Unbreakable Mind & Body
Welcome to The Unbreakable Mind & Body podcast with host, Tiana Gonzalez—a multi-passionate creative, storyteller, and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we’ll unlock the tools you need to create an unbreakable mind and body.
Unbreakable Mind & Body
Learning to Say No: A Journey to Find My Voice
What happens when you finally stand up for yourself after a lifetime of putting someone else first? The moment I set my first boundary with my father changed everything between us – and within myself.
After supporting my father through 13 years of incarceration from age 12 to 25, I found myself trapped in a cycle of manipulation and guilt. Until one day, when he made a passive-aggressive comment about my gym time being more important than his needs – and something inside me snapped.
The words flew out with a ferocity that surprised us both: "That's right. My whole life I have taken care of you and now it's my turn to take care of me." For the first time, I saw fear in his eyes. This raw, emotional episode explores the exhausting journey of prison visits, collect calls, and sacrifice that led to this breaking point. I share gut-wrenching stories – like spending seven hours on public transportation for a two-hour prison visit as a teenager – and the gradual realization that this devotion wasn't reciprocal.
Growing up walking on eggshells and having my boundaries consistently violated taught me to be hypervigilant, a skill that transformed into the keen intuition I now use to connect with clients. Through this deeply personal story, I hope to inspire you to identify your own non-negotiables and find the courage to speak your truth – even when it's difficult. Because being specific about your needs and honoring your boundaries is far better than becoming a watered-down version of yourself to please everyone else.
Ready to start setting better boundaries? Tune in to discover how standing in your power can transform your relationships and reclaim your life.
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Website: www.unbreakablemb.com
Email: info@unbreakablemb.com
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Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only. This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.
Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body podcast. I am your host, tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate, creative storyteller and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body. Welcome back to the show. I am your host, tiana, and on this episode, I am going to share with you a life-changing experience that I had the first time that I ever set a firm boundary with my father. Now, if you've been with me for any amount of time or you've listened to some of my earlier episodes that I've released on this show, I do share in episode one and some in episode two, about how I supported my dad for 13 and a half years while he was in prison, starting at the age of 12 up until I was 25 years old, and then also supporting him for a few years after, when he was released on parole. I'm going to read something that I wrote, probably about two or three years ago, in regards to this particular event. It is a vivid memory for me because I'll never forget the look of shock on his face and how our relationship dynamic did change dramatically after this day. So here we go. I'm going to read this to you, okay, I will never forget the day that I set a boundary with my father and he immediately expressed his dislike of it. He tried to make me feel guilty about it and then he tried to gaslight me when I called him out for trying to guilt me. It was around 2003 or 2004. He was on parole, living with me, adjusting to the new ways of the world and relying on me for everything. I understood how it came as a shock to him. After all, I never said no and the brief period of time when it was logistically challenging for me to get to prison to visit him. He certainly did not hold back in trying to scold me and punish me, which was hilarious coming from a man in state prison who continuously tried to guilt me for his tough circumstances. He was not the innocent victim he constantly claimed he was to me. He manipulated everyone. To this day, I don't know the truth about what really happened. What I do know I'll never hear it from him.
Speaker 1:When he was released on parole, he moved in with me. I handed him a cell phone, bought him clothes and shoes, turned my living room into his bedroom and helped him get on his feet. The financial and emotional stress was exhausting. On this particular day, when I set my boundary, I recall him asking me to do something for him or take him somewhere, and when I said no, I can't, as I was bustling around the apartment, he quickly replied with no hesitation and a rather irritating tone of frustration oh right, because you have to go to the gym. I snapped back sharply in his face. That's right, hard stop. It was the first time he looked at me with a little bit of fear in his eyes.
Speaker 1:I then continued my whole life life. I have taken care of you and now it's my turn to take care of me. 13 years of jail visits and orchestrating legal documentation, packages, letters collect, calls, finding rides and then living under my roof. I was tapped out. The air in the room felt stagnant and gritty, and it was at that moment I confirmed in my heart that I was phasing out of the abusive manipulation of his. He was a mastermind, but I stopped gaslighting myself, guilting myself, and started to see the real person, who was my father, and not the image. It was the first of many times that I said no. It was the first time I stood up for the kid that who I was, when I was not under the awning of a crusty, rundown, fragile family structure. It was the beginning of choosing me. That's the end of the piece that I wrote. I want to take a moment and just say first, thank you for listening to that. I struggle finding the words because I don't regret anything I did. I loved fiercely. I loved so strongly.
Speaker 1:I remember one time I must have been 19 years old. I did not have my driver's license or a car just yet. I was in college, but I was home for a summer break Now, where I lived to where I went to school. It was a three-hour drive and where my father was in jail. At the time it was sort of about a third, if not halfway, from my home up to my school, but it was never really convenient to stop on the way there or back because visiting hours were very strict In the maximum security prison he was in at first I could go up there seven days a week and as the sentence drew on and he was transferred to different locations, there was always a different set of rules and a different set of guidelines and state law changed and the mandates changed, and so as a kid, I was always learning about these new policies.
