Speaker 1: Native Lampard is a production of iHeart Radio in partnership
Speaker 1: with Reason Choice Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome.
Speaker 1: Okay, everybody, this is our mini pod for this week.
Speaker 1: We got abandoned super Many. It's just a duet and
Speaker 1: it's a NA. See what I did there.
Speaker 3: It's R and R with an A, rod Real with
Speaker 3: an A. It's kind of cool. We should maybe have
Speaker 3: a podcast here. I was thinking.
Speaker 1: Earlier this week about you know, well, often I think
Speaker 1: about this. I'm like, oh, I really I feel like
Speaker 1: I've done so much of what I wanted to get
Speaker 1: done in my life, but the place where I have
Speaker 1: not is family, like being married, having kids, and it's
Speaker 1: something that I really really want. You have three very
Speaker 1: special young ones who I have adopted, and you were
Speaker 1: talking about spring break on our main show, and I
Speaker 1: would love for you to talk to me, your sister,
Speaker 1: about kind of the ups and downs of parenting and
Speaker 1: some of the joys. Like you guys didn't have a
Speaker 1: super easy journey to parenthood, but now you are fully
Speaker 1: in it, so I'd love to hear that, and like
Speaker 1: some of the things that you've had to sacrifice along
Speaker 1: the way that you know may have been difficult but
Speaker 1: worth it.
Speaker 2: Well, I will say the journey to getting pregnant and
Speaker 2: staying pregnant was heralding, such to the point where I
Speaker 2: didn't want to know when Jay, you know, after after
Speaker 2: the third miscarriage, I just couldn't. I wasn't functioning properly.
Speaker 2: I wasn't. Every phone call in the middle of the
Speaker 2: day that was her was traumatic, you know, the phone,
Speaker 2: you know, buzzing or whatever. And because my aide, Angela,
Speaker 2: would interrupt me in meetings and she's say, Lady Gilliam's coming,
Speaker 2: Lady Gillam's coming, that's what she called r J r
Speaker 2: J didn't really favor that title. But so I was
Speaker 2: on I was on pins and needles about it, right,
Speaker 2: And so we talked and we were at the point
Speaker 2: of adoption, or you know, we had in our minds said, well,
Speaker 2: we still want to give the gift of us, you know,
Speaker 2: and we want to get the gift of what it
Speaker 2: means to shape and mold and watch this, you know,
Speaker 2: this baby turned to a human or this young person,
Speaker 2: this little person turned into a full slize adult. And
Speaker 2: as soon as we had set our minds to that,
Speaker 2: Jay got pregnant again. Because this is we we had IVF,
Speaker 2: which again a lot of people think that's then you're guarante.
Speaker 2: I did, and it is not. It is not. I
Speaker 2: think you and I talked about the shots. Oh how
Speaker 2: I am. I can't take shots myself. I definitely can't
Speaker 2: give one, but I would pass out. And then Jay
Speaker 2: had to have these shots every day, and you know,
Speaker 2: we worked out something with the neighbor who come over
Speaker 2: and help us out, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2: I never still to this day, gave her a shot.
Speaker 2: I just I felt for her health. I might fall
Speaker 2: over in the middle of it, and you know, Lord
Speaker 2: knows pull the thing. I don't know. So the journey
Speaker 2: to getting there was incredible, incredibly heartbreaking, the lowest of depths,
Speaker 2: but also the highest of high when you think it's
Speaker 2: gonna work and it's going to be possible. And that's
Speaker 2: really what I wanted to not experience anymore. I didn't
Speaker 2: want the lows. You know, in politics you deal with
Speaker 2: lows a lot. This was very personal, so slightly different.
Speaker 2: But I feel like I can psych my mind out
Speaker 2: on the valleys, but the mountaintops, I couldn't really fake it,
Speaker 2: you know, I couldn't really fake what it felt like.
Speaker 2: Being like, oh my god, lord, I'm about to be
Speaker 2: a daddy, you know, and I'm about to you know,
Speaker 2: have this human race that I couldn't fake. And so
Speaker 2: I felt that every time, and I was like, I
Speaker 2: don't want that anymore. That's the thing I don't want.
Speaker 2: If I could cutterize that, you know, we'd be all right.
