Co-Parenting Part 2 - Going to Indiana
Alright. So welcome back to part 2. So after we graduated, you got the opportunity. You wanna talk about the opportunity why we went to Indiana? Well, yeah.
Ivan Jackson:You could talk about that. I spoke a little bit in the last segment around doing research at Ohio State for the summer. So this research program at Ohio State kinda set me up for what I wanted to do after college. I think going through college, my whole line of thinking was always that I didn't really know what I wanted to do next, but I just didn't wanna work, if that makes sense. I felt like going into the workforce is like, I'm a work for the next 30, 40 years of my life.
Ivan Jackson:So all I ever knew was school. By that point, I felt like school was this saving grace or this this medium for me to get out. Right? To get out the neighborhood, to change my family's life. So I figured I'm a try to go to school.
Ivan Jackson:Without the summer research opportunities program at Ohio State, I probably would've never even imagined to apply for graduate education at a place like Purdue University, right? Or to even take my GRE, right? The idea of taking the graduate, the graduate entrance exam was was far fetched to me. Like this was not something that people around me did, people from my neighborhood, people in my family, so it was all new, and the only examples that I had was the new people that I met in life in college. So speed it up, me and somebody else from Purdue.
Ivan Jackson:I mean, me and somebody else from Wheelock applied to Purdue University because a professor in human development at the time at Wheelock was a Purdue alum. She said, well, since you did research at Ohio State, she was the one that introduced the program to us, maybe you should think about applying for graduate school. I applied, at first I didn't get in. Through some special, you know, grace of God.
Thee Real Joy:I didn't know that.
Ivan Jackson:You know, at first I didn't get in. I'm not sure why I didn't get in, but I didn't get in. That was reversed, and I now went from not knowing what I was gonna do to know that I was going to Purdue in August. So you go from graduating in June, to heading to West Lafayette, Indiana in in about August, right? And that opportunity presented a lot.
Ivan Jackson:I received the teaching assistantship where part of my funding to be there, to be a full time student, to get the stipend that I I couldn't really work for I had to be a full time student. So when you set up in a research one institution, if you find the right funding, right, I have funding from 2 departments, the African American Studies Department and American Studies. African American Studies Department, as a instructor in training, as a professor in training required me to teach or TA. That journey in itself, right? The idea that I was leaving Indiana, the idea that I was about to teach in the college classroom, coming from my high school was in district 9, I believe, when I was younger.
Ivan Jackson:It's one of the the the lowest socioeconomic areas the school could be in. Right? Although my school was made in prom for excellence, right, created the combat the prison to school pipeline. I didn't really know how to write a paper going into college in the ways that my peers, right, or even going into grad school, my peers could. So it was uphill battle, uphill feet.
Ivan Jackson:I made it to Purdue to speed us up. Right? I made it to Purdue. I went in August, Kehlani was born in January. We had a talking rapport, we communicated with each other.
Ivan Jackson:I wouldn't say we were together.
Thee Real Joy:No. We definitely weren't together.
Ivan Jackson:But
Thee Real Joy:I remember being home and
Ivan Jackson:She lived in North Carolina.
Thee Real Joy:I lived in North Carolina. You were in Indiana. And I remember right before I had Kehlani, I came out to Indiana to kinda see what it was like. And we I visited, and we still weren't really together. Yeah.
Thee Real Joy:It was kinda
Ivan Jackson:kid. I was having
Thee Real Joy:We were just, like, preparing to have her, trying to figure out what that was gonna look like. I stayed there for maybe, like, a month, I would say, and then I had to get back home because all my, everything was kinda set up for me to still have her in North Carolina. So I remember I didn't really have a lot set up for myself, like, listening to you say, like, everything you had. I think I was very intimidated because, like, everything you're saying, because my mom gave this responsibility, me as a person get like, kinda gave me as a responsibility to you. It's almost like she kinda was just setting me up to, like, be with someone who could take care of me or, like, be not necessarily, like, pouring into me and, like, saying, well, maybe you could do this, do this.
Thee Real Joy:It was kinda just like, well, you need to be taken care of. So I remember her, like, pressuring us to get married.
Ivan Jackson:And that it was so random because this wasn't always her rhetoric. Like, that wasn't she talked about it, but the moment Ebony became Pregnant. Pregnant, in my opinion
Thee Real Joy:It's automatic. Yeah.
Ivan Jackson:Everything shifts.
Thee Real Joy:She knew that, like, we weren't necessarily together, but it was like, okay. Now that you guys have a kid together, you have to
Ivan Jackson:Yeah.