Speaker 1:Now this was in the 90s, so there was not much internet use, and even though the internet was more commonly used in the late 90s, early 2000s, not everything was on the internet just yet. So sometimes a place would have a website and there'd be no information that was useful or updated. But I remember this one trip and I wanted to go see my dad and I remember I didn't have anyone that could drive me, so I chose to take public transportation. So I took the train from the town I lived in, four stops, to the small city where I could catch I think it was a Greyhound or a short line bus, a coach bus to drive up. The bus had stops along the way, so by the time I got to the town that I needed to get off in, it was already probably like two hours in. Then, from the bus stop, I had to take a cab. Now, mind you, we didn't have cell phones back then, so I had loose change in a Ziploc bag. I had my ID, which was basically my learner's permit and my social security card, and I was just a young kid, 19, out in the middle of New York State at this bus stop waiting for a cab, hoping we'll make it to prison to the visiting hours before they close, and I got there and probably spent about two hours with my dad, only to turn around and do the whole trip back in reverse, with my dad only to turn around and do the whole trip back in reverse. I think I spent close to seven hours traveling that day to see him for maybe two hours and I remember getting home and just thinking, you know, I just don't think he'd do this for me. I just don't feel like that is something he's capable of. And when I think back on things and different experiences, I'm struggling telling this story and these things. So please bear with me.
Speaker 1:I remember being in fourth or fifth grade and I was in a special choir performance that I had to audition for and it was a conglomerate of the best singers from each elementary school in Westchester County. They called it All-County Choir. I worked really hard at it and I remember he missed more than half of the performance. And I remember he missed more than half of the performance and I was devastated. I called him out on it. I was crying, I was so upset. I got upset during the performance and I tried to chill. And then, of course, afterwards I said you know, I saw you come in late and he was like, oh, I just went to the bathroom and I said, no, you didn't, I saw you come in.
Speaker 1:My dad always had his keys on a carabiner hanging from one of the hooks of his jeans. So whenever I heard keys jingling I knew it was my dad, and for such a long time. Once he went to prison, I would always turn my head every time I heard jingling keys, like just in case. And that's the kind of thing that can destroy a child because they have hope. And that's the kind of pain that I just feel in my heart that certain people will never fully grasp. We have ideas of who we think our parents are. We put them on a pedestal when we're little. We look up to them. They are the example.
Speaker 1:Both of my parents were so far gone in their own victimhood not knowing it, you know, just so wrapped up in their trauma, like a fucking electric blanket okay that they just were not going to take off. A fucking electric blanket, okay, that they just were not going to take off, and it was always two steps forward and five steps backwards. It became this experience. I got to a point where I was like there's just no point in even talking about the way that I'm feeling. I think back home my mom wanted to be there for me and support me, but she could not remove her feelings for my dad and her resentment, her anger for being in an abusive situation with him, for being angry with him and for being angry with herself, that she couldn't separate those things. It was just this whole big snowball, this big mess, this beautiful disaster.
Speaker 1:I remember there was one time my brother was mixed up in some trouble, when we were both younger too, and this was still I didn't have a car yet and I remember I went to go visit him and he was in county jail, which is not far from where I live, actually and I remember I took a bus, it was a summer day, I had flip-flops on. This was at a time when the capri pants were very popular, so like we used to wear business casual, but they were capri pants, so I had like a business casual t-shirt on these capri pants, flip flops, cute little pedicure, and it starts thunder and lightning. And the walk from the bus stop, which was truly just a cute little glass vestibule on the side of a grassy road was like a mile to where the entrance was. And I remember just being completely soaking wet. My flip-flops were like sponges you could squeeze the water out of them.
Speaker 1:And I remember telling my brother when he finally came out he was in this bootcamp sort of program for kids that had gotten mixed up in trouble. And I remember he finally came out and I told him. I said this is the last time I'm ever going to come visit you in any kind of facility like this. I don't care what happens for the rest of our lives, I'm never coming to see you again. I don't care what happens for the rest of our lives, I'm never coming to see you again. So you either decide to straighten up your life or you'll just be writing me letters.
Speaker 1:And, truth be told, from that point on he did get mixed up in some more trouble a few more times and he always knew, like, yeah, I'll write you a letter, that's fine, I'll take a call here and there. Like, yeah, I'll write you a letter, that's fine, I'll take a call here and there. In those visits you are taking your freedom and giving it up. I think that in some cases there were a few guards who were really angry that I would visit my dad so much. They're like oh you're here again, you're here again. You know, in these comments and I don't know if that made it worse for my dad after I left but imagine, I mean, I'm a teen First I was like a tween, and then a teen, and then a young woman in my early twenties and I'm worried about what's going to happen to my dad, who's a grown man, black belt in karate, can defend himself.
