The Real Relationship Classroom (Episode 53)

🎧 From toxic family patterns to relationship breakthroughs - Shawnti Refuge reveals how childhood models shape our love lives! In this raw and powerful episode, mental health coach and author Shawnti opens up about growing up with unhealthy relationship examples and shares how she broke free to build genuine connection.

Through honest storytelling and hard-won wisdom, Shawnti exposes the generational patterns that keep us stuck in toxic relationships.

This transformative episode explores:

• How parents' relationships become our relationship blueprint
• The dangerous impact of bringing random partners around your kids
• The three essential elements of truly healthy relationships
• Real strategies for healing when you've never seen healthy love
• The journey from player to committed partner
• How to find relationship mentors when you lack positive examples

Perfect for: Teens from challenging family backgrounds, students questioning their parents' relationship choices, young people wanting to break toxic patterns, and the counselors, teachers, and parents guiding youth toward healthier relationships. Plus: Critical insights on building strong connections even when you didn't see them modeled at home.

To learn more about Shawnti Refuge, please click on the link below.

http://shawntirefuge.com

Transcript

Welcome to Mindshift Power Podcast, a show for teenagers and the adults who work with them, where we have raw and honest conversations. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the mind shifter. And welcome everyone. Today, we have with us Shanti Refuge. She is from Houston, Texas.

She's a mental health coach and an author. Now if you recall, you have heard her on here before, and she's back again. This woman is full of a whole lot of things to talk about, and so we're we're gonna talk about modeling relationships, in in our homes and such a big topic. I'm having this episode today because I truly believe at least, and I think that this is a conservative number, at least 80% of you are affected by this topic. And some of you don't even recognize it.

You might recognize it after today. And for some of you, you might recognize what has happened to you, and others will recognize what you're doing and hopefully make some positive changes. So how are you doing today, Shanti? I am good. How are you?

Good. Good. So I like to dive right in as you know. Tell us, what did you see in your household concerning relationships growing up? I saw my mom at through a span of my childhood, I saw her with different men.

So there was no steady relationship. And the ones that lasted a little longer than a few months, those were the ones where she was being domestically abused. Okay. So you you got to watch domestic abuse happen and instability. Right.

I'm just giving them, principal names. Mhmm. So how do you think that affected your life? I grew up saying I will never get married. If this is what marriage is, I don't want it.

And I used to say that all the time. I never had any intention on getting married. Now was she ever married to any of them? She was married to well, she was married to my dad, but they divorced when I was two. So, of course, I don't remember that.

Right. But her, second marriage, she was she was her second marriage, she, that's the one who abused her. And then they got a divorce eventually. And then her third marriage, she I think she married him when I was, like, 19, 18, 19. And it wasn't a good marriage either.

So, yeah, it turned me completely off on marriage. So what made them not good marriages? Well, well, the second one, because he beat our ass. Like Well, yeah. That's not what marriage is about.

What about the third one? The third one, that he wasn't violent, but he was no good. Go out all night, stay out, don't come back. I can hear her screaming and crying. Where you been?

You know, trying to whisper, but, you know, we can hear you. This is a little house. Right. And he had he did not try to make establish any relationship with, me and my my, little sister. Okay.

But when they had their child, my baby sister, it was you know? Of course, it was all about her because that was his only girl. But, essentially, we got treated like shit. Oh, let's do that. So what I'm hearing what I'm drawing out from what you're saying Uh-huh.

Is there was a lack of respect when it comes to relationships and what was modeled before you. You saw your mother being disrespected first physically and then otherwise. Just basically disrespected. Right. But staying in a relationship where she wasn't respected.

Right. You saw that there was you know, that father figures did not care about you. Mhmm. Well, especially especially the last one. Now the other one, like, my my middle sister's dad, he was great.

I used to tell people he was my dad, but my mom never married him. Okay. Okay. So, the only from from what I understand, the issue they had was that he was not stable financially. Oh, okay.

So that ends that. Yeah. Finances matter. Sorry. But he was great with us.

Okay. So you did have one example of of a father figure treating you correctly. Mhmm. Okay. Well, that's good.

Now let's talk about we we understand that there was lack of respect. Something that you learned growing up was accepted. Mhmm. Frequently changing partners, something you learned growing up that was accepted. Yes.

She used to move these people in, and I'm like, who is this? It was no, like, hey. This is my boyfriend, Joe. Nothing like that. Okay.

