Ep 119: What’s It Like Growing Up In A Single Parent Family with Morgan & Mom

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Transcript

MORGAN & MOM — Season 2, Episode 119
“What It’s Like Growing Up in a Single-Parent Family” (Part 1 of 2)
Total runtime: 27:47

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[00:00:00] MISTY: Hey, this is Misty, and for the first time ever, sitting across this little podcast space with me is Morgan. She is one of my daughters, and she’s not here as my guest. She is here every week from here on, I guess until we decide to stop, as my co-host. There is no advice here. We don’t have any advice to give. We’re not scripting this. It’s just us talking the way we already do. Today, we’re gonna talk about what it was like for her to grow up in a single-parent home with me as her mom.

[00:00:46] MISTY: I have shared so much about being a mom and being a single mom — I would love to hear, unless if you don’t wanna go here, that’s totally fine.

[00:00:57] MORGAN: Do you wanna know what it’s like to be a pug mom?

[00:01:00] MISTY: Well, that’s not exactly… seriously, what I was thinking.

[00:01:04] MORGAN: I have a pug. I’m a pug mom.

[00:01:07] MISTY: Hug the pug.

[00:01:08] MORGAN: Yes.

[00:01:10] MISTY: No, because I think people would love to hear, if you want to share — what was it like growing up for you, in a single parent family?

[00:01:24] MORGAN: That’s a great question. I’m happy — that’s, yeah, would love to talk about that. And for context, everyone, this is 2026 that we’re recording. I am 39, so… And my parents got divorced when I was 11 or 12, so this is, you know, like 25 years ago that I was growing up in a single parent household.

[00:01:51] MORGAN: And so I share that context because it seems like divorce, being in a divorced household or having divorced parents, feels different maybe now than it did even 25 years ago. And I think that it was, at least in our circles, a lot less normal. And for me, I think I was one of the first people in my youth group whose parents got divorced.

[00:02:25] MORGAN: I mean, I was 12, so I probably remember things more and better, more broadly than I do — whereas now, I don’t know if divorce is more prevalent, but the other thing that seems really different now is, like, I don’t know any divorced households. I have a lot of friends who are divorced, and I know a lot of single parents, and now the custody situation is almost always 50/50, and amicable co-parenting is the default expectation. And that was not our case.

[00:03:11] MORGAN: And so I share that context because I think being a divorced kid in a small town in central Kentucky, with a Methodist university and theological seminary, was very shameful. I know that was your experience being a single mom and a single woman too. And there was all sorts of just awful things that well-intended people said and did, that only exacerbated this feeling of otherness and shame, and that you did something wrong. And that, I would say, is the highlighted feeling for me as a divorced kid.

[00:03:47] MORGAN: At that time, I felt ashamed and embarrassed, that my family was broken, that our home was fractured, and it wasn’t normal or good. And then also I think we were poor, and that made it harder, and resources were even fewer.

[00:04:08] MORGAN: So I think being a divorced kid twenty-five years ago, I felt like my home was broken, that we were broken, and I felt ashamed and embarrassed and more vulnerable and incomplete. I think you and dad did not have an amicable divorce, and that made it harder — because not only was it a hard situation, but Dad didn’t feel very welcome or safe to be around or show up to events, and I think he was made to feel ashamed and ostracized, like the villain and the bad guy.

[00:04:56] MORGAN: And that made it harder too, because then it was the absence of another loving parent in my life, and there wasn’t really a good way for him to be in our lives. And I think, candidly, this is something I’ve felt like I’ve resented you for — I felt like you were hurt by Dad and then wanted us to be hurt by him too.

[00:05:29] MORGAN: I felt like there were times where you kind of nursed those wounds in us rather than tried to heal them, and that made him less welcome in our lives, and I think it would’ve been to our benefit for him to be able to be in our lives.

[00:05:59] MORGAN: I’ve seen parents now, who are divorced and even in bad circumstances, who are like, “I have to get over that because this person is still a good father, this person is still a good mother, and I want to have an amicable and productive co-parenting relationship with them.” And I felt like your hurt became our hurt, and that became more about dad leaving us than I think it needed to be.

[00:06:24] MORGAN: I think it was hard for him to be a part of our lives, and I wish it hadn’t been as hard for him to be a part of our lives. I think it’s okay that he wasn’t happy with you — and now I’m speaking from my personal experience, my husband left me very unexpectedly after we had been married almost 10 years — and I think it is okay that he wasn’t happy with me. I know the circumstances are different, and there is infidelity in your case, which is much more hurtful, and children.

