In 2017, Gina Marie Byars shared her story of taking emergency custody of her brother’s four children and how this affected her life and her relatively new marriage. Now, the kids have moved back in with their mother and we are talking about the next chapter – how she and her husband are handling the empty nest.

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00:06 Speaker 1: This is Do Good, BeGood, the show about helpful people and the challenges they face in trying todo good. Your host is Sharon Tewksbury-Bloom, a career do-gooder, who alsoloves craft beer and a good hard tackle in rugby. Sharon speaks to everydaypeople about why they do good and what it means to be good.

00:27 Sharon Tewksbury-Bloom:Welcome back, listeners, this is Sharon Tewksbury-Bloom, your host, and todayI’ve got the rest of the story with Gina Marie Byars. Last week we rebroadcastmy conversation with Gina in October 2017. If you haven’t taken a moment tolisten to that episode, I strongly urge you to do so. This conversation thisweek will make a lot more sense if you go back and listen. It should be thelast episode in your feed if you’re listening in a podcast app or you canlisten to it through our website, dogoodbegoodshow.com. It shows up asrebroadcast episode two “And Then There Were Four.” But to today’sepisode, I got Gina Marie Byars back in the studio and we were able to talkabout what happened next. I gave you a little context at the beginning of ourconversation, so I think it’s best if we just jump right in.

01:23 ST: Here we are, it’s like twoand a half years after I last spoke to you.

01:27 Gina Marie Byars: Yeah.

01:28 ST: And I have a sense that alot has happened in that time. We really spent the whole first interviewtalking about the enormous changes to your life that had happened when you tookon temporary emergency custody of your brother’s kids.

01:46 GB: Yes.

01:47 ST: Which was four kids,correct?

01:49 GB: Yes.

01:50 ST: Okay, [chuckle] and beforethat you had been living just with your fairly new husband.

01:56 GB: Yes.

01:57 ST: In an apartment.

01:58 GB: Yes.

01:58 ST: And that was quite a bigchange to your life.

02:04 GB: Yes, it was. It was. Itwas a big change.

02:06 ST: And that situation lastedfor quite a while. I know when we were talking, you still were saying thattheir mother was trying to get so that she could start taking custody again.You didn’t know exactly how much longer you would have the kids. You had beenable to move into a bigger space and at least accommodate that more. But yeah,so what’s happened since then?

[chuckle]

02:34 GB: Well, about six months, itwould’ve been just about six months, seven months, after we talked, the kidsended up going back with their mom full-time. They’ve been doing littleovernights or different things. And then January 18th, 2018, they were backwith their mom full-time, all four of them. And so then, another big giantchange of, “Okay, going from lots of kids.” And then our 18 year oldIsaac, he had been still from beginning had been with us part-time, and thenhe’s gone off to college. And so, we’ve… All five of the kids that had beenwith us have been out of the house.

03:29 ST: You’re like empty nesters.

03:30 GB: Yeah, yeah.

03:32 ST: Which is not a term youusually apply to a…

03:35 GB: 48 year old woman, no.

03:37 ST: Or to a couple that hasn’tbeen married all that long.

03:40 GB: True.

03:40 ST: And didn’t set out to havechildren together.

03:44 GB: Yeah, exactly, exactly.And it was immediate sudden empty nest. Even though yes, we knew it was coming,’cause that was what was going on. But with other families, their oldest goesoff to wherever then the next one, the next one, next one. Ours was just like,all of them, all at once. Yeah, another big change. So it’s been just over twoyears now and it’s probably only been in the last eight months that I’vefigured out… Re-figured out my equilibrium for us again.

04:23 ST: Do you remember back tothat first morning when there were no kids in the house and what that felt likeor how?

[chuckle]

04:31 GB: It was weird, it’s still weird. Every once in a while, I’ll wake up and walk through the house and it’s just me, ’cause Scott will go off to work early. And then the other change on that is, since then, about nine months ago, 10 months ago, I guess now almost, my mom actually started living with us. And then in November, December, it was officially, she had just been kinda hanging out with us with some other family drama with my brother at her house. And then November, December, I said, “Yeah let’s just officially have you live with us.” And so, yeah it’s again, just interesting. And then, yeah, not having the kids around every once in a while there’ll be things… We still have cubbies of their stuff still there and every once in a while I think, “Oh I should go through this and clean it up and use this space,” and I’m like, “Well, not yet.” [chuckle] So that’s been a funny realization for me.

05:41 ST: How old are the kids now?

05:44 GB: 13, 11, nine and eight.

05:48 ST: Okay.