So there was a large disconnect as well. Yeah. She was just moving motherfucker. And then, like Mhmm. He's here.

So yeah. Oh, wow. Wow. Unfortunately, she she's not the only one that. There are people listening right now that are like, yep, I know somebody like that or that was me.

You know, there's there's that's reality for a lot of people, not just you, and that's why we're talking about it. Yeah. Tell us, how do you feel growing up and seeing that affected your life? It made me not wanna go home. That's why I was always somewhere else.

I was at my grandmother's house. You know, my grandmother and grandfather, they were together until the end. So but their relationship wasn't, you know, perfect, you know, what we cons we would consider perfect. But, you know, I would always wanna go to my grandmother house just to because they didn't argue. They didn't fight.

My grandmother was very passive. But, you know, it's like, I just knew I didn't wanna be married. I am I I used to say, oh, I would never get married. Because of all the bad examples that you set yourself. I ain't I didn't wanna put be a part of any of that.

So what made your grandparents', relationship unhealthy, you think? Well, from what I was told from what I was told, my grandfather used to mess around. Okay. And my grandmother, she told me this, and she said I told him, you know, I'm tired of this. And if you do it again, if I catch you doing it again, I'm leaving.

And he stopped. Okay. So but now you you can't say that to people these days. That'll make them wanna do it more. So Yeah.

It depends on who you're talking to. Yeah. But it depends who you're talking to. So you didn't really have truly healthy relationships model before No. And it made you say, I am never gonna get married.

Do you feel like this affected your commitment in relationships? Absolutely. Yes. How? I cheated in all of my relationships.

And then when I finally decided to get serious in my, relationship, she ended up cheating on me. We talked about that in the last episode. Mhmm. Yeah. So what's modeled before us?

What I'm hearing is that what's modeled before us does affect us. And there and and talking to the audience right now, I want you to think about what was modeled before you, good or bad, regardless of who's in your household because maybe you didn't go over with your parents, maybe you didn't go over with your grandparents, maybe you were up with a single mother, whatever your situation was because we're all a little different. What was modeled before you, and how do you think that affected you? Because I promise you, if you examine it, you're gonna see some things you never saw before. Right.

It is it is really a big deal. So let me ask you this. This is, you know, we're speculating right now, but how would it have made a difference if healthy relationships were modeled in front of you, or how do you think it would have made a difference? It would have changed my view on wanting to be married. You know?

Because when you're a little girl, back in my time, I grew up in the late seventies, eighties. So it was, you know, find you a husband, get married, have kids, live happily ever after. That's not real. Right. Yeah.

But, I mean, I think my perspective on relationships and marriage would have been different if I would have seen my mother. And it didn't even have to be my dad, but somebody, that one person for a long time and actually being a married couple, whatever married couples did back then. Mhmm. You know, I didn't see love, and I grew up in a household where I wasn't told I love you or got hugs. We weren't affectionate.

We didn't say stuff like that. But I remember one time, one of my mom's boyfriends was at the house, and I heard her say I was walking through going to my room, and I heard her tell him she loved him, and it stopped me in my tracks. I said, you don't tell me you love me. And she he tried to explain herself away and say, well, that's a different kind of love. I said, you still don't tell me you love me.

And it's like she couldn't say shit. Yeah. Because she didn't. She never told us that. And then when we don't tell children that we love them, it does affect them even if Yeah.

Even if everybody else around them says it. Mhmm. We're the birth givers. Yeah. You know, whether it's mother or father, we're still we're the parents.

We're their when your parents will tell you that they love you, even if everybody else does, it hurts and it matters. And it says that I'm not that important. I'm not that valued. And even though you may never say those words with your mouth, you say them when you say them within action if you don't say the words I love you. And sometimes people grow up in households where they don't say I love you, so for them it's weird and hard and strange.

But I feel but to you, that where that's the case, if I'm if that's you, your children are worth the effort. Your children are worth your discomfort, and go ahead and say it even if it feels weird. After a while, it won't. Be the change maker instead of continuing on the same crap that you grew up with. Mhmm.

And, you know, I just that's a little sidebar because I think it matters. For me, I was the opposite. We grew up, like, if we didn't give my mother a kiss and and say I love you before going to bed, that it was a problem. It was we're a complete opposite. I thought, you know, I with the household that I grew up in, I thought everybody in America said I love you to each other.

