bless them, the loyalty that they're trying to build with the new family versus, you know, where the family was and those kinds of things.
gregAnd then they feel loyalty to their mom and to their dad or whoever that may be. So they feel pulled. And so many times we take our own selfish crap and put on them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I feel like a lot of the time um children in a blended family feel like they can't love the step parent because it takes away or maybe maybe they feel like they're betraying their biological parent.
MichaelYeah.
SPEAKER_04Um I feel like that's probably something that the kids of a blended family struggle with and they don't know how to talk about it.
gregI feel like I want to say this, but I I could I could catch a lot of crap for it. If you're if you're offended as a as a blended family adult, if you're offended when the kid talks about how much fun they had and if they love a step family or stepperson, if that makes you angry or frustrated, that is a sign of your emotional maturity. Yeah. And that makes you not that mature. And I'm sorry if that frustrates you, I'm sorry if that pisses you off, but that's the truth. Like you should be a healthy adult and you should want the best for your kids. And why would you not want to have more people who love your kids in their life than people who don't? The fact they care for them and love on them, you'd want them in. So if that's where you're at, I'm sorry. But get healthy.
SPEAKER_04And it's okay to talk about this with your kids too, and it's okay that they say out loud, I miss the way my our family was. I miss our old family. But just because they say they miss their old family doesn't mean they can also love the new one.
MichaelRight.
SPEAKER_04I mean, it it can be both. Yeah.
MichaelWell, the reality is is it helps you identify where you come from. Like it helps you identify things that were momentous to you, things that were important to you.
SPEAKER_04Well, up until that point in their lives, that's what made them who they were.
gregYeah. Delia, if you're not addressing these issues in your blended family, they're there. I mean, they're there, whether you I mean those issues are that those things are there. It's just whether it's going by silently or being where it's silently creating that separation and distraction or whether it's drawing you together.
SPEAKER_04Well, here's something you can do to help with that.
gregOkay. That's uh I love some action steps given to me.
SPEAKER_04So, and this is gonna be uncomfortable if you're not emotionally mature enough to handle it, like you just said. Have a have all sit down together, the whole blended family, and have each family member, including the parents, step parents, and the biological parent, name one thing they miss or feel a sense of loss about regarding how it used to be, without anyone in the room trying to fix it or minimize it or redirect the conversation. Name one thing that you miss. And that if you're not mature enough to handle it, that can hurt your feelings.
gregWell, it's gonna hurt your feelings. I can tell you that. And that's okay.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
gregIt's when you start acting like a child and you start making comments that say if hurt feelings are okay. Yeah.
MichaelBecause for some reason we we live in a society that's like, oh, well, we shouldn't hurt feelings. Well, why not?
SPEAKER_04If it's the truth, yeah.
MichaelYeah.
SPEAKER_04Um, another thing that can be helpful, and it would really, I think, alleviate a lot of stress that you don't know you're putting on your children, is say out loud, you don't you don't have to have permission to love the other step parent. Because loving the step parent is not a betrayal. Like you can love me, your stepmom, and still also love your mom. That doesn't mean like you're not allowed to love me. Because missing the old family, like I said earlier, is not a rejection of the new one. Like it's okay to love two people that have that role in your life.
gregBecause a lot of times those kids are just trying to figure that out.
SPEAKER_04Mm-hmm. But you have to say it to them. It's okay. Yeah. Because they don't know, like you said, they're just trying to figure it out. But say it to them.
gregAnd sometimes this is harder if you blend your family and your kids are a little older. Yeah. Like if they're in their early preteens or they've they've had more time together, that's harder for them than it is for the younger. Like for our boys, our younger boys, it seemed easier than it was for Callie. Because she was a little older.
SPEAKER_04She was a preteen.
gregYeah, so it was it's just different. She was a different place emotionally, mentally. And so there are those things that are out there. So again, these are not silver bullets. These are not do this and you're gonna win. This is a this is a framework to help you just get in the right path.
