Beat | Your big wins over polarization in the family

(Music up and under)

Mónica Guzmán:

This season we are proud to be partnering with two fantastic media organizations to help us reach more listeners like you. KUOW is Seattle’s NPR news station and Deseret News is a multi -platform newspaper out of Salt Lake City.

Help us by helping them. Learn how at KUOW.org/brave or Deseret.com/subscribe. 

(music out and segue up and under)

Hey everyone, welcome to seven weeks before the election and one week since Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’ first presidential debate. I can only imagine, for those of you who watched, what your political conversations have been like since that night. I’ll tell you a bit about mine. If you tuned into the podcast last week, you got to know my parents, and they’re excited to cast their third vote for Trump in November, while I will be voting with some enthusiasm for Harris. We didn’t plan the debate we had the morning after the debate.

We just launched into it while I was packing up my hotel room after a visit to Vanderbilt University in Nashville that they drove out to meet me for. We had a bunch of questions for each other, given that, during the debate, I could not help but look at them every time I thought Trump said something outrageous, and they couldn’t help but look at me every time they thought Harris squirmed her way out of a valid critique.

And I learned some things. I learned that my mom’s vote for the Republican ticket is a lot more driven by the economy than I had ever realized. I learned that my mom and dad disagree a lot about whether laws regulating abortion should come from the federal government or the states.

And I learned that one thing all three of us want, no matter who wins the election, is strong early childhood education and policies that put quality daycare within reach of a lot more families in need.

Now, I am well aware that not every family that’s as politically divided as mine can talk about those kinds of issues for very long, or at all.

And that a lot of families don’t even want to or need to. One listener, Linda in Colorado, wrote in to tell us that her divided family likes to avoid politics and just do and talk about a whole lot of other things they enjoy.

“We have realized,” she wrote, “that how we each feel about politics doesn’t define the way we feel about each other.” 

But for a lot of other divided families, how they feel about politics doesn’t just come to define a relationship, it can threaten to break it. Which brings us to the heart of this week’s Beat.

If there even is a way to repair a close relationship damaged by political disagreement. How in the world might you find it? 

(music under)

In a moment here, I’m going to hand the mic to someone who has known this very struggle on a really personal level. We featured her story at the tail end of an episode last year. And given the impact it had on so many of you then, when we weren’t diving headfirst into another device of election, we are bringing it back to you now. With that, here’s Janice. 

Janice Dickinson:

“My name is Janice Dickinson, and I live in Winthrop, Washington. I was born to a very liberal mother. I went to the University of Colorado in Boulder, which was a very liberal place.

I married a liberal. My friends are liberals. There are several issues on the blue side. One is gun control. Another one is abortion. And those things are very important to me and are much better represented by the blue side.

(music out)

I had this contentious relationship with my father. And my stepmother, who was his beloved wife died five years ago and I was one of the people that was trying to help him in his 80s as he was living alone and needing a lot of assistance.

I would come to visit my dad and it takes me an entire day to get from where I live in Washington State to where he lived in Colorado. So I would spend all this time and energy coming to visit him and I would walk in the front door and I would hear Fox News on and they would be on a rant because that’s what they do on Fox News. So you could hear it immediately and there would be some mention of something that I disagreed with and I just feel this irritation immediately. And I guess I wasn’t aware, but I’m aware now that that irritation was something that he could feel.

So I think the whole event would take really only a few seconds to happen and then it would set off a chain reaction of my dad being irritated back with me.

It would eventually escalate into him getting really mad at me and then I would pack up my stuff and leave. And I had been every time intending to stay with him or had been staying with him and I’d have to go to a hotel.

And it was pretty sad. It was really, it was a, I cried every time. It was, it was an emotional situation. My brother who lives locally would be upset.

It would just cause turmoil. And I started, “Braver Angels,” kind of during this time. There are two women from my alliance, Sue Lani Madsen and Sharon Lonergan, who are really outspoken, very conservative women. Sue Lani Madsen was an architect, and in one of our workshops, she started talking about how she felt there were too many rules and that the left had imposed too much structure on construction and that it was part of why construction was so expensive.

And I know my father had been in construction and the light bulb went off and I thought, oh, I agree with that. And that was one of the first ones. And I just felt, I started to change. So then I started having these visits with my dad where I would walk in the door and I wouldn’t get triggered by Fox News because it wasn’t bothering me anymore because I was beginning to believe that people could have other views and that was acceptable.

What was so cool was my dad changed too. I wasn’t coming in and whatever energy I was giving off to him wasn’t happening so he wasn’t reacting to it and we became almost instantly an amazingly different relationship. And very loving and kind and I was one of the people that could help him navigate… 

(music under)

…because he still was a contentious person he still that was his personality but he never got mad at me again. And this went on for a couple years I was able to manage his care and do all these things. And in the very last visit I’m gonna I choked up, sorry, I guess it still hits me.

But the very last visit I had with him, he and I had, and my brother had this incredible time with him, it was just an amazing moment. And then a couple weeks later, he had a stroke and I made it to the hospital two hours before he died and he was completely unconscious and I never got to talk to him again.

And I felt like my father departed knowing that his daughter loved him and I said goodbye to him knowing how much I cared about him and there wasn’t anything else. It was just pure and clean and so wonderful. I think the biggest thing for me is I sleep at night because I’m not feeling like half the country are terrible people and uneducated.

I just feel like I’m not afraid of the other side and we had the memorial or the funeral for my father. We had 27 family members and many of them are conservative and nobody cared and it was an amazing celebration of his life and connection for all of us.