That was just normal. You know, I've since learned that there's a lot of people where that wasn't the the the norm for them, but it matters. It really matters. And it matters in big ways that we don't see because it's an undercurrent that affects the big wave that eventually comes when we don't do it. I just had to add that in there.

So you feel like, if you had had healthy relationship model before you, you'd feel different about marriage, and you'd be more serious about commitment. That's it. Well, that's where you were because you've since made some a lot of personal changes. So Uh-huh. That's where you were, and that's not where you are now.

And and we're gonna talk about that in a minute. But where you were before recently was, you know, really growing up in early adulthood was, I ain't committing to nobody because that don't work. Yeah. And that's what you saw before you. Yeah.

And this is true regardless of what race you are. There are people of every race, every ethnicity, every color, every financial status, social status, blah blah blah, name a detail. This you're gonna find this across the board with a lot of people who were had bad things modeled before them. Some people had parents that didn't communicate and didn't actually act like they loved each other. They were just in a committed relationship and they had some money and some kids popped out, and that was the end of it.

And Yeah. That's an unhealthy environment as well. Okay. So that's a really unhealthy environment. And and I'll, you know, I'll I'll add this too.

I will say that for for me, my parents were, they got divorced when I was, like, eight. So, you know, I was born into the standard American family. They, you know, met in college, they got married, bought a house, had a beautiful baby girl, which was me. Yes. So, you know, and they had children, etcetera.

And then by the time I was eight, they they were divorcing. The good thing I will say about my mother growing up was the opposite of some of what you were saying. There there was she didn't just bring men home every, you know, all willy nilly. And my mother was absolutely gorgeous, she was a model, and there was men after her all the time, but she was never one to respond that much to them. She just wasn't, she didn't put herself out there like that.

That. So she just didn't bring home random men, you know, and if she did bring someone home, they were in a relationship for a long time or the rest of her life. She's now married to an absolutely wonderful man, my stepfather. But I'm grateful that I did not have, there's a lot of things that were missing, but the things that weren't there is I didn't have a a mother who brought home men out willy nilly. And I'm I'm grateful for that.

And I'm not, and I'm not saying that to for you those of you listening, I'm not saying that to put anybody down. But I'm saying that there's I'm drawing the contrast between the two of us because we grew up with very different households. And even though it wasn't as bad in some areas, some of what I grew up with, she probably didn't. You know? So we all have different details.

We all have different details and they're all in different levels. For you listening, you have to decide what bits and pieces go with you, what bits and pieces are have influenced you. Because some of that might help you figure out how to fix the relationship you're in right now. You know what I'm just saying? Now let me ask you this, Shanti.

Mhmm. We talked about unhealthy relationship modeling growing up. Do you feel you are able to have a healthy relationship now? Yes. I have one now.

Depending on what your definition of healthy is. Because healthy to you might not be healthy to me. Exactly. I'm gonna define that right now. So I'm gonna define it in very simple, simple terms, for everyone.

And I'm not diving deep into these because that's an entire not just an episode, but a book and a seminar. So I'm not gonna go into that. But I'm just gonna talk about three basic principles that are in a healthy relationship. When one of these three are missing, you are in an unhealthy relationship. So, first of all, let me start off by saying a healthy relationship does not mean perfection.

Right, Shanti? That's right. That's not perfect. Mean perfection. There's absolutely no such thing as a perfect relationship.

So if that's what you have in your head, get it out of your head. And if you wanna keep it in your head, that's why you will always be disappointed and you will always be in an unhealthy relationship because your expectations are not on this earth. So a healthy relationship doesn't mean perfection. It doesn't mean you never argue. It doesn't mean you never disagree.

It doesn't mean you don't like stuff. It just means that you're human, but these three things are in present in a healthy relationship. Respect, communication, and growth. If any one of those three are missing, you are in an unhealthy relationship. Do you respect one another?

I don't mean do you have your moments where they get you get pissed off and you wanna punch them in the head. We all feel that way sometimes. Please don't please don't punch me in the head. What I'm saying what I'm saying is we all feel that way sometimes. But if those three things are in a relationship, then you are on the right track.

When these three things are missing, respect, communication, and growth, you have an unhealthy relationship. You need to fix those broken pieces. Your relationship is healthy if those three things are present and you're both giving effort. That's a healthy relationship, period. It doesn't mean perfection.

It doesn't mean everything's great all the time. It doesn't mean they don't get on your nerve. It doesn't mean that sometimes you wanna just throw them in the ocean and leave them alone. It doesn't mean any of that. That those are normal human feelings.