Speaker 2: And I didn't want to see Jay hurt anymore. It
Speaker 2: was the hardest thing. I mean, the first time, I
Speaker 2: think we were both were just so broken. And in
Speaker 2: the second time, I was broken, yes, but I was
Speaker 2: broken for her because you know, regardless of what people
Speaker 2: say right about how mischaracters happened and so on and
Speaker 2: so forth, I know that there is a big burden
Speaker 2: that lies with the woman. And there was nothing I
Speaker 2: could do to interrupt that. There was nothing I could
Speaker 2: do to you know, I felt like there was nothing
Speaker 2: I could do to stop it. And I didn't want
Speaker 2: that anymore either, her heartbreak and I didn't want my
Speaker 2: eyes from it. The most amazing part, especially now, because
Speaker 2: you you know, we've got pictures of you, and they
Speaker 2: love their themselves, some aunty angela, and they put themselves
Speaker 2: in places where you and I have been that they
Speaker 2: ain't never been Oh when we were there over night, No,
Speaker 2: you ain't been there. That wasn't you? And that was
Speaker 2: me and whatnot y'all for the for the record, and
Speaker 2: Angela is the most amazing Auntie Funty. I said, it's funny,
Speaker 2: not unto most amazing Funty because she basically outfitted the
Speaker 2: whole house for the babies when she knew the twins
Speaker 2: were coming, I mean just bought up all everything. But
Speaker 2: in truth, watching the people they like are becoming and
Speaker 2: actually tracing it back to like I started to see
Speaker 2: this and I got a sense of them very early.
Speaker 2: And you know what, that characteristic has not changed. It's
Speaker 2: like just coming in the greater blossom. But it's also
Speaker 2: like wearing your heart and your most sensitive appendages outside
Speaker 2: your body, not protected by anything so inclement weather, an accident,
Speaker 2: at anything. I'm I'm on pins and needles from the
Speaker 2: time that they're out of my sight to their back
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 1: To be truthful, we watched that happen. We were in
Speaker 1: Where were we, Andrew? We were in?
Speaker 2: Where were we in Texas?
Speaker 3: Yes, we were in Texas.
Speaker 1: We were for Afrotech and we were recording a podcast.
Speaker 1: You got a call from Jay. You guys did not
Speaker 1: know where the boys were, right, yeah, and they left
Speaker 1: their eye as At Andrew got up from the podcast
Speaker 1: set and I was like, get his stuff.
Speaker 2: He gotta go.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I was like, Jay, I can't understand. You have to stop.
Speaker 2: You have to stop crying. We have to communicate. But
Speaker 2: that's what it is, right you can reason goes away
Speaker 2: and I said, Jay, calm down and then we you know.
Speaker 2: And I could only do that because we were in Texas, Angela, and.
Speaker 3: You ran the hell off the set.
Speaker 2: But I only speak to her.
Speaker 3: I want to help.
Speaker 2: I could only speak to her that way. And then Lord,
Speaker 2: as I got off the phone and I look, I
Speaker 2: didn't even have to get back in the room. All
Speaker 2: y'all had come out of the room. You but Cary
Speaker 2: Tiffany in the hallway like everything okay, everything's okay, Angela.
Speaker 2: I pray for you and your desire. I never know
Speaker 2: because I have, you know, friends from college who are single.
Speaker 2: They one was married is now single, had a plan
Speaker 2: to have a child with their spouse that didn't work out,
Speaker 2: but she continued forward. Wanted a baby anyway, and as
Speaker 2: an incredible mom, and she's doing her thing. I know
Speaker 2: it is out of maybe the vision that she thought,
Speaker 2: but I can't imagine how I experience her and observe
Speaker 2: her that it is any less fulfilling the way that
Speaker 2: it has come about, Sarah Gus, you know, the whole
Speaker 2: process or whatever. I am probably most terrified that, like
Speaker 2: the moments that I have with it's like just us
Speaker 2: and them, that I've had more of those those days
Speaker 2: than I will have going forward for the twins. That
Speaker 2: upsets me a lot. And I think what it causes
Speaker 2: me to do is like ride out with Davis. Davis
Speaker 2: at the grocery store with me. David's going to the
Speaker 2: post office with me. He don't want to go Lord,
Speaker 2: he wants to go home and get on his daplet.
Speaker 2: I'm like, David came yeah. I'm like, please, please, please,
Speaker 2: you want to go to the park afterwards, we'll go
Speaker 2: to the park and we'll just you know, so that's
Speaker 2: you know, and we'll go to the park because that's
Speaker 2: the thing he wanted to do. And I drug him
Speaker 2: along with all my stuff. It's making me spend more
Speaker 2: time there.
Speaker 3: Do you feel like you have cleave to them as
Speaker 3: your friend?
Speaker 1: Source too? Like I feel like growing up with my mom.