Mónica:

When we passed on Janice’s story last year, which by the way, thank you Janice, we heard it gave a lot of you hope That maybe in your own families something you want to see shift really can.

It can be a real staggered process that shift Or the attempt at it anyway. Two steps forward one step back or maybe three steps back who knows. But somehow people keep going.

A couple weeks ago we sent out a survey via our text line to ask those of you in politically divided families if you had managed to repair even some small part of a family relationship that had taken a political hit. And 87% of those of you who responded told us you had.

You heard that right. 87%. Granted, A Braver Way listeners are probably paying a little more attention to all this in the average American relative, but still. That’s pretty good, right? What’s even better, several of you went on to tell us what you had done to move the needle in the right direction on those relationships. So, here we go.

(music change and under)

Meg in Utah leans conservative and writes, 

“My left leaning brother -in -law is extreme in his political views and whenever the family is together he can’t avoid talking politics and he will spew whatever he’s been reading like it’s common knowledge and like everyone knows and agrees.

I’ve had a hard time knowing how to deal with or respond to this communication style.”

Then Meg went on to say she learned a couple skills we teach at Braver Angels workshops. Meg goes on,

“When I was with him next, I gave myself the challenge to say back to him what I was hearing and understanding from him. That was a challenge I had never tried before. It helped me to make sense of what he was saying, and it helped him to feel heard and understood. And before I knew it, we were finding common ground on things, and loving our time together.”

(music out)

Erika, also in Utah, leans moderate left, and her daughter, who came home for a visit not that long ago, leans far left. Erika writes, 

“My Gen Z daughter is very angry and devastated about Israel’s actions in the war.

My view is different. So after happily passing on political conversation the whole four days, somehow on the way to the airport, we got to talking about Gaza. I was able to ask her questions of curiosity and ‘tell me more’, even though the words coming out of her mouth were very painful to me. I wasn’t perfect, I think I probably sighed a lot and winced a bit, but I count it as a win that it didn’t turn into a fight.

She said her thing. I didn’t challenge her. We gave each other a big hug when I dropped her off.”

 Mike, who leans liberal, lives in Texas. He writes,

“After the assassination attempt on former President Trump, I reached out to my cousins, who lean conservative, to tell them how horrified I was, both at the violence and the responses of many of my fellow liberals on social media.

We hadn’t spoken since COVID, which had further divided us. We realized we both wanted to bridge across our divides for the sake of family. We have recently both invited each other to our kids’ birthday parties for the first time.”

And then there’s Amy in Idaho. 

(music under)

She is a conservative -leaning centrist, and her grown son, who is liberal, stopped talking to her in the fall of 2020 over a rift she ascribes to misunderstandings about her beliefs as they relate to liberal ideology.

I’ve talked to Amy a couple times over the years, and the one -step -forward -three -steps -back scenario is pretty familiar to her. Last fall, she sent me this text message, and it’s like I could feel her beaming as I read it. She had gathered her courage to text her son to see if he wanted to talk, and he had said “yes.” She wrote,

“I was able to speak with my son for about 25 minutes a couple weeks ago, first time in over three years. It was a good conversation. I really have no idea where the slightly open door will lead. I can only hope that it’ll continue to open up a little bit more all the time.” 

Almost a year past before the next forward step, a much longer conversation with her son.

During that chat, Amy said, he talked about the boundaries he needed and how he’s learned that it’s better for him to keep some people out of his life. That’s when Amy gathered her courage again and asked what she was afraid to know.

“Are me and your dad in that group? Of people you want to keep out of your life?” “No,” he told her. 

He was enjoying that conversation. He wanted to talk again. 

I wanted to end on Amy’s story, because as I’ve heard from family members divided by politics all over the country, it’s felt like one of the hardest things for anyone to accept is that we can’t control other people, even the people we love. They will move, if they move, on their own time, on their own terms, and there is a courage in patience. If you are struggling with political division in your family, if whatever’s going on is not, not a big deal or something you can brush aside very easily, I hope you know, I hope you know you’re not alone. I hope you find some slightly open doors in some moments. And if some doors won’t open for you at all in your family, I hope you can find others that open real wide somewhere else. 

And, by the way, if your family is torn over election season politics, I invite you and a loved one to consider signing up for the reprise of a video series at Braver Angels called Helping Loved Ones Divided by Politics.

It’s hosted by Braver Angels’ co -founder and renowned family therapist, Dr. Bill Doherty. He helps a divided family pair, whether it’s husband and wife, father and daughter, or another related duo, explain what happens when they talk politics. By the end of the session, the two are able to say what’s truly on their minds, explain what’s tough for them, and go deeper than they have before.

Think you and someone in your family might want to give that a try? Learn more at the link in our show notes. 

(music out)

(music under)

Thank you all so much for joining us for this beat episode of A Braver Way. A Braver Way is produced by Braver Angels and distributed in partnership with KUOW and Deseret News.

We get financial support from the MJ Murdoch Charitable Trust and Reclaim Curiosity and count USA Facts as a proud sponsor. 

Our senior producer and editor is David Albright. Our producer is Jessica Jones. Our theme music is by the fantastic number one Billboard bluegrass charting hip hop band Gangstagrass. 

A special thank you to Ben Caron, Don Goldberg, Gabbi Timmis, and Katelin Annes. I’m your host and guide across the divide, Mónica Guzmán. Want to share your story with us? Please do. You can always reach us at abraverway@braverangels.org or join our text line by texting the word BRAVE to 206-926-9955.

Take heart, everyone. Till next time.

(music out)