What matters is that respect and communication and growth are consistently there and maintained. Then you're in a healthy relationship. So for some of you listening right now, you're like, oh my god. I might be in a healthy relationship. You probably are.

And for some of you listening right now, you're like, I thought I was in a healthy relationship, but I'm not. You're probably right too. Look at things based on those three things, and you can move on. So now I'm gonna go back to that question to Shanti now that I preach this with the audience. Why do you think you're able to maintain a healthy relationship now?

I grew up. I changed my mindset. How did you do that? Well, I didn't do it on purpose. I think me, having last time we talked, I told you that we had I had a nervous breakdown.

I think that had a lot to do with me changing the way I perceive things, the way I thought about things because I'm married. I've been married going on nine years now. Oh, wow. Okay. And I never thought that would've happened because I planned on being a player the rest of my life.

That's no. But that that's an important point. Yeah. Because there's a lot of there's a lot of people out there, men and women Yeah. Who are just like you were.

Yeah. It's not just you. You know? It it people like you are not the ones that get displayed in front of us, but people like you are real. Mhmm.

Yeah. You know? You're you're real. That's not what gets displayed in front of us. And I don't like portraying perfect people because, I think it's very, very, very, very bad for the rest of us to portray perfect people or portray anyone as perfect because now we are trying to measure ourselves against something we will never meet.

Exactly. You will never be in a quote unquote perfect relationship. Let me I little sidebar, I have to say this. If you are in a relationship and y'all never disagree, never argue. You are in a unhealthy relationship, and I'll tell you why.

Doesn't mean that we need to argue and disagree all the time. What I'm saying is that if you're truly communicating, communication is one of those key principles, if you're truly communicating, you're going to disagree. You're not gonna agree with everything unless somebody's lying because that's just not normal. If you're a normal human being, you might agree with a lot of things. You might get along really well.

You might disagree rarely, and that's fine, and that's normal too. But never is not normal. Just Shanti, what do you have to say about that? You are absolutely right because my the relationship that I was in, I decided, okay. I'm not gonna play around no more.

I'm gonna be committed. I'm gonna be loyal. I'm gonna, you know, do whatever she has, and I did. And we were together five years, never had an argument. We had our first argument when I learned she cheated on me.

That was our first and last argument. So what I hear in that is she was bottling up a bunch of crap, whatever that crap was. She was bottling up a bunch of stuff. Yeah. And instead of communicating with you, went out and struck out instead.

Yeah. And that happens. That happens a lot. So sometimes, another sidebar for those of you listening, if you had somebody cheat on you, I have learned 99.9% of the time there was something in the relationship that wasn't communicated or wasn't dealt with and this person, man or woman, went out and found it somewhere else. Yeah.

Right. Whatever that thing is because it's not the same for all of us. But, I think it's I I think it's this conversation is so important that we think about as parents, how we are modeling relationships before our kids. Now I wanna add to that. It doesn't mean that you have to be a perfect parent.

You have to be a perfect human as a parent. You're not going to be. It doesn't mean that you won't have failed relationships because, honestly, that's kinda normal too. Mhmm. That's going to happen even if you're great and you try to do your best.

You you might still have failed relationships. Hopefully, you learn from them and don't repeat them. Right. Send it to clients. But, you know, that's normal.

But for those of you who have, you know, who just change mates like you change underwear, your kids are watching that. Mhmm. Your kids, your nieces and nephews, if they're close to you, your grandkids, whoever is around you, they're watching that, and it's affecting how they're gonna view relationships and, ultimately, how they see themselves. It always affects how they see themselves. Yeah.

Sometimes they may look at you and say, I never wanna be like you. And sometimes they look at you and say, Ashanti said, marriage doesn't work. I'm never gonna get married. And now she's happy, you know, because she's she's in a committed relationship that's growing, and that's a healthy place to be where there's communication. Now I know some of this because she told me some of this off air, not because I'm guessing.

But, but it's it's so important as parents. What are you that you think about this. What are you modeling for your kids? And I don't wanna beat up the ones who are trying, so please don't take it that way because that is really not what I mean. I don't mean beat yourself up because you're not perfect.

I mean, if you've been messing up and screwing up before now and screwing everything that walks by, and your kids are seeing that, it's not too late to change. Because if you start changing now, they will also see that. They can see that you can go from a hoe to mo. You know what I mean? Okay.