Speaker 1: She would I mean she used to. She would tell
Speaker 1: me like I was her best friend. I'm like, no, girl,
Speaker 1: you need some of your friends too. And I and
Speaker 1: I loved Art like all her mommy daughter time. But like,
Speaker 1: do you feel like you're cleaving to them as like
Speaker 1: now they've replaced some of your best friend circle, especially
Speaker 1: in a regular routine kind of way.
Speaker 2: Well, they've replaced him because I don't have time for
Speaker 2: the other I mean, they all got schedules in I'm
Speaker 2: bus driver. No. In fact, I had to tell Jackson
Speaker 2: the other week that I'm not your friend. It kind
Speaker 2: of hurt me to say it, to be honest, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I said, I'm not your friend, Jackson. I'm your father.
Speaker 2: And just because you don't like what I told you
Speaker 2: you have to do doesn't mean you can snap an
Speaker 2: attitude with me and snatch something. You might choose to
Speaker 2: do that with your peers and with your friends, but
Speaker 2: that's not our situation. And Angela, you would have been
Speaker 2: heartbroken because I was chastising him the other week about
Speaker 2: a quiz grade that he had gotten, and he was
Speaker 2: on his way to basketball practice and he had gotten
Speaker 2: so upset because I chastised him about it, about what
Speaker 2: I wanted to see. Basically, like, you didn't go from
Speaker 2: an A in this class to a quiz that you
Speaker 2: couldn't even complete. That doesn't tell me that you are
Speaker 2: a applying yourself to your highest and best potential. You
Speaker 2: could have all seas. I just want to know that
Speaker 2: you worked really hard to get them, meaning you put
Speaker 2: your best wood for it. But tell me, honesty, did
Speaker 2: you know? So he gets upset. I've got to go
Speaker 2: get Davis. I come back and Carolina is bawling, crying
Speaker 2: in the kitchen. I'm saying, what's the matter, Caroline? She says,
Speaker 2: Jackson yelled at me. He was so mean. And he's
Speaker 2: there with a real blustered face. And I say, Jackson,
Speaker 2: you need to gather yourself and you need to apologize. Anyway,
Speaker 2: He doesn't gather himself in that moment and apologize. He
Speaker 2: goes outside. When I go outside, he is drowning in tears. Upset.
Speaker 2: I pull him to the side. I say, Jackson, if
Speaker 2: you want to talk, I'm here, and he says, I
Speaker 2: hurt Caroline. And he's apoplectic because he hurt Caroline. But
Speaker 2: what he says to me about this whole quiz, because
Speaker 2: that's what this is really about. He's mad at me,
Speaker 2: but he's taking it out on her because he can't
Speaker 2: take it out on me. And he says, I'm just
Speaker 2: mad because I said, you're crying so much. Jackson put
Speaker 2: it into words, and he says, I'm just I just
Speaker 2: failed at life. Oh girl. I went from like hurt
Speaker 2: at the same time to terribly angry, and I liked,
Speaker 2: you aren't. I said, you don't have life experience to
Speaker 2: tell me that you have. I'm insulted that you think
Speaker 2: you could form your lips to say that you failed
Speaker 2: that life. I needed to yank him out of that thing.
Speaker 2: I couldn't coast him into that. I didn't want him
Speaker 2: to think that that was any way nearby acceptable. I'm
Speaker 2: sure there are therapists who would tell me I did
Speaker 2: this wrong. But all I could think of in that
Speaker 2: moment was he plays with all these other little, other wonderful,
Speaker 2: you know, wonderful kids, and things get dramatized and they
Speaker 2: think they're at their end of the rope, and then
Speaker 2: there's nothing left at the end of the rope. I
Speaker 2: needed him to be shocked into knowing that you're not
Speaker 2: even qualified for this conversation. We are not having this.
Speaker 2: I say right now, this is command and control your mother,
Speaker 2: and I command and control you. When you start living
Speaker 2: is when you get to make decisions for yourself and
Speaker 2: then get to execute on those decisions without our input.
Speaker 2: You don't have that life. We command and control you
Speaker 2: right now. I just had to hear real basic with
Speaker 2: on the edge of little. But you would have been
Speaker 2: hurt because it was such a range of emotions and
Speaker 2: you're always fearful that you might be doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: What do you feel like you were prepared? And if
Speaker 1: you don't, what do you think has prepared you the most?
Speaker 1: For parenthood?
Speaker 3: For marriage?
Speaker 2: Oh? That was two different things.