Thee Real Joy:Get married. And I think that was, like, very strange for me because there was no really no real trying to figure out where we were together at that moment or, like, no one ever cared to repair us or to fix or anyone sat to sit down with us and be like, okay. What's going on with y'all? Why aren't things working? But it was like this fast track to, like, being adults and being parents and being together.
Thee Real Joy:So as my due date came closer, still we weren't together. I remember you coming to North Carolina.
Ivan Jackson:Had a baby shower. We're skipping. We had a baby shower.
Thee Real Joy:We had a baby shower.
Ivan Jackson:Couple of things going on. Some I mean
Thee Real Joy:and I think you were pretty your comfort comfortability level with my family was always because we have been in each other's lives, we kinda grew up together. Yeah. So, like, our families That's
Ivan Jackson:good context.
Thee Real Joy:Yeah. Our families all knew we like, it was like family. Yeah. Like, that's what we always say too. Like, as weird as it sounds to people, I feel like we have, like, more of a sibling.
Ivan Jackson:Yeah. I I would definitely say that. We definitely have more of a sibling bond than you would expect from a situation as typical as this.
Thee Real Joy:Yeah. And
Ivan Jackson:I think it's interesting that when you say that, not to cut you off, but there's people in her family that I think I could get to today, it's still that energy about me. Like, I could call I could call Kamari and Kariana, and if they not necessarily doing the things they need to do as grown ass adults, they might still hear me. But that was all essential to me because of how I was taught to show up as a man of color, right? Yeah. And how I was taught to show up just in general, right?
Ivan Jackson:As a leader, right? As it is, and it wasn't always inextricably attached to me being a man, like you know how you get very patriarchal and say, I have a phallus, I have a man, I have to take care of you. There was some hints to that, but it was really how I showed up as a black man in these white spaces. It's really how I showed up and showed a level of love that we ain't necessarily see on TV, a level of love that I was necessarily reading in books and was trying to manifest. Right?
Ivan Jackson:Because now what we missing is like we pouring all this information, intellectualism in our brains. Not only that, but we try to figure out how to show that, how to live that. And every college student is going through that right now. And if it's not college, it could be, alright, for lack of better term, somebody in another dormitory situation, jail. They reading, they learn it, they understand it, and they trying to figure out how to apply that to their lives.
Ivan Jackson:Right? And it's it it's all one in the same. Right? And they're going through this transitional phases, and sometimes nobody is sitting you down to help you really chart out what you do and how you pivot when you do this.
Thee Real Joy:And I think that that was, at the beginning, the downfall to our co parenting start because we didn't have anyone kinda sitting us down and saying, okay, this is what it's gonna look like. This is what you're gonna be responsible for. This is what you need to work on. We kinda, like, literally just went into it, like like, okay. How we
Ivan Jackson:did everything else?
Thee Real Joy:Yeah. Like, really just like, okay. So I had Kehlani, January 2, 2015. She had to be in the NICU for about 3 weeks, I would say. I was supposed to have her December 23rd.
Thee Real Joy:They didn't induce me.
Ivan Jackson:She wasn't trying to bug.
Thee Real Joy:Yeah. She wasn't budging. I my cervix wasn't ripening. I think that's how you say it. Yeah.
Thee Real Joy:So it was very it was like a long process. We still hadn't figured out what it was gonna look like with you being in Indiana, with me being in North Carolina. We still didn't really know what us being parents were gonna look like up until her being born. So we both it's so funny because with her being born, you actually like, you were able to hold her. I had to
Ivan Jackson:learn, like, the first 30, 40 minutes of her life Yeah. By myself.
Thee Real Joy:I had an emergency c section, so I didn't get to hold her. I didn't really get to see her. And then they had to rush her off to the hospital that was like an hour away right after I had her. Just the way they induced my pregnancy, the medicine was going to her and not me. And it was like
Ivan Jackson:Slowing her heart rate.
Thee Real Joy:See how it would, like, spike her heart rate, then it would slow it down. Spike her heart rate and slow it down. So I ended up having to have an emergency c section, which was very just on top of the unknown. Like, that was, like, more added trauma to the whole process. And because I had a c section, we It's
Ivan Jackson:a whole level of land, not even to cut you off, but, you know, as we think about media and talking and black women and c sections and where you was at having that baby and I'm not telling you. It's a level of like, it could have been by design and that's where, you know, I'm coming from with the rhetoric and intellectualism and understanding like, she was a part of that statistic now of women who could have been forced into having a c section. Like for all we know, right, it could have been a whole another alternative route because you were a black woman in that space, in that hospital at the time. Yeah. This is what they know to do to women of color.
Ivan Jackson:Right?
Thee Real Joy:Yeah. That makes sense. But, so I feel like that journey kinda started off just very traumatic. She had to we had to stay at the Ronald McDonald House Word. In one room with 2 beds, And her mommy.