You know what I mean? And and I'm not just I mean, male or female, it doesn't matter. It's the same thing, when it comes to this. You can you can make a change today if if you are examining yourself and you realize I've been poorly modeling. Something that you can do is don't just bring anybody home unless you're real serious about them.

Yes. And just being serious about them doesn't mean that you're you're gonna last. Maybe you won't. Exactly. But don't be so quick to just switch things up.

And what did you say earlier? Your your your mom would be like, oh, here you go. I got a new boyfriend. Oh, yeah. No communication.

Like, that's just messed up. I'm sorry. That's messed up. It is. Like, this is there was no introduction.

Hey, Shanti. This is Joe Bob. You know Mhmm. They say, I know, some random dude coming out the bedroom, and he got a draw. And what the hell?

That's a really horrible way to, to portray ourselves in front of our kids. It it I'm I'm sorry. It just is. And it's but it wasn't just your mom. There are people listening right now who had that experience or maybe are doing it.

Yeah. Again, audience. It's not too late to change. So, Shanti, let me ask you this. Let let's discuss this.

What can people do who have never seen a healthy relationship model before them? What advice do you have for them? My advice would be to seek out a couple, a married couple around your age or older, preferably a little older, who's been married for longer than five years. Excellent advice. Absolutely.

Seek them out. Why is that why is that good advice, though? Because it's like having a mentor. If you've never seen it growing up, how are you gonna know what it is? I mean, a lot of people we watch so much TV, and TV makes us think that this is what it's supposed to be like.

Oh my god. The kind of family I want. This is the kind of wife I wanna be. And if we don't have those examples in our real lives, we're gonna turn the TV and think that's real life when it's not. You can't resolve the issue in thirty minutes like it like it does on, you know, sitcoms or whatever.

Right. But, you know, find go if you're in church, find you a couple in church. You know, elders who not too old because, you know, when you go too old, they be on that old school stuff. And a lot of us a lot of us aren't with that. But, you know, somewhere around your age who's been married long a long time.

And, you know, talk to them. Ask questions. You know? And if they're open if they're not open, don't even bother. But find you a couple that is open to answering questions about their marriage.

Or if you can't find one, go to couples counseling. Go to couples therapy. Yeah. You know, to that's if you want to, you know, have develop that growth in your relationship and communication Right. And respect in your relationship.

If this is the person you wanna be with and you can see yourself, you know, growing old with this person, then you go get some mentors. You can't do it by yourself or you're gonna do it the wrong and the hard way when it could be so easy by just get seeking help. That doesn't mean anything is wrong with you or them. It just means that you're wanting to grow. You're wanting to see something different.

I love everything you just said, and I love the fact that you brought up the example of television. Mhmm. I think you are dead on with that. So much of our romantic ideas of what relationships are supposed to be are very, very, very, very distorted as Americans because of a lot of the garbage we see on TV and in movies that are portrayed before us, like, this is what you're supposed to be like. Right now, in modern day times, I would call that reality TV.

Like, a lot of that is absolute pure garbage and teaching you all the wrong things about relationships. Your relationship should not be put together in ten minutes and based on something that's so shallow. And, but a lot of people think that that's, you know, okay because that's the garbage that's portrayed before us. But, yeah, I love that idea of of get yourself an older couple who's been together for longer than five years and find out what makes that work for them. And I you know what you know what I like about that advice as well?

When you do that, I find that a % of the time, it does something to the couple you're talking to also. Because you can't, as a couple, have that conversation with with a youngin. Right. With someone younger. Pretty much, yeah.

Without actually examining your own relationship. Exactly. And sometimes you realize, oh my god, we're doing this right. And sometimes you're like, well, we need to work on that. But I find most of the time, you you you get a little bit of both, what's good about your relationship, what's bad.

All of that is good. That is self examination is excellent. Mhmm. So when you do that for a couple, your chances are you don't realize it, and they may not say anything in front of you, but you're probably doing something for them too. Yeah.

You definitely are. I know someone a couple came to us and said, can we, you know, be your couple friends? And we wanna, you know, learn, you know, all the ups and downs so we'll know, you know, what to do and what not to do. Blah blah blah. I would be honored that some a couple looked up to my marriage and wanting to learn.

I would be honored. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It does feel honorable when people wanna Yeah.

Put it to you like that. But I I love that idea of I I honestly I really think that what's true today wasn't true twenty to thirty years ago. Yes. Yes. But what I'm about to say, I don't I don't think I would have said it thirty years ago, but I think that majority of Americans have not seen a healthy relationship in front of them.