Speaker 1:Let that just sit with you for a minute. Let's think about this here, okay, so up until that point in time I was a people pleaser and before that I was a parent pleaser. I was always looking to get the pat on the head. I was always hoping for approval. I wanted to be on the pedestal. I wanted to be the good girl. I wanted to be something that my parents would be proud of, someone that my parents would be raving about, and I took a lot of pride in that.
Speaker 1:At the age of 46, which is right now when this is being recorded I have a crazy sense of intuition and that comes from the trauma that I experienced when I was a kid and being on high alert, because I would read the room and try to gauge if my mom was coming home from work in a good mood or in a bad mood. Was she going to start yelling at somebody? And if she was going to start yelling at somebody, was it going to be me, and could I fix the house or do something? I remember every single time, especially when I lived in my house in the Bronx, we had this long driveway that went along the side of the house and there was a fence on the other side and it was the next house, and then my mom would park her car, like around back driveway so we could hear the car. And when we would hear her car come down the driveway, both my brother and I would both be like, oh shit, mom's home, and we were both kind of going to like this scattering panic for no reason, cause we weren't doing anything wrong, but it was just. Like you know, make sure the TV's turned off. The lights are turned off. Like you know, if the cushion on the couch was the wrong way, she was going to scream about that and I want you to understand she wasn't a bad person back then. She was just very high strung and stressed out and unhappy and every little thing bothered her.
Speaker 1:So we were walking on eggshells and I think because of those experiences I've been able to really sharpen the antenna, if you will fine tune it, that I can pick up cues, energy shifts. Sometimes my clients come up the stairs at the gym, the fitness floors on the second floor. They can come up the stairs and I can tell as soon as I look in their eyes oh, this one just got into a fight with her husband, this one's kid is stressing her out, like I just know, and it's really bizarre and creepy and crazy. But I truly believe that it's just from being able to tap into that muscle Intuition you can sharpen it like a muscle. Same thing with creativity. These are things that you can make better by using them often and trusting.
Speaker 1:So I established this boundary with my dad at the age of 25, 26 years old, at the age of 25, 26 years old, and we really didn't ever go back to the way it was after that, because I started to really express my needs and establish what I needed and not waver on it. But as a kid I didn't know how to do that. My boundaries were not respected. As a child I was.
Speaker 1:You know, if I got, let's say, an ice cream cone, that I really wanted, it was a setup. I would get the ice cream cone and as soon as the man in the truck would hand it to me pause, we're talking about Mr Softy in the Bronx, okay, not Mr Goodyear, that came in paper. This is fresh, soft-serve ice cream. You could pick chocolate, vanilla or the swirl and then you could put the sprinkles on it. I always got the swirl with chocolate sprinkles and when he would hand me the cone before I could even take a lick of it, it was like, okay, now share with your brother. That was a setup. I didn't want to share it. I wanted my own fucking ice cream cone, you know, and I think that it was always like to me. It felt like a tax. It was like you can have that but you have to share it, or I'd have a plate of food and somebody would just come right over with their fork and stick it right in my plate, take a bite of something. It was like you can never just have something of my own and that's what I mean by my boundaries were not really being respected.
Speaker 1:It's never too late to start using your words, to start using your voice, but first you have to find it and you have to be clear about what your needs are. And then finding the words and the language so that you can express yourself, and also the courage to not be afraid to take a L, so to speak, or to let something pass by because the person did not respect your boundaries. To let something pass by because the person did not respect your boundaries. Because in the long run, if you respect yourself and your boundaries, you're not going to let somebody walk all over you. You're not going to let somebody take advantage of you. You're not going to let somebody come in and out of your life and disrespect you. You're not going to let your clients or your friends or your coworkers or whoever, walk all over you, because they will know where you stand. But you got to establish where you stand and in order to do that you need to find your words and speak up for yourself.
Speaker 1:So my father was mad because I said I couldn't take him somewhere. I needed to go to the gym, because I learned that in order for me to live a long and healthy life, I got to take care of myself, and that's a non-negotiable. I move my body every single day. That's a non-negotiable for me. It might not be a non-negotiable for you I hope it is but you need to find what those things are for yourself and then find your way of saying what you need in your life so you can thrive.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode. I know we went on a journey and I appreciate you listening to the piece that I wrote and my anecdotes, and I hope that if you are still struggling in finding your words and your voice and the things that are of importance to you, the things that you speak with conviction from the heart, you say it with your chest. Sit down with yourself, grab a notebook, write it out, because the more that you learn how to do that, the stronger you are going to be, the more robust your system will be and you will clearly start to attract more of what you want and desire and repel the things that you don't. It's better to be specific and focus on that than to try to be a watered down version of yourself to make everybody else happy. That is lame, so find your voice and use it. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your time and attention, as always.
Speaker 1:If you liked the show, please give me a follow. Maybe give me a five stars. I appreciate it and I'll see you on the next one. Bye-bye.