Speaker 3: Now it's both. I want to know for both.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll say for parenthood, the decision to be present
Speaker 2: and it wasn't one that I chose it. It was
Speaker 2: delivered to me, frankly in the election results of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: The first time I after the election was looking at
Speaker 2: pictures of them and not really being not remembering when
Speaker 2: they grew so much and when hairlines curls went to
Speaker 2: like straight and then curls at the end. Not remembering
Speaker 2: that stuff just took a toll on me. So so
Speaker 2: for me, it was like, Okay, God's delivered this. I'm
Speaker 2: going to just I'm gonna be here whatever the moment is.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be present marriage. When I realized that
Speaker 2: I didn't have to be right and that I didn't
Speaker 2: want to be right in the arguments anymore.
Speaker 3: I might need to put that on a mirror.
Speaker 2: It's so God I needed it. I was fighting, so
Speaker 2: you know, in the fights, I was going to you know,
Speaker 2: you were going to come out of this seeing it
Speaker 2: the way that I saw it, experienced it, and you're
Speaker 2: going to you understand exactly why I responded the way
Speaker 2: I did. You're going to be in that frame of mind.
Speaker 2: And then it was like no, but she's going there,
Speaker 2: but it's begrudgingly and now there's resentment and there's all
Speaker 2: those others. So okay, I don't have to be right.
Speaker 2: I just want us to be happy afterwards. I want
Speaker 2: us to smile.
Speaker 1: I had a well I'm still if I hope she
Speaker 1: runs that thing back. But Angela Manuel Davis is she
Speaker 1: was a soul cycle instructor and she started her own company.
Speaker 1: But we really call her like a fitness evangelist. She's
Speaker 1: done stuff for Oprah. She's incredible. And Angela would say,
Speaker 1: Ange would say, like on the bike, the way you
Speaker 1: do one thing is the way you do all things.
Speaker 1: And you know, as we like really round out this
Speaker 1: mini pod, Andrew, the one thing that I want to
Speaker 1: commend you for is watching you as a husband, watching
Speaker 1: you as a father, watching you as a brother, as
Speaker 1: a son, as a candidate, as a mayor, as a
Speaker 1: as a commissioner.
Speaker 3: You really.
Speaker 1: Do all things with the same amount of vigor and
Speaker 1: discipline and desire to be great at it. And I
Speaker 1: just want to publicly thank you, brother, because you are
Speaker 1: someone who I deeply admire across the board, because I
Speaker 1: know it's got to be hard to I don't even
Speaker 1: say balance everything, it's just a farce, but to carry everything,
Speaker 1: not let a ball drop, and when you do let
Speaker 1: it drop, to go back and pick it up gracefully,
Speaker 1: even if it means picking Jackson up after the other
Speaker 1: side of that quiz.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for letting me for being really generous
Speaker 2: with that comment, because as you know, the balls that
Speaker 2: drop are my cell phone. It could be in another
Speaker 2: sick you know, put away for the weekend and I'll
Speaker 2: see it on the other side, you know, because there
Speaker 2: are sacrifices, right, there are things that you listen. What
Speaker 2: you hope is that all your friends are going to
Speaker 2: be like you, which is they're not going to charge
Speaker 2: it to you know the.
Speaker 3: Heart, but well it sometimes I do, well, I know.
Speaker 2: But you usually come up out of it. How can
Speaker 2: you get through your fields? You come up out of it.
Speaker 2: And I have the patience for that now, and you're
Speaker 2: going to be incredible as you have always been in
Speaker 2: your life as the leader, the mentor, the mother, the caretaker,
Speaker 2: the person who gives all the love. And what I
Speaker 2: want for you back is for you to get triple
Speaker 2: times that and to feel it and to know it
Speaker 2: when you see it.
Speaker 3: And you're not going to make me cry here, but
Speaker 3: it's right here. I know I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Well. I don't know why I recorded Ricky smiling at
Speaker 1: the end of such a tender moment, but Ricky, shout.
Speaker 3: Out to you.
Speaker 1: I wanted you all to get to see another side
Speaker 1: of my dear brother because he works so hard to
Speaker 1: carry the things and and he does it really well.
Speaker 1: So shout out to our my sister R J. Gillow
Speaker 1: and to the kids I need to see them soon.
Speaker 1: Davis Jackson, Carolina, love y'all.
Speaker 2: So Angela get to interview you next, Okay, so they
Speaker 2: just know that you're mine for no, I get it
Speaker 2: for the next pod, for the next, for the for
Speaker 2: the mini and the for.
Speaker 3: A n A on the R n R.
Speaker 1: That's on the rn R.
Speaker 3: That's it, all right. Well, welcome home, y'all.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Tender Moment, brought to you by the
Speaker 1: A Team, not the B team.
Speaker 3: Tell them we said it.
Speaker 2: Can't nobody. Setting Up by.
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Speaker 1: with Reizent Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio,
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