Thee Real Joy:And my mom. So it was us in a twin bed and then my mom in a twin bed. And we will, like, go up to the hospital every day and visit with her from, like, the beginning of the day to the end of the day. Then we would come back to this room. I think my mom stayed for, like, maybe the first 3 or 4 days, and then she kinda left.
Thee Real Joy:It just, like, allowed us to kinda I think my mom also, in that moment, was figuring out that, like, okay, they need to figure out
Ivan Jackson:Yeah.
Thee Real Joy:What they're doing. Like, I remember my mom almost I think she kinda felt like the 3rd wheel, but like the glue at the time holding us together. And I think when she left and left us at the Ronald McDonald House, that was the first time that we actually had to like
Ivan Jackson:Talk and process things.
Thee Real Joy:Talk as Kehlani's parents, like the first real moment as Kehlani's parents. And I think that we did an awesome job at it. I think that parenting came to us, like, it was very easy. It was very, like it was an instinct for us because we were so used to taking care of people around us. Like you said, our little cousins at the time, like, we were that person for everyone.
Thee Real Joy:Like, we were already taking care of everyone. So doing it for our own kid in that moment was very I think that was, like the beginning of, like, me seeing this journey in my head. Like, okay, maybe this can work. Even though we're still not having conversations, even I don't know what to expect, I feel very overwhelmed because, like, I feel like everyone was looking at Ivan, right, as, like, this is this guy who has, like, all these opportunities, and now he has a baby. And now he has this baby mama, and she don't know what she gonna do.
Thee Real Joy:She don't know. And it's so funny now that I'm a creative and I do hair, makeup, and, like, that was always me, but I didn't necessarily have the support or people understanding the way my mind works maybe. So always just seemed as if, like, I wasn't good enough. And I think I went into that co parenting, you know, relationship thinking I wasn't good enough. I felt like I was, like, looked down upon.
Thee Real Joy:So I wasn't really confident as a mother, going into co parenting, but I knew that I had the support of my mom. And that's kinda what, like, kept me going because, like, my mom, at first, she was like, okay. The you're pregnant. Like, she wasn't ecstatic, but she said the only thing I asked is that you graduate before, you know, you ever did anything. She's like, you did that?
Thee Real Joy:Because it was 2 weeks before. So she supported me through in that co parenting. So I think, like, me going to Indiana after we had her, my mom supported that decision. I think that she at first, it was hard for her, but she understood, like, okay, you're responsible. Kinda went back to, like, what she knew of you.
Ivan Jackson:Yeah.
Thee Real Joy:And I went to Indiana. Still, we're not together. Still, we're not talking about what things look like between us. But I now have your baby. You have this opportunity in Indiana.
Thee Real Joy:I don't have anything set up for myself right now in North Carolina, so I need to go to Indiana. I don't think your parents were the happiest about it, which I understand because they were thinking Ebony and is gonna get in the way of this opportunity that you worked so hard for.
Ivan Jackson:I think not to cut you off. I think if we could circle, I think Ebony shared a space where she resented me because I feel like at the time, my rhetoric to her was that I wanted more for her than she wanted for herself.
Thee Real Joy:But I don't think it always came out that way.
Ivan Jackson:That's so that's what I'm saying. Yeah. I think that we struggled in that space, and the level of resentment was created around me even feeling like that because I showed it and showed it not always in the nicest ways. So in the ways that people will push off, well, he has all these things planned from people around us to her family even. Oh, if you have a little girl, she gonna be on point.
Ivan Jackson:I miss this, this, this. I mean, I even showed up a certain way with her family. Right? So I think that all of those things included with I started to believe and feel a lot of that too. Like, well, she ain't got shit planned.
Ivan Jackson:I'm just gonna carry this forever. Like and I think it showed in kinda visceral ways, not in ways that was nice. Right? Not in ways that was encouraging to somebody that was that age. Right?
Ivan Jackson:There was always a level of I carried my age, but then 10 to 12 years extra too, trying to kinda show and be a role model. And I could remember and think of so many ways that I just was nasty, some ways that I could still be nasty now, not for her, but just things in general. Right? Because, you know, we're works in progress. But, I can remember moments, or even when we speak particularly about coming to Indiana, I don't know if my parents, they wasn't happy about it.
Ivan Jackson:But at a certain point, I lived in a way where it was like, it's nothing you could say. I did everything you needed me to do. Yeah. I'm in grad school, I'm this, I showed up as a leader on campus, so at a certain point, I cared, but I didn't care. I think we had a conversation and I wanted her to wait until Jen, till
Thee Real Joy:You didn't want me to come when I I
Ivan Jackson:think I needed another 3 months before she came. And this is I stopped you only because at a certain point, I stopped speaking to her mother, not on purpose, not on purpose, we just wasn't communicating. It wasn't a riff, I would never be for her mother. I might have felt some type of way, but if a mother reached out to me, I'm never gonna be disrespectful. I was never that with miss Sherry.