[00:07:07] MORGAN: But I think what made a hard situation for us kids harder was that it seemed like there was more of an effort to exacerbate the hurt and pain of him leaving, rather than help turn us towards him and say, “No, your dad loves you, your dad wants to spend time with you.” That was never reinforced to us from you. That was something I later figured out. And again, I’m only telling my side of this story, which I know is really partial and incomplete, and there was probably a lot more going on.

[00:07:48] MORGAN: But from the data points that I have in my lived experience, something that has been hard for me to understand is why you, in your hurt towards dad, furthered the divide, furthered the distance of the children from their father, instead of trying to close that gap, even though that had no benefit to you and even though you were hurt.

[00:08:23] MORGAN: So this is one of those things I said I was… anyway, that’s all I’ll say right now. What are your thoughts?

[00:08:31] MISTY: Thank you for sharing.

[00:08:34] MISTY: And I think — do you wanna know? Because I don’t wanna get into defending myself, so I wanna be careful.

[00:08:48] MORGAN: What do you want me to know?

[00:08:51] MISTY: What I want you to know is my — what was conveyed from where I sat, I didn’t see him fight for a relationship with you guys.

[00:09:04] MISTY: And what I hear you say is I didn’t make him welcome, and I guess what I would say to that is that wasn’t my responsibility. It was his responsibility to be the adult and be the father and pursue your hearts and relationship with you. And I guess where I sat, I thought I never denied that. And you’re right, I didn’t make it safe for him. I didn’t make it comfortable for him.

[00:09:46] MISTY: So you’re very much spot on on those counts, because I didn’t feel safe and comfortable with him. My experience was he’s made a choice because he’s not pursuing, he’s not calling, he’s not asking when the games are or when this is happening.

[00:10:11] MISTY: And I felt like at some point — because I did for a while — but at some point I just remember feeling like, “Misty, it’s no longer your responsibility to make sure he knows all these things.” If he wants to know, I’ll let him know this is when this is happening, this is when that’s happening.

[00:10:38] MISTY: So I would say, no, I didn’t go the extra mile to invite him, but at some point I thought he’s an adult and he gets to make those decisions about his relationship with his kids, and I have to quit managing it. Because one thing that I discovered after the divorce was, wow, I was really managing his relationship with the kids anyway.

[00:11:12] MISTY: I was the one — “Hey, we’re gonna do this as a family.” “Oh hey, you go take this person out.” I was always the one initiating and creating his ability to be engaged with you all. So again, thank you for sharing. I know you have more insight into definitely your experience and what your experience was.

[00:11:35] MISTY: And it’s interesting, because I know in the midst of the divorce, things that I would say to myself, things that I didn’t want — and I hear you saying, “I don’t want my kids to feel like they have to choose sides,” and yet I know that happened because of my own pain, especially you, because you carry other people’s hearts. You care about other people so deeply. And even as an 11, 12-year-old girl, you cared about other people so deeply. And so I know that you absorbed, and even though I’m thinking “I’m protecting, I’m not doing this” — that’s not your story.

[00:12:36] MORGAN: Well, that makes so much sense. And again, I think hearing — it’s so cool to be able to hear, ’cause you were younger than I am right now when that was all happening.

[00:12:47] MISTY: Yeah, I was like 36.

[00:12:49] MORGAN: Yeah, that’s crazy. And so it’s so — I don’t know if fun is the right word ’cause this is a heavy topic — but so interesting and cool to think about me and my adult mind thinking about you, you know, you would’ve been my peer, and what it would’ve been like to know you in that time. ‘Cause I was living it as a 12-year-old. And yeah, so it’s so interesting to think about you not as my mom, not as you from 12-year-old me’s perspective, but like you as a woman my age now going through this. That’s why this is so kind of fun and interesting to think about.

[00:13:30] MORGAN: I’m definitely not speaking on behalf of any of my siblings, nor would I ever at any point in anything I will say on this show. But in my experience, I did feel like you tried to kind of put us against dad. And so even if I’m that person who I know every time I call they’re going to be angry or feel owed or hurt or not wanna talk, then at some point, yeah, I wanna stop calling.

[00:14:03] MORGAN: And I think that even outside of dad’s efforts in the space between when we saw him, which was vast, because we only saw him like every other weekend or something, the prevailing narrative from you, at least towards me, about him was, “Your dad has left you. You’re an orphan now. God is your father. God is my husband.” And it was this story of abandonment and disparagement towards him. That felt like the prevailing narrative in the absence of his presence, and that doesn’t really feel like it was fair — that wasn’t neutral, right? That wasn’t letting us pick our own sides and have our own experience.

