Last summer, Tatianna and her dad were in a really bad spot, to the point she felt every conversation turned into an argument. She reflects on the strategies she’s been using and what they’ve helped her understand about her dad—and herself.
If you loved this episode, listen to Tatianna's original episode, Papí and I Don't Talk, We Argue.
We’d love to hear your stories of triumph and frustration so send us a detailed voice memo to hello@talktomamipapi.com. You might be on a future episode! Let’s connect on Twitter and Instagram at @TalkToMamiPapi and email us at hello@talktomamipapi.com. And subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams:
Hi, everybody. As you know, we’ve been checking in with our OGs, our original guests. We’ve been curious. You know, through the pandemic, through the new year, what have people done since we spoke, if they wanted to do anything, about the situations that they shared with us. So, today I’m checking in with Tatianna. Her original episode aired June 29th, 2020. She came on the show to talk about her relationship with her father.
Tatianna: I feel like every time my dad and I talk, there’s a confrontation. This whole COVID situation, because I have to work from home, my husband had to work from home, we had both kids at home and both of my parents home. For two months we did this. And that, the fact that I had to interact with him 24/7, every day, it became hard, so it gave me a tough realization where I had to be like… and even my mom, I believe she spoke with him about she’s her own person, this is not your house, we live with her, you cannot parent her anymore.
Because I don’t have a problem with him parenting and disciplining my kids, because let me face it, I’m working. They’re the ones stuck with my kids at home. I tell them, “You guys do what you need to do in order to keep them in line.” But when it comes to me, he has a hard time understanding that I’m an adult now and sometimes he forgets, and I have to constantly remind him. So, in the past few weeks, I think working from home has made us realize that our relationship is a constant argument.
Lantigua-Williams:
After we recorded her episode, we got a voice message from Tatianna with a brief update letting us know that she started going to therapy and that things with her, and with her dad, and their communication had actually been improving. So, of course we wanted to invite her back and find out how it’s going, what’s different. Let’s get into it.
Tatianna: My name is Tatianna. I was on the show last time because of my relationship with my father. Yeah. That was the reason.
Lantigua-Williams:
And so, ahead of today’s conversation, we asked you to listen to your episode. What was that like? What did you hear? Anything strike you when you were listening?
Tatianna: At first, I felt embarrassed. Because I love my father very much and I feel like a part of me didn’t sound like I loved him in that audio, but then I had to think back to myself and say, “I have to understand the state of mind I was in when I did the episode.” I believe I was at my wits’ end at that point. It was like my last straw. My patience had gone to its limit. So, as I kept listening to the episode, I was being a little more graceful for myself and saying, “You know what? You still love him the same. He’s still your father. He still lives with you.” And it was just a moment of just me being I guess tired, and I feel like I’ve grown a lot since then.
Lantigua-Williams:
So, what’s happened since then? What was the difference between when we recorded you and when you sent us your update on voice memo?
Tatianna: I went more in depth of my relationship with my dad in therapy. I feel like therapy has helped me tremendously. Not only with my relationship with my parents, but with my kids, my husband, with myself. Since we recorded the episode, my dad’s and I relationship, and he doesn’t even know that I did a podcast about him. I don’t think I’ll ever tell him.
Lantigua-Williams:
Okay.
Tatianna: But because of how private he is and he… Like, he would be mortified, because he… The belief system he has is los trapos sucios se lavan en la casa. You know what I mean? Like you don’t talk publicly about family. You know? But I’ve been going to therapy. I’ve been very intentional about bettering my relationship with him. And I feel like on the other end, he has also understood boundaries and limits. I don’t know if it’s because he’s finally heard me, or my mom has talked to him, but those conversations where he would demean what I say, or like try to correct me, they don’t happen anymore. And another thing that has been happening is that back home in Puerto Rico, there’s been a lot of family drama on his side of the family, and that has prompted me to kind of like see that door and go through it, and ask him about his childhood, possible childhood traumas, how he was raised.
And that has helped a lot. He has opened up in this past year and said things to me that I didn’t even know he went through. Things that he would never tell me before.
Lantigua-Williams:
Wow.
Tatianna: He’s starting to tell me now like how he was raised, more in depth, how was his father? Because, I mean, the grandpa that I know is not the father that raised him. He has changed a lot. My dad has been very open about telling me about who his dad was, and how he was raised, and why he views certain things certain ways, and there’s been that… him being comfortable, open, opening up with me. It makes so much sense now the way he is, and I feel like I see it through a different lens, and I have a lot more compassion now when I talk to him, when we talk to each other, and yeah, there’s been times where it gets heated, and either my mom has to go, “Okay, let’s just slow down,” or we kind of like realize and we kind of go, “Okay, let’s just get back to zero.”
Because I’m not gonna say it’s 100% perfect, but the communication is 100% better.