Avoidance Unspoken Rules And Check-Ins
gregSo that the that segues perfectly into our last one, which is basically avoidance is is is like kind of a misguided form of protection.
MichaelYeah.
gregLike in other words, we don't talk about it, we ignore it, we don't, oh, there's an elephant in the room. We don't see that. We're not gonna talk about it. What elephant? What elephant? What? I just ran into him. I don't know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_04So I just happen to have some deeper insight into this. I do. Okay. Avoidance in a blended family. Excuse me, let me start over. Avoidance in blended families is rarely laziness. It's usually a protective strategy that made sense at some point and never got reevaluated. Naming the complexity out loud can feel like admitting the family is fragile or that the parents made a wrong choice or that things aren't as seamless as everyone had hoped. So families build unspoken rules to keep the peace, like don't mention the epics, don't ask about the other household, don't bring up how things used to be. In the short term, these rules reduce visible conflict. In the long term, they remove the family's ability to actually process anything. So the same tension resurfaces, usually a worse moment, like weddings, graduations, celebrations of any sort, with less warning and less skill to handle it. Amen.
gregHallelujah. I I will tell you that tension and frustration will 1,000% come out.
MichaelYep.
gregYou just don't know when and where. Like it will leak. Um and it just it doesn't matter how you treat it, it's coming out uh at some point or another.
SPEAKER_04And that's a Yeah, avoiding talking about it really truly may feel like you're protecting like your own heart. You may feel like you're protecting the children, but you're not.
gregThere's been times, I remember times where we sat the kids down. It may have been at a park, it may have been something else, and we're like, we we don't know what we're doing. Like, I I don't I don't know what we're doing. This feels sometimes this feels awkward, sometimes this is hard, and the kids are shaking their head, yeah, yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_04And I'm like, because we would say, like, this is our first time in a blended family too. We don't know what we're doing.
gregSo I need you to help me help you. So like, let's say that like can we figure this out together?
SPEAKER_04And 14 years later, we still tell them, and they're all adults. We're like, we don't know what we're doing. We're just trying to do what feels like it would be a good idea.
gregWhat's so crazy, I tell you right now, the same complexities that were there when they were kids and we met is still there. Still have the same complexities right now. Like if we take a family picture, we've launched, we've la I mean, I think it would be easier to launch a rocket from SpaceX than it is to get a picture of our family all together.
SPEAKER_04Like it's it's uh But not only that, but how do we On our website there's some family pictures that we had taken in the fall, and it was the most miraculous timing that everyone could be there, and it was literally 45 minutes in our yard. We couldn't even go to a like a location. It was in our yard for 45 minutes.
gregBut we had 45 minutes. We did, and it was when you But the thing is we we almost got to the point where we would just like let's just call it what it is. You know, when that you hear the old phrase, call a spade a spade, you know, just call it out for what it is. Sometimes it makes people really, really awkward, but it is so freeing. Just I mean, there's times I looked at the boys and be like, bro, this is hard. This sucks.
MichaelYeah.
gregAnd they're like, yep. Okay, so how do uh how do we get what do you need? What do you need for me to help you get through this moment or get through this time? Because uh we don't know, you don't know all the answers. No one everyone who tells you they know all the answers, they don't know the answers, they're just really good at BS. So it's like they can give you a framework, they can give you some ideas and some directions, but you're gonna have to get in the get in the weeds with it and just figure out what works for your family. Like these things work, these things are uh here's some truths. There's some truths and some realities that we're trying to speak.
MichaelYeah.
gregStick to those and then how you do those or how you weave that, man, good luck. Get at it. You know, you may come up with something that's really cool that I haven't thought of.