05:48 GB: Yeah.

05:50 ST: And how often do you seethem now?

05:54 GB: Often. Obviously not asoften as it had been, of course, but like for tonight we’re going to the NAUWomen’s Basketball game. I’m taking the whole family, taking all of them. Andthen the youngest will come over in the mornings a couple of times a weekbefore school, and we hang out for half an hour maybe and then I take her toschool, and starting after spring break, we’re gonna restart Monday nights haveone of them spend the night with us each week, and so… We’re still prettyconnected. And then Scott gets to see the two oldest every day because they goto school with him, they’re in seventh and sixth grade, and he teaches sixthgrade and one of them actually gets to be in his class and so that’s a lot offun for those three, they get to see him.

06:51 ST: Was there anything, Idon’t know how much mental space you had to prepare for them leaving, but wasthere anything you intentionally, you and Scott did to try to say, “Okaywe’re gonna take some time for ourselves,” or “We’re gonna re-figureout what we wanna do now that we have more space and time and ability to dothat.”?

07:19 GB: We tried. We triedplanning, but it was so unconceivable not inconceivable, but not being able toconceive and what’s the word I’m looking for? Predict. Not predict it’s alongpredict…

07:41 ST: Foresee…

07:41 GB: Foresee, yeah. We weren’table to foresee what that would look like, what that would feel like. And yes,we’d had days when the kids would be with their mom or somebody else other thanus for several hours or overnight or something, but that’s one day. So extendedperiod of time, I was saying, “Okay here’s now just us again.” And itreally was, and is, continues to be a really interesting piece of saying,“Well hey, it’s Sunday morning and Karma has their all day, happy hour,should we go do that today? Yes let’s go.” Like, “Oh, okay, yeah,that works.” So I think we’re still trying to figure that out.

08:33 ST: Yeah, I think that in asense of figuring out what it looks like to be you as a couple, and how younegotiate your lives is something I think we can all relate to and deal with ona regular basis. My best friend and I joke about this, she was a guest on theshow, Rachel, she has four kids. And so we’re always joking about thedifferences of how you relate to your husband when you have four kids versushow you relate to your husband when you don’t have any kids.

09:02 GB: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

09:03 ST: She’s always telling melike, “I don’t understand, what do you talk about?” Like, “Whatdo you do at this time of day?” Or like, “What do you do onweekends?” And I’m always joking with her, “I listen to podcasts. Welisten to podcasts.” She’s like, “No, no, no, but I mean what do youtalk about over dinner?” I was like, “We don’t. We listen topodcasts.” [laughter] “What part of this don’t you understand?”Yeah, ’cause she can’t conceive of what that would be like. [chuckle]

09:29 GB: Yeah and it’s been onewe’ve had to actively practice again, and going, “Oh, here’s talking aboutthis,” and we’ll find little things, like just this past weekend I found alittle card game, and it’s called Serenflipity and it has three differentthings, you can either… There’s an activity pile or a connection pile, and ittells you something to do to connect to some random person or a self-reflectiontype of things. We’ve pulled one of those, and go, “Oh.” And the firstone we pulled was, one of the observation ones. And pay attention to thethings, to all your senses today and find something that really is beautiful toeach of those senses. So then we chit chatted about that a little bit. Andsometimes like in the car, I’ve in the last period of time, I’ve just had myradio off. I don’t listen to anything, no music, nothing and just let thesilence be there and let my brain do whatever it’s gonna be. And so then when Ihave somebody in the car and sometimes I’m still in that mode and I don’t thinkto talk. And I’m like, “Oh, should I ask? Oh I will just let it go?”And then of course, Scott will say something or, well one of us will saysomething, and we talk to each other about that. So it is, it’s one that we’vehad to actively practice doing. We’re actually starting a writing projecttogether. I don’t know if I mentioned it in our first interview but I’m stillabout a quarter of the way through completing a novel.

11:12 ST: Nice.

11:13 GB: I know. From that, it’sactually expanded and so it’s in my head, it needs to be three novels. And sothat lowers that…

11:21 ST: So you’ve gone backwards.

11:23 GB: That percentage. I’ve gone backwards. But Scott is super excited and about either doing a side project or there’s some pieces of the world building that we’ve been talking about. And he’s like, “Oh we could do this. And would you be okay if I did this?” And I said, “Yes.” And then every once in a while he says, “Oh what about this story? This would be a great story in that room realm.” And I always tell him, I say, “You should write it.” [chuckle] “Because I have the story that I wanna tell. You need to write that one.” But so that’s… That’s just little bits.