Lantigua-Williams:
That’s so wonderful. First of all, I’m so proud of you. Seriously. You’ve put in some serious work on yourself and in trying to understand your dad. I mean, it just sounds incredible. So, I want to hear a little bit more about what your process was at the beginning and how it must have been difficult when things got really heated-
Tatianna: Oh, absolutely.
Lantigua-Williams:
… to say to yourself, “Okay, this is for a greater purpose. This is for the greater good.” Like, how did you do that? How did you break through that initial kind of like fight or flee instinct that we have when we get into it with our parents?
Tatianna: I feel like I owe a lot to my therapist, because I feel like she has given me the tools that I need to be able to have those conversations, and to be able to catch my anxiety and my anger before it gets to me. So, I’ve been really good about listening to myself, and looking for those signs of like… Because I am the type of person, which my dad is the same way, we go from zero to 100 very, very quickly. So, I can go from calm to super angry in no time, so through therapy, I have been able to look at those signs and catch them before my lid flips. So, whenever I feel like my chest is bubbling up and I feel like I want to just, like that therapist said in the episode, when I want to hit below the belt, which is that’s my thing.
When I feel like I’m cornered, I’m gonna hit below the belt. And I get offensive. And that’s something that I did a lot with my dad whenever I felt cornered and I felt like he was offending me, and I felt like he was disrespecting me because he was not respecting my space and the boundaries, I would immediately hit below the belt and it will just… Hell would break loose. The moment I did that, there was no turning back, because at that point it was just a daughter disrespecting her father. But now, I kind of like look for those signs, and I take my deep breaths, and I kind of like take a step back and go… I sometimes have to stop myself and say, “We cannot talk about this right now. Let’s leave it for after dinner or let’s leave it for later.”
I have to wait to unwind and then we come back. And when we come back to it, that’s when it gets better. That’s when I’m not mad, he’s not mad, we’re just talking at this point.
Lantigua-Williams:
Right, right. And so, what are some of the other differences that you see in him in how he approaches the tense situations? Have you observed differences in him?
Tatianna: Yeah. It’s more of like let me bite my tongue type of mentality, I think. Like he doesn’t grab every chance like he used to. A year ago, he would just grab every chance to criticize anything I did, the way I did it. As a mom, as a wife, as a woman. Those are the three things that he critiqued the most about me. How I am as a mom, how I am as a wife, and how I am as a woman. He has such expectations about what a woman, how a woman should behave, how a daughter should behave, how a mom should behave, how a wife should behave, and me not adapting to what he believes that would be, it always killed him.
I mean, I would say… I’d say killed him, but it always kind of like ate on him, so he would always feel the need to let me know that’s not what a wife would do. That’s not what a mom would do. And that would get me mad. That’s where it all would start. And I feel like now he sees my behavior and he sees things that I do, and I hope he understands that I’m just different than my mom, and I don’t know if it’s my mom telling him mind your business, leave her alone, or him just saying to himself, “Let me just mind my business and just let her be.” In these past months, he has learned to let go and I feel like he’s understanding she’s her own person, she’s her own person, she’s her own person. I feel like that’s what he’s telling himself.
Lantigua-Williams:
A new mantra. But I do want to talk about your mom, though, because when you talked to us last time, your mom had this thing where she was sometimes the go-between, and sometimes she didn’t want to get involved, but then she also started to speak up for herself more and you thought that was because of your own example. So, what’s the dynamic now with the three of you in the mix?
Tatianna: My mom, I feel like ever since she moved in with me, because she moved in with me first, and then he retired and moved and followed us. And my mom kind of like broke in the news to him, “I don’t want to go back to Puerto Rico. I want to be with my grandchildren.” And that was shocking for him, because it was the first time that my mom-
Lantigua-Williams:
Right.
Tatianna: It was the first time that my mom got to make a decision of where she wants her future to be. All her life, it’s been all about her dad’s views of the future. So, she stopped working when she was 19 because my dad said so. She stopped going to college when she was very young because my dad said so. She had me and my brother and became a stay-at-home mom and I want to believe… Part of me wants to believe that it’s because she just wanted to be a mom, and wanted to be with her kids, but a part of me very deep inside believes that it was because that’s what she was pushed to do. It was not necessarily what she 100% wanted to do.
So, my husband and I kind of like gave her that freedom to choose. Hey, it would be great if you stay here with the kids, because it helps us, but we also didn’t tell her, “Stay with us.” We basically told her, “We’re gonna love you no matter what you decide. If you want to stay here with us and support us, great. You have your house in Puerto Rico. If you want to go back, go back.” And she was like, “No, I don’t want to go back.” She wanted to be here.
And it was the first decision in 30-plus years that she’s made for her own, and she talked to my dad and said, “I don’t know what you’re gonna do, but I feel like our future is not in Puerto Rico anymore.” And my dad took it very hard, but he loves her, so he came and joined us.
Growing up with her, I did hear my mom here and there speaking up for herself when I was a kid, because it’s not like she was 100% submissive, because I feel like I made it sound like that in my previous podcast. But I want to make it clear, like there were times that I do remember my mom speaking up for herself. I do. I do remember that. But I feel like now that she’s older, she feels 10 times more comfortable doing it and she does it a lot more often than when I was a kid. And I feel like there’s some resentment in my dad against me because he feels like she’s like that because of me.
I feel like he came to the States to find my mom to be a bit of a new person. And I don’t know. I mean-
Lantigua-Williams:
Interesting.
Tatianna: Their relationship is still great. They still… Again, they still live with us, but I can see the dynamic has changed from my mom saying no very quickly, and not walking on eggshells when she wants to say no to him. She just says firm noes, and that to me is a big thing now. She’s like more of a no is a complete sentence and I’m saying no.
Lantigua-Williams:
Right. She’s more direct. So, I imagine that the dynamic in your very active household has changed, improved, since we last spoke.
Tatianna: Yeah.
Lantigua-Williams:
How’s that been? With the grandkids, and with your husband, and everyone, because you know, the way that one person feels in a family, especially when you’re very close, impacts everyone.
Tatianna: Yes. I mean, being a multigenerational family and living together like this, yeah, it’s big. Because my relationship with my dad is not so much tense, I feel like my husband’s relationship with my dad has gotten better. Because my husband would always feel like this person in the middle, because I would complain about my dad, and my husband would… I don’t know if I would say justify him, but my husband would say, “Well, that’s just the way he is. That’s how he was raised. He’s just old fashioned.” My husband always wanted me to get along with my dad. My husband loves my dad a lot and he loves my parents, and of course, my parents drive him insane sometimes. What in-laws don’t drive you insane? But my husband, I felt like he was like… How do you say that? Entre la espada y la pared? I don’t know how to say that in English.
Lantigua-Williams:
Between a rock and a hard place.
Tatianna: Yes, because my husband would feel the tension between me and my dad when we would argue. He would want to stand up for me because he loves me, but at the same time, he would respect that father-daughter dynamic and I feel like now he feels more relaxed around my dad. He can joke with my dad a lot more. He can talk to him. With the children, it’s different. My children have always loved my dad and my son, and my dad are like two peas in a pod. They’re always together. My son is my dad’s little colita. He follows my dad everywhere. So, my son and my dad have a very special relationship, but now seeing that my husband feels a little bit more relaxed and more comfortable interacting with my dad, it has changed the dynamic of the family greatly.
Lantigua-Williams:
I’m so happy to hear that. All right, my final question is that one of the things that the therapist who was on your episode said, which made me giggle, was, “They’re the same person. She doesn’t even realize that they fight so much because they’re the same person.” So, when you heard that the first time, what did you think? And then has that changed?
Tatianna: Here’s the thing: When I first heard my episode, I was on my way from work to home, and I put it on my radio as I was driving. When she said that, I let out the biggest laugh, and I was like, “She’s so right!” I was screaming in my car. Because that is something that my husband has always said. My husband, every time I argued with my dad, my husband would say, “You and your dad are the same person. You need to admit that to yourself so you can understand why your dynamic with your dad is the way it is.” And then fast forward with my therapist, when I’m like sitting here complaining about my dad, she goes, “It sounds like you and your dad are very similar.”
So, it’s like everybody has the same opinion. Everybody. And even my mom says it. And that’s hard to hear when it comes from so many different people, especially people who don’t know me, and don’t know my family, like my therapist or the therapist that was on the show. I’m like, “How dare you people?”
So, yeah, I guess it’s true. And I guess… Yeah.
Lantigua-Williams:
Listen. Knowledge is power, okay? Knowledge is power.
Tatianna: Yes. Oh, my goodness.
Lantigua-Williams:
No, I definitely giggled. I don’t think we left my giggle in there, but I definitely giggled hard when she said that.
Tatianna: Yes. So, I’m like, “It must be true if all these people are saying it.”
Lantigua-Williams:
Tatianna, I’m so happy for you. I’m so proud of you and the work that you’ve put in. And thank you for coming back and updating us.
Tatianna: Oh, no. It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me again and I’m looking forward to continue to work on the relationship with my family, my multigenerational family.
Lantigua-Williams:
You can listen to Tatianna’s original episode, Papí and I Don’t Talk, We Argue, on our feed and on our website.
How to Talk to [Mamí and Papí] About Anything is an original production of Lantigua Williams & Co. Virginia Lora produced this episode. Kojin Tashiro mixed it. Manuela Bedoya is our social media editor. Cedric Wilson is our lead producer. Jen Chien is our executive editor. I’m the show’s creator, Juleyka Lantigua-Williams. On Twitter and Instagram, we’re @TalktoMamiPapi. Please subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Bye, everybody. Same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua-Williams, Juleyka, host. “OG Check-in: Papí and I Are Talking, Really Talking.””
How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] About Anything,
Lantigua Williams & Co., March 8, 2021. TalkToMamiPapi.com.