[00:14:59] MORGAN: If we see him 15% of the time, the other 85% is your hurt and pain around the divorce and with him overflowing into how we should perceive him — how I at least should perceive him. I just remember feeling really torn all the time. Candidly, I still feel bad for having a relationship with both of you. I still feel torn for being close to dad and talking with him and understanding and processing pain and frustration and things that pulled us apart. And I feel bad for being close to you too — I feel like I’m betraying both of you as an almost-40-year-old woman. We did have to pick sides.

[00:15:51] MORGAN: You guys don’t support each other. You don’t approve of each other. You don’t agree with each other on any front, much less as co-parents. There was no common ground for me as a kid to not pick a side. There were only sides.

[00:16:11] MORGAN: In my experience, it wasn’t until I was an adult that Dad ever shared any of his hurt or frustrations with you with me. But you shared your hurt and frustrations with him with me since I was a small child, and that developed into what we’ll talk about in another episode — how I think we had a codependent relationship in my teens.

[00:16:36] MORGAN: And again, that might be distinct to me, but that made a hard situation harder for me as a kid. I remember there were many times where I was the only person that would talk to Dad when he called, and still to this day I have a relationship with him. My experience was that I felt like I was having to choose sides, and Dad did not stake a claim because he felt bad, and he knew that he was in the wrong. And so he didn’t fight because — it felt like the narrative was that because he left, he didn’t deserve to have a relationship with us. It was hard for him to do that, and I think he believed that narrative too — “I don’t deserve this, and why should I fight for it?” I’m not saying that’s a right way of thinking, or mature, or true — that’s a separate conversation, if I ever have a podcast with Dad where I can talk about my perception of where he didn’t respond with maturity or strength.

[00:17:48] MORGAN: In conclusion, I did feel very much like we had to choose sides, and I still feel conflicted about having a loving relationship with both of my parents.

[00:18:04] MORGAN: ‘Cause you have no shared ground, not even in raising us. And I’m okay with that — I’m not mad about it now, but —

[00:18:11] MISTY: But you have been.

[00:18:12] MORGAN: I have. And that was part of why I didn’t wanna have a relationship with you for a long period of time — because I did have to pick sides.

[00:18:23] MORGAN: And I picked Dad for a while.

[00:18:28] MORGAN: I felt like it was his turn.

[00:18:31] MORGAN: How you doing? Want to take a break?

[00:18:34] MISTY: Well, I think we probably need to figure out how to close this.

[00:18:42] MORGAN: Okay. I have a closing statement.

[00:18:44] MISTY: Okay.

[00:18:47] MORGAN: My closing statement is that I love you. I forgive you. These things happen. And again, I know it’s very partial — I’m only speaking from my partial experience, and I acknowledge right now that it is incomplete and therefore erroneous. But what I guess I wanna just say in conclusion is that it doesn’t really matter, because everything is fine. And it does matter — it’s a part of our story — but I would like us to be able to separate: that happened, that pain was real, that frustration was real, and that’s now a part of our story. What really matters is that we’re here now. And we wouldn’t be here now, we wouldn’t be this close now, if we hadn’t had the breaking and the healing.

[00:19:39] MORGAN: I’m not sharing this because I need you to do anything about it, and I’m certainly not sharing this to hurt you, and I’m certainly not sharing this because I want something from you. I don’t want you to be sorry, and I don’t want you to be sad. But I just want you to know that that was my experience, and I want other people to know that that’s a real experience, and it’s hard and it’s painful.

[00:20:11] MORGAN: And very luckily, we’re all right, and everything is all right. But I’m not sharing this because I need you to apologize. I’m sharing this because I wanna know what I don’t know, and I want the gaps to be filled in where my experience and understanding are partial. The only thing that makes this hard for me to talk about is that I’m sharing it to you directly, and I know that it hurts you to hear these things, and that makes it really hard. It’s not hard for me because I have any personal pain or resentment about this anymore — but it’s just an important part of the story, I think.

[00:20:55] MISTY: I think you’re right. And I think — you had talked about how you were excited to share this space and hear more of my story, and then we talked last time about what I was nervous about, and I’m nervous about hearing your story.

[00:21:21] MISTY: But yet, that’s what I want. I want to hear your story, and I don’t think I’ve had — I don’t know if it’s been the courage to ask — what was your experience? What were you thinking? What was going on at this time, what was your experience here, what’s your truth from that time?