Ivan Jackson:At a certain point, we had stopped talking. I didn't know that her mother was going through it. And I think I think I don't know if you know that purview completely. There's a space where we went from graduation to me figuring out school, to you getting to Indiana and not knowing your mom was sick, not knowing that she was getting sick, not knowing that anything was happening to her. I didn't really know your mom was sick till I I knew, but I didn't really know till I got the pheasant run.
Ivan Jackson:Like, I don't think that that was ever something we sat down and talked about Yeah. Talked about. You feel me? Because I will remember, and I think when I think back to this all the time, I always think of that moment for her mother to be such a pivotal part of it. I think the only time I spoke to her mother in between a lot of that is we was beefing about some money.
Ivan Jackson:Not me and her mother, me and her. And her mother as the mediator, like, aight, cut the shit. She kinda know I'm a communicate with her at a certain level and in a certain way out of respect. There's certain ways her mother could check me. Right?
Ivan Jackson:Whether I'm getting angry, angsty, cut it out. And I would listen. I would adhere to that. And I think that there was a level of when they was transitioning, when she was transitioning to Indiana, I was clueless. I wasn't clueless on purpose though.
Ivan Jackson:Right? I was trying to figure out You
Thee Real Joy:know, all that was going on in my life.
Ivan Jackson:Trying to figure out everything that I was figuring it out. Like, I didn't I moved to Indiana on my own. I got on the plane and figured out the place that I lived. Yeah.
Thee Real Joy:I got
Ivan Jackson:the place before I got there.
Thee Real Joy:We were like on air beds.
Ivan Jackson:Not to say that my parents didn't my dad was not driving to Indiana. That just wasn't a a a thought, like and it's not the I'm not judge I think I used to judge him for it, but it's like I get it as a parent now. And granted, I'm a drive Kehlani to Indiana, but I get it. You work a full time job, you're blue collar, you don't have time to really take these 3, 4 days. My mom doesn't drive, so you doing the drive by yourself, then you come back by yourself.
Ivan Jackson:I flew to Indiana. I found some furniture a couple days later. They sent me a couple dollars. Earbag dug it out. This is I'm 20 something years old.
Ivan Jackson:Yeah. If you take me out of college and put me in another situation, and I got a job, everybody's doing this right now at this age, or they in a worse or better situation. And I think that there was a level of unknownness for me that created probably more anger.
Thee Real Joy:Oh, yeah. You were very angry. Like looking back on everything, you were just really angry. I remember when I got there, I had Kehlani. At first, I didn't have a job, because we were trying to work out childcare.
Ivan Jackson:Tell them the truth. Why why we ain't have childcare in India?
Thee Real Joy:No money?
Ivan Jackson:Shit. We could've figured the money out. I went to Purdue. We could've figured the money out. What did what didn't I want?
Ivan Jackson:You remember that?
Thee Real Joy:White boots. Yeah. It was predominantly white.
Ivan Jackson:This is where I'm coming from.
Thee Real Joy:Yeah. It was
Ivan Jackson:no doubt. Way in hell I'm a come from Boston in New York and go to Indiana and expect somebody random. I don't know nobody out here. I don't know if I have family in Chicago. I don't know if I have family in Gary.
Ivan Jackson:Everything that I know is in New York City is on the East Coast. My brand new kid coming from a a predominantly white institution where he was going to war with 40, 50 year old white faculty, because you felt a certain type of way about our existence in this space, and you want me to let you watch my little black baby.
Thee Real Joy:But I also feel like but on the other hand of that, you were angry because I was just home with her and I wasn't working and I wasn't helping.
Ivan Jackson:I don't think I was angry about that. It might have been perceived like that.
Thee Real Joy:Because you were just angry.
Ivan Jackson:Yeah. But I agree at everything else. Yeah. Because it was to me and not in the not in the chauvinism or anything, it was my decision for you to stay home. It was your decision, you had the agency in it, but if I would have encouraged you to go to work, you probably would have found a job.
Ivan Jackson:I was really I
Thee Real Joy:did though.
Ivan Jackson:I did. Especially she did and we tried to shift, but at first, hell, no. Yeah.
Thee Real Joy:So I think because of everything that was being said about me at the time and just the attitude around me, I was like, I did not wanna ride his coat toe in Indiana. I wanted to go to Indiana, make my own life no matter what that looked like. Even if it was working 2 to 3 hours a day, I wasn't gonna be here
Ivan Jackson:and kinda like Charlie