MichaelYeah.
gregThat that may be a really good solution. You know, it's uh this is a quick example because I know we're our time is is ticking up. We came to this conclusion, this is one of the for this point, we didn't realize time, like we got our kids, the kids were with Kai and Cody with us for seven days, and then we're mom for seven days. And so we did not have much, like our time to them was very limited. And if there were sleepovers, those kind of things that were happening.
SPEAKER_04And of course, mine too, Thomas and Aaron were with us all the time.
gregYeah. So we were we were out, I think we've told the story, we were out of Target, and that's when we ran into um Thomas and Aaron Grace, and they were so excited about it. They were with their grandmother. Yeah, they were their grandma, but they saw Callie and Cody and they got all excited, and they were just all hanging out, and they were like, Oh, can we go with y'all? Can we hang out with y'all? And I noticed Callie is just She burst into hysterical tears. Yeah, which never happens.
SPEAKER_04She's not a highly emotional girl.
gregYeah, she was just emotional, and Jess took her to the side and said, Honey, what's wrong? And she goes, We don't ever get time with just you and bad. And she goes, it's she goes, they they live with y'all, but we'll our time with you is so we don't get that. We don't ever get just time with you. Yeah. And so immediately it was like, okay, you go back with your granddaughter.
SPEAKER_04Buy Thomas, buy Aaron, go with you, go with Nani.
gregSee you tomorrow. But that created a thought within me to say, you know what? When our kids turn 16, that's where the whole 16 trip came from. When our kids turn 16, they get us for three to four days anywhere in the US.
SPEAKER_04Well, fancy Cody got five days.
gregYeah, wherever you want, whatever you, whatever you want to do, we're gonna go do that. And it's just us and you pick what we do, what we're doing.
SPEAKER_04But then too, that moment with Callie, like, not just this the 16 trip, like we both became more intentional about like if you had like a project to do or errands to run, you would take just Cody or just Callie or just Thomas. Like we we would we became a lot more mindful.
gregYes, just because of not to create separation and not uh be inclusive, but that avoidance and that misguided just not talking about the whole time thing was creating such distance and such a fractured relationship. Yeah. We're like, we have to attack this head on and just and luckily, thank God Callie actually expressed the and and said that out loud because if not, who knows if we would ever would have caught that?
SPEAKER_04We probably wouldn't.
gregYou know, it's like thank you for bringing uh as hard as that moment was, it it opened our eyes to one thing that was just simple and right in front of us that we didn't pay attention to.
SPEAKER_04And I feel like Callie, she may not would phrase it this way, but I feel like maybe she could have thought it was like an unspoken rule, like, well, Callie and Cody can't have just dad and jest time because that's just not how we're set up.
gregYeah. Sadly. It may have been. And so those are the things that you just you have to talk about over and over and over.
SPEAKER_04You do. And talking about unspoken rules, here's some action steps. Okay. So pick one unspoken rule that your family operates by, like we don't talk about the ex or the kids' other kids' time with the other parents is an off-limit topic, and discuss where that unspoken rule even came from and if it's actually serving anyone. Because you have them in your blended family. You have unspoken rules. You just don't know it.
gregOh, everybody has them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
gregYeah.
SPEAKER_04Um, and this is something that we actually did do. Um, so we we would have month not monthly necessarily, but almost weekly. We would meet together at the kitchen table and do a check-in. Um sometimes it came in the form of like the high-low game at the table. We called it a game, but it was really just a way to can't get them talking. Um, to practice naming the elephant in the room that might be there, um, just to get talking about it.
gregOur our biggest goal for our kids was to to help them be able to call out the the awkward thing that nobody wanted to talk about. So we that's when we communicated everything to death. Then they would say that. They'd be like, you guys talk things to death.
SPEAKER_04Um Well, we wanted them to get used to talking things to death so it didn't have to happen in a crisis.
gregRight.