11:53 ST: Yeah, I love theimportance of having a project that you can work on together and then alsohaving that time and space to have your own projects that you get to work onand supporting each other in that. I’ve recently started, what I’d consider aproject of going backpacking by myself on the Arizona trail and it’s been niceto see, I mean Jay’s had some apprehensions about that, not for necessarily mysafety or anything like that, but for just maybe more even so how he’s gonnasurvive when I’m not here, [chuckle] for longer periods of time. But he’ssupportive of it and he knows that that’ll be, that I need to do my things andI need to be able to go and do something independently, if it’s something I’mreally interested in and so that’s kinda I think sparked something in him wherehe’s wanting to figure out, “Well, what do I wannna do and what would befun for me?” And so he’s trying to get back to mountain biking more.

12:56 GB: That’s really cool.

12:57 ST: Yeah.

12:57 GB: And that’s really cool’cause you’re just off the trail, ’cause you were on the trail last week,weren’t you?

13:01 ST: I just did my first tripalone, so that was four days.

13:05 GB: Okay.

13:05 ST: 40 miles, and then thatwas preparation for this longer trip, we’re starting at the Mexican border andthen hiking to Tucson, which is like 150 miles, two weeks, and then I don’tknow if I’ll wanna do more after that. [chuckle]

13:19 GB: Great, yeah that’sexciting.

13:21 ST: I haven’t really committedto doing more than that, but that seems like enough for now. [chuckle]

13:25 GB: Yeah, absolutely.

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13:26 ST: Just a quick break toremind you that you can find show notes from today’s episode, including a fulltranscript at dogoodbegoodshow.com, and you can follow us on Facebook atfacebook.com/dogoodbegoodshow, and I always like to encourage you to subscribeto this show, it’s free and it allows you to easily see every new episode whenit’s released. Typically, we release a new episode every other week. You can dothat in your podcast purveyor of choice. Now, back to my conversation withGina.

14:03 ST: I know that before youwere taking on four kids, [chuckle] you were involved in children’s theater andyou had lots of different activities that you, particularly, non-profits orarts things that you were involved with and drumming and other stuff. So haveyou picked back up on any of those things or has it given you any perspectiveon what kind of things in the community you wanna be involved in?

14:31 GB: Well, some of them, likethe drumming, I had continued that. That was actually a really goodcontinuation for me, and it was fun ’cause every once in a while the kids wouldparticipate, and that was one that Scott periodically participates in.

14:44 ST: Okay, so you are gettingback into some…

14:48 GB: Theater.

14:48 ST: Theater and stuff.

14:49 GB: Yeah, yeah.

14:50 ST: And writing your novel?

14:51 GB: Yeah, and I’m writing mynovel and I’m starting to get excited about it again. I’d been writing it and Iwas excited about it, and then life and got sidetracked from it. And true toform, I’m not just writing a novel, there’s also this other little side projectthat has nothing to do with the novel, that I’m also writing and having funwith that. It’s more of a daily inspirational book.

15:22 ST: Nice.

15:23 GB: And I will tell you the title just ’cause it makes my heart happy. It’s Too Blessed To Be Dressed. [chuckle]

15:31 ST: Oh, is it like a nudistinspirational book?

15:33 GB: Yes, yes.

15:33 ST: That’s awesome. [chuckle]

15:35 GB: Yes, and it was, I hadseen Too Blessed To Be Stressed or something at some book store and in my head,that’s what I saw was Too Blessed To Be Dressed and I was like, “Oh mygosh” and it made me laugh and I thought, “Oh, actually that could bea really interesting spin and what does it mean to be naked?” And doingresearch on just even just word study stuff has been fascinating so far, I’mlike, “Oh, okay, there’s some things,” and I’m practicing writingparagraphs or sentence worth of here’s something to contemplate throughout theday has being a fun little, almost pre-writing project ’cause I can do thatsuper easy, just kind of flip through the day, and then get into some biggerwriting after that.

16:22 ST: Well, I’ve seen sometimesyou will do it on social media like Gina’s Random Musings, which I’m oftenlaughing at.

16:28 GB: Yeah. [chuckle] Yeah.

16:29 ST: So I like the creative andquirky way that you can see things sometimes.

16:34 GB: Yeah.

16:35 ST: Cool, so sort of on thatnote, but transitioning, I think, going through the backpacking experience formyself, I’m trying to figure out how do you transition between whether it’s aevent you were planning on that takes over your life for a while or whetherit’s something that you even planned on that takes over your life for a whileand then you’re trying to get back to those things you know you like and yourcreative pursuits and stuff that maybe you had to put on the back burner. So,you mentioned getting back into it and maybe that being a little difficult toget the writing spark again. Is there anything in particular that you did toget back to it?