[00:21:44] MISTY: So I say all that to say, I’m not afraid. I know that I’m gonna cry — I just cry. Yeah, it does make me sad, and it does make me sorrowful.

[00:22:01] MORGAN: But why?

[00:22:02] MISTY: Because — and I think —

[00:22:04] MORGAN: You’re a different person now.

[00:22:04] MISTY: I, well, and I think that’s — you know different things. I think that’s it. I think that’s part of it — it’s like I wish I knew then what I know now.

[00:22:12] MORGAN: Yeah, but don’t you have so much love for 36-year-old Misty who did the best that she could with — and don’t you look on, like, man, yeah, it would’ve been nice if you knew some of the things and had 30 other years of lived experience under your belt. But, like, Mom, in that moment you were doing the most.

[00:22:32] MISTY: Right.

[00:22:32] MORGAN: You were doing the best. You were operating with every resource that you had available to you, and so you didn’t do anything wrong. You would do something different now ’cause you have more tools and resources and experience. You weren’t malicious or mean or neglectful — you were an amazing mom and parent, you just did the best that you could with what you had.

[00:22:57] MISTY: So let me say this. But the best wasn’t the best for my kids. Like what I thought and —

[00:23:14] MORGAN: I acknowledge that. But also it is what was best for us, ’cause everyone is good and we’re all okay. And your intent was for our good. And we do this all the time, where we want to do good to someone, and then somehow we mess it up. We mess it up, and we’re like, “Wait, how did that happen? I was trying to do something so good.”

[00:23:49] MISTY: Okay. Here’s what I don’t want in this discussion —

[00:23:56] MORGAN: I’m not trying to make you feel better.

[00:23:58] MISTY: Okay. I don’t — I’m just trying to —

[00:24:00] MISTY: Right. And so I’m okay with being uncomfortable. I’m okay with feeling sad and sorrowful.

[00:24:09] MORGAN: Well, I disagree.

[00:24:11] MISTY: And I can feel that way. You’ve had all this time and all these years to process through that. That’s fair. This is the first time — this is your information — I’m hearing some of this stuff. And so it’s okay if I want to sit with it and feel sad and process through it and feel the grief for —

[00:24:34] MISTY: Yeah. And I’m not, “Oh, poor me.” It’s just that — I just —

[00:24:46] MORGAN: Damn.

[00:24:46] MISTY: Yeah. And then the fact that you still feel the tension — and I will say this, and this is just a natural thing, and when you say that, I’m like, “Okay, how can I fix this?” But I’m not going to fix it. I’m just saying that’s like immediately where my mom brain goes — is, “Oh, now I have to go reconcile with your dad so we can parent our adult children well together,” and then I go, “No.” So anyway, this is just some of what’s going on in my brain. You don’t have to try to make me feel better. I’m okay with being sad, being sorrowful. You can let me hold that.

[00:25:40] MORGAN: Okay? Well, that makes me uncomfortable.

[00:25:42] MISTY: Why? It doesn’t change my love for you. In fact, these kind of conversations and experiences — I go, “Oh, I respect you so much more. Oh, I love you so much more. Oh, I love that you love me even though you could choose not to.” And that is so honoring.

[00:26:19] MISTY: Anyway, I don’t know if you remember, but I always had this phrase when you guys were growing up — that we’re gonna land in love. Do you remember that?

[00:26:26] MORGAN: Yeah.

[00:26:28] MISTY: So maybe I just thought it, and vocabulary later, but it was just like, at the end of the day — “And now abide these three: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of all is love.” And that’s just — that’s where I wanna end, I think.

[00:26:38] MORGAN: And I think that — oh yeah, oh, like in the podcast.

[00:26:41] MISTY: Yeah.

[00:26:42] MORGAN: Sorry.

[00:26:42] MISTY: You want something else to say? Say it again.

[00:26:47] MORGAN: I don’t have a follow-up.

[00:26:47] MISTY: Oh, okay. “And now abide these three: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.” And so that’s where I wanna end.

[00:26:56] MISTY: I’m Misty, and I love you.

[00:26:58] MORGAN: I’m Morgan, and I love you.

[00:27:03] MORGAN: Oh, dear. Is it still going? Oh my God.

[00:27:07] MISTY: Yeah, it’s still going. Okay. I think it’s okay, Morgan, because I think there’s more I want to say about all this. I don’t think I’ve said everything fully yet, and I think I definitely need time to process. I don’t wanna rush here. So how about we come back into this conversation, and next week I would actually like to respond to you more fully. So does that sound good? Stay with us for that one.

[00:27:47] [END]