SPEAKER_04It's like, okay, now spill your guts. Now be comfortable talking. We just they yeah, they would all four agree. We and we still talk things to death with them.
gregYeah. Because we want I want them to know they have a voice, but at the same time be like, I'm interested in what you have to say, and that is important. But at the same time, I don't want to be caught sideways. I don't want to, I don't, I don't want to be like, oh my gosh, what do we do now?
SPEAKER_04Right.
gregSo well, those are three really, really big
Hard Truths And Practical Next Steps
gregsolid things. Do you have anything else to add to put those kind of a big bow wraps on it?
SPEAKER_04Put a big bow on it. Well, there is a bow you can put on it. Uh the blended family model, there it there is no model.
MichaelYeah.
SPEAKER_04It was not there's not one created for us. We none of us know what we're doing. And you to pretend like you know what you're doing or to pretend like you're a a traditional nuclear family, you're uh just to be harsh, you're lying to yourself. Because it's not it's not it's not that easy. Yeah. Um address loss and loyalty that can happen at the same time. Come both for the biological parent and the step parent. Um and avoidance is never gonna work at all.
gregSo if you're the if you're the parent, you're sitting out there and you're listening to this and you're just like, I'm not doing that because I don't like them. I'm pissed off at him or her, blah, blah, blah, for what they did. So I don't want to do that. I don't want to have acceptance. I would tell you, I would tell you, you are you are crippling your kids.
MichaelYeah.
gregYou are hurting them in ways that you don't even imagine, not just now, but in future relationships that you're going to be in to be able to communicate and share what's really going on. Get past your hurt, find some forgiveness, work through that. Your kids are your kids are are modeling after you. They're watching you. Your kids are watching how you speak, how you act, what you do. So figure those things out.
SPEAKER_04You can still have hurt feelings and you can still have anger that you're working through, but that's not your kids' feelings. Right.
gregAnd you don't put that on there. You don't give up. Oh, I I to for us to say everything was happy and hunky-dory the entire time would be a lie.
SPEAKER_03That's a big fat lie.
gregYeah, it's like, but uh I never I worked really, really hard. We worked really, really hard to not bring that into the family dynamic. We worked really hard at if we had something we need to talk about, it was not in front of the kids or with the kids involved.
SPEAKER_04No, never.
gregIt was always separate.
SPEAKER_04So naming the elephant in the room isn't trying to create a conflict, it's actually talking about something that's already there.
gregYeah. And just giving it a name and be like, you know what? We're gonna we're gonna encompass this one bite at a time. Not eating elephants, PETA, but it's the the thing that's out there. So wow, okay. Well, I hope this has been insightful. I hope it's been helpful. I hope maybe
Free Resources And Closing
gregyou've caught one or two really good insights out there. If you're if you're looking at this going, great, that's a lot of info. You guys shared a lot in the 42 minutes. If you're still listening to us, thank you so much. Yeah, man. I cheers to you. Uh thank you so much. We're gonna put some of these action steps and these points into a PDF format if you need those or want those. Uh they'll be on our social medias. There'll be links to those so you can find those. I'm not sure. We're gonna make it as easy as we can for you to to find that stuff and download it. UnpackTogether.com. There's a free resource section. We'll probably we'll probably try to put it there.
MichaelYeah.
gregUm, we'll put things up to try to help it make it as easy as we can for you to to help navigate this.
SPEAKER_04And you don't have to use these like a checklist. It's a lot. Pick one.
gregYeah, just don't do don't don't go overboard. Like start small.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
gregPick one, pick two, and and try those out. And then when you get your hands around that one, then do another one. Don't do too many at a time. You get overwhelmed. It's kind of crazy. So anything else to add? Takeaway? So hey, thank you guys for listening. Uh make sure to visit our website, do the inventory. Um, if you like, follow, share us, that helps us be able to keep doing what we do. Please do that. We're trying to trying to reach and grow our audience. So thank you so much for being a part of it. And uh look forward to sitting with you again soon. Until then.
SPEAKER_04We have four weeks until we officially get to say Go Dogs.