17:22 GB: Being stubborn and beinglike, “You just need to it.” [chuckle] That’s part of it and then theother part was that even the whole time throughout all of the transitions isreally paying attention to what I like to call the sacred mundane, and thenthat daily stuff is as important and essential as the ceremonial and ritualtimes that we celebrate whatever it’s gonna be. The making coffee in themorning can be as much of a sacred ritual as going to some celebratoryceremony, they each have their purpose and they each have the piece that holdswho we are and so trying to be very aware of that and very mindful of theday-to-day things and then saying, “How do I make sure that these piecesare connected to my everyday life and to the things that I want tocontinue?” And using that sacred mundane pieces as a vehicle to then say,“Yes, I do want to write. Yeah, it’s important, it’s important.”

18:29 ST: But what I hear in whatyou’re saying though you haven’t said it explicitly is being able to have thatgrace with yourself, to let yourself move through those transitions withwhatever it is you need to or to know like, “Okay, I’m going to be sadabout this or I’m going to have low energy for a little while or I’m not gonnafeel guilt that I put my writing to the side during this time, I’m going tojust accept that I needed to do that and then now is the time when I can pickit back up and I don’t need to over-think or put a bunch of judgment onit.”

18:29 GB: Yeah, yeah.

18:29 ST: I struggle with that. [chuckle] I have a lot of admiration for people who can make those transitions without also feeding in the should haves or I love the term shooting all over yourself.

19:39 GB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it’sbeen a lot of work that I’ve personally done with myself, of knowing all thecircumstances that brought me to a certain point, and not excusing but knowingthe reasons and saying, “Ah, here are the reasons.” And soacknowledging and realizing my own responsibility in a place without feeling,yeah, like taking on the fault. Being like, “Here’s my responsibility,it’s not my fault but I did play a part to be here.” And being able to beokay with it. And if I’m not okay with it, saying, “Okay I’m not okay withthis, so am I gonna change it?” And then depending on that answer if I’mnot gonna change it, then I have to be able to accept it. And getting to thatpoint is always a interesting journey. [chuckle]

20:39 ST: Yeah. Kinda going backwith your experience now of the foster system, and of course, you were enteringit from the family side rather than from the signing up to be a foster familyside. Do you have any thoughts on whether you would want to go through and becomea foster family for other foster kids, unrelated to you?

21:13 GB: Yeah. I’ve thought aboutit. I know Scott isn’t as keen on it. It’s interesting ’cause I go back andforth, there’s times I think about it, and then there’s other times I’m like,“Oh my God.” It makes me tired just thinking about it. I’m like,“Okay, I don’t know how much energy I have to be able to do that.”And things like that, and other people being in the community, I’ve beenpracticing saying, “Thank you. Thank you for participating in ourcommunity, thank you for being a part of it,” and truly meaning it.

21:50 ST: Yeah, it really made mewanna figure out, “Okay, how can I support those who are taking on thisresponsibility?”

21:57 GB: Right.

21:57 ST: ‘Cause it’s so important.

22:00 GB: Right.

22:00 ST: Yeah.

22:00 GB: Yeah. And something thatI’ve been feeling my desire to still participate in foster system at somelevel, and then going, “Okay, that’s not really feasible right now.”Random list of reasons. But participating in things like coaching with girls onthe run, then coaching the girls basketball team for Pine Forest and reallypaying attention to places that I can support in a side-ways way and notnecessarily being like, “Okay, I’m right here supporting them.” Beinglike, “No here’s one more little piece.” That’s so important foreverybody in the community to be able to know that there’s connections.

22:54 ST: I hope you enjoyed myconversation with Gina. A big, big shout-out to Gina, for being willing toshare her story and for making the time to come and talk about it again. Thankyou so much, Gina. Thank you for listening to Do Good, Be Good. For show noteson all of our episodes visit dogoodbegoodshow.com. Today’s episode was edited,produced, and everything else by me, Sharon Tewksbury-Bloom. Don’t forget, youcan always subscribe for free to this show in any podcast app of choice. Bethat Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcast, any of them that you like, you can justclick the button to subscribe and you’ll get each episode as soon as it isreleased. Music in this episode is Bathed in Fine Dust by Andy G. Cohen,released under Creative Commons Attribution international license anddiscovered in the free music archive. Until next week, this is SharonTewksbury-Bloom, signing off.

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