Yep. And that's scary and that's bad. It's very bad. So, there there are solutions if that's you and you know that it's you. Okay.

Everything wasn't right and there's some there's a lot wrong growing up, so what can you do about it? I think the all of the advice that Shanti just gave was absolutely perfect. And if that's you, and I know it is most of you, you know, take that under advisement. And, you know, if you keep going through the same relationship over and over again with different faces and different names, the issue is you, period. But what is the issue within you?

That's where the conversation needs to happen because Mhmm. Maybe you're picking the same people over and over again because your outlook is broken. Oh, you haven't learned your lesson Yes. From the last ones. Because your lesson can show up several times, different faces, different people, same problem.

And until you recognize it and learn from it, you're gonna keep repeating that cycle. And this is where going to get some counseling really is helpful. Yes. You know, there are people out there that specifically do relationship counseling, who can really actually help you to to see what it what do I need to fix to have a healthy relationship. Exactly.

Again, I wanna emphasize, not what do I need to fix to be perfect, but what do I need to fix to have a healthy relationship. Those are two different things. Perfect lives on an island all by itself inside your head and not on your own. Right? Perfect has parties all the time inside your head, but it doesn't exist out here in reality.

And you'll never be perfect either, so don't try. But what you can do is make sure that you respect your your partner, that you communicate with them. Real communication. Real communication requires conversations, not just looks and attitudes. I just wanna say that.

But real communication and, and growth. There should always be growth in your relationship. We're not always gonna grow the same way or at the same pace. You do not need to be like me. You need to be your own version of that.

Exactly. There does need to be some kind of growth. If there is no growth and you're becoming stagnant, you're on your way to falling apart. Yeah. Slow growth is better is better than no growth.

Well said. Exactly. Exactly. Well, Shanti, now we had this conversation today, but you are an you are an author. You've written this amazing book, and you do coaching as well.

So Mhmm. Tell the audience what you do and how they can find you. I am a certified mental health coach. I'm a, keynote speaker, author, and I help women to release, heal, and live their best lives through guided journaling. Guided journaling is basically answering specific prompts pertaining to whatever issue you wanna overcome.

You can find me on my website, shantyrefuge.com, and you can find me on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. I'm at Shanti Refuge Journals. Alright. And there you have it. Well, Shanti, once again, thank you very, very, very much for coming on once again.

It's always a joy to talk to you. There are 942 more topics we could talk on because you are a plethora of of wisdom, and experiences. And I really think that more people should listen to what you have to say because there's too many people in America that can relate to you. I know. And I'm gonna keep talking.

Good. Keep sharing. I'm not quitting because I know there's somebody that needs to hear, you know, about anything I have to say regarding, you know, taking care of your mental health and being your best you despite your past. Your past doesn't define you. And not and not a fluffy sugar coated mental health, but real stuff.

Oh, no. No. I don't I don't sugarcoat. I come for you. I come for you.

I love that. Alright. Well, once again, Shanti, thank you for coming on, and, we'll talk soon. Thank you. Bye.

And now for a mind shifting moment. Today, I want you to do some self reflection. I want you to take a look at what has been displayed before you growing up. What's been displayed before you in friendships? What's been displayed before you in media, television, movies, even social media?

When it comes to relationships, what have you seen? What has everything you've seen taught you? And then I want you to take those things and say, okay, how has this affected how I have relationships now? How has this affected my relationships and marriage? How has this affected my friendships?

How has this affected my not having relationships because of fear? Whatever the issue is for you, how has it affected you? Now this can be done can be looked at in both good and bad ways. Maybe you had some excellent displayed some excellence displayed before you. Wonderful.

Even that, how has that affected you, and what can you take from it? And if you've never seen a healthy relationship displayed before you, it doesn't mean that they don't exist and you can't have one. It means you need to get one in front of you to know what it looks like. You might have to seek that out, as Shanti told said earlier, but you can have one. And, again, I wanna reiterate, a healthy relationship doesn't mean perfection.

It doesn't mean that there aren't bad moments. A healthy relationship means there's consistency in these three things, respect, communication, and growth. Find that, and you found the example. Just think about it. Thank you for listening to Mindshift Power Podcast.

Please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel at the mind shifter. If you have any comments, topic suggestions, or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit FatimaBay.com/podcast. Remember, there's power in shifting your thinking. Tune in for next week.