Hey there TeamConfessioners. Today we’re going to move into Part II of my conversation with Christine and Dave. I will, of course, link Part I here for you when we discussed Christine’s diagnosis in 2019. 

Today we pick up our talk from when the script got flipped after Dave abruptly lost his job after relocating the entire family for a new position. We talk about resilience, vulnerability—especially for men—and how couples can support one another through life’s unexpected turns.

Let’s jump right in here for Part II of our three part conversation…

Transcript: Confession time Team —This is just a transcript of our conversation and it favors function over perfection. So yes — there will be typos, and moments where the transcript program just gave up. Please read with grace (and maybe your imagination).

Mags: Even you speaking about that reminds me that it has been this person needs the support, and this person needs to be the supporter. So you guys have gone through that in all the different waves throughout. I would say the next thing was another job change, and now you’re the supporter and you’re the one who needs supporting. What did that look like?

Christine: Yeah, I mean, that was something that we had never experienced—a job loss the way that we did. And it was, I want to say, devastating. He was in the start of a season, and when football starts in August, football is 24/7.

Mags: Twenty-four seven.

Christine: No prisoners, right? It’s just a continual 24/7. And so now he finds himself home, and it’s a whole dance that we have to do. We didn’t anticipate that. We didn’t plan for that. I had no frame of reference for it, and roles were reversed. Now he’s being hit with this two-by-four to his head, and I have to find a way to be stronger and take up the slack, if you will. Again, it was a role that we never planned on. But one of the things I did feel strongly, because I knew it had helped me, was working with someone like a life coach who could help him process what he was thinking and what his thoughts were around everything. I certainly couldn’t do that. That was one of the things I kind of brought to the table to say, how about you call this person? And you wound up having kind of a slew of different people that you spoke with in different capacities.

Mags: Well, I’ll actually pop in here because I feel like that’s what I’ve learned from you guys. We all learn things from our friends. I’m recalling a tick outbreak in the Guilford public school system, and you were like, “Oh, I’m not dealing with this. I’m calling a professional and I’m bringing in the big guns.” And there I was with four kids and this frigging comb, and I was like, what am I doing? I’ve got to take a page out of this book. And Dave, you’re always like, no, bring it. What do you have? What are the ideas? I’ll look under rocks. Let’s try this. That’s such a good lesson that I think we can all take a page out of the Patenaude book from.

Christine: And I do think it’s that whole idea that you can choose to be a victim.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Christine: Right? Or you can choose to say, okay, life is not happening to me here.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Christine: I can make this mean something more. I am going to make this have purpose, or I’m going to grow from this. I’m going to learn from this. And like Dave said, yeah, it sucks. And you have to have those moments where you cry and you get angry and you clearly are a victim, but you don’t have to stay there. And I think in this instance, our roles got reversed, and I could see, okay, he’s going to feel like a victim here.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Christine: How can we help him manage that in a different way so he doesn’t stay there?

Mags: Well, you’re actually bringing up something that I’m seeing now too, which is that Dave just stepped in and made those phone calls.

Christine: Mm-hmm.

Mags: And you let him. And Christine just stepped in and started getting some resources for you, and you let her. And that’s something I think I struggle with. G will have an idea, and my controlling nature is like, I’m out of control of this situation, so I’m going to dig in with, “No, you don’t know what’s best for me.”

Christine: Right.

Mags: Maybe he doesn’t, but just be open to whatever help he’s offering, because it might be the solution, it might not be, but someone’s throwing you an olive branch. You could surrender. But that also is my ego. I have to get quiet with that. I always say my first response to anybody, ever, all the time, is no. It just comes. It feels good. “Mom, can I—”

Christine: No.

Mags: No. Absolutely not.

Christine: You start from no.

Mags: Yeah. And so much of my recovery has been, okay, maybe I still say no first, but maybe has really offered so much. And it’s great for my ego because it’s like, I don’t always know what’s best for me.

Christine: You don’t.

Mags: And I think ultimately I know what’s best for me, but I don’t until I look at different options.

Dave: The one thing that I would say is that by going through the things that you go through in your life, you learn how to do hard better.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And so when you have to step up or you have to make decisions, the fact that you’ve gone through hard things prior to having to make that decision makes your ability to make those decisions much easier.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And if you embrace the hard instead of running away from the hard, then you are going to learn the resiliency that it’s going to take to make decisions moving forward. So when Christine was diagnosed and I had to do the things that I had to do to be in support of her recovery, it also allowed her to see that from my side. And then when the page got flipped and she had to do that, we learned as a couple how to do hard better.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And so even if the roles are reversed, there’s a common ground and an understanding of, hey, this person’s going through this right now, and I’m going to allow them to have their journey of going through this, but I’m also going to know how to better support that journey. And I’m going to be open to the things that that person needs. And very complimentary, she said, well, you know, Dave’s cool and he is open to these things. I’m also an alpha male, right? So I’m like, no, hell no, I’m doing this on my own. I can figure this out. I’ll just run face-first into the wall and do these things until the wall keeps knocking me back. Then you step back and say, well, maybe there’s a better way of going around this, and maybe I need to be open to other things, whether that’s meditation or journaling or counseling or whatever those things are, to be able to get the things that you’re really feeling inside out so that you can actually address them. You can see them more tangibly, and you can make an informed decision on how to do it. The problem, I think, is that we as males don’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable and get into that space where you’re actually going to be able to grow and heal. Whether that makes you, as the person going through it, more able to do it, or it makes you, as the co-pilot in this journey, more able to see what’s going on and be more open to it and more reflective on it, I think that’s one of the things the majority of males need to be able to step back and say: hey man, I can’t figure this out alone. Because when she was ill, I jumped in like, yeah, here I come, Captain America. I’ve got this thing straightened out. I’m going to call all the friends, I’m going to get the doctors set up. Chris had her surgeries, and I got off from work and took care of her and got all this stuff done. For us, that’s easy. The hard part is being on the other side of it and being out of control and now letting somebody else have to take care of us.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And that part of it, I think, is much more difficult if you have that alpha male mindset of, I’m going to do this on my own. And the reality is, that’s a really lonely place to be.

Mags: But how do you get there, DP? How do you go from banging your head against the wall to maybe I’m open to this? What’s the first step?

Dave: Yeah, you bang your head into the wall until you get a big old lump on your forehead, and then you figure out, well, maybe this isn’t the right way to do it.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And if the other person who is in support—and again, it’s my wife, but it could be your sister or your friends or a buddy who’s a therapist or a counselor or your friend who went through this and said, “Hey man, I couldn’t do it alone, and this is what helped me”—which I think is awesome with what Christine is doing with C2, is saying, here are the things that helped me, and if you’re open to doing this, you’re going to feel better about this.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Dave: So I basically just had to relinquish control. And you talk about it all the time—if I could control this piece of it, I feel like I’m in control. Well, really you’re not.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Dave: You’re just controlling this one little piece, and I feel safe here and I feel strong here. But if I go out here and do something else and open myself up to other people or other options or other ways of trying to heal, then I’m going to feel more vulnerable. And it’s in that vulnerability that you’re going to find a new way of doing things. But you have to allow yourself to get vulnerable.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And be open and receptive. Christine, through her journey, had found all of these things, so it really allowed me to open up. We would talk about stillness or being open or finding alternate ways to get that fear out.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Because ultimately the fear, no matter what situation you’re in, is crippling. And if you can find a way to deal with the fear, you can move forward. And like I said, doing hard better—well, we already just went through this, right? And so now, watching the things that she found to help her outside of the medical side of things—the emotional side, the mental side, the spiritual side—allowed me, as the person standing on the outside and watching her go through that part of her journey and being super proud of her for finding these alternate ways to heal, to say, well, maybe that’s something I should be able to look into.

Mags: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Which I don’t know that I would’ve been able to do had she not gone through the crisis that she went through and found alternate ways to move forward. And life is a wave, right? There are going to be some bottom-outs on the wave. And if you’re open to finding alternative ways of looking at things, I think you’re going to grow. Now, I’m also in my mid-fifties, and I have life experience that tells me, hey, there are going to be ups and downs, and these are the ways that you’re going to be able to handle that. Had we been 30 years old when this diagnosis came, I don’t know that we would have come through it the same way. So I think experience and life being a teacher means you have to be open to seeing what the lessons are and making the adjustments you need to make. I think I’m a much better version of myself at 57 than I was at 37 or 47.

Hey Team, Mags here again to offer another reminder that this conversation is not over. The third and final part will air in June, when we’ll discuss yet another wave this family had to navigate that was even more overwhelming than cancer and job loss. The Patenaudes share honestly about the terrifying night an intruder entered their home and the long road of healing that followed. So please be sure not to miss it and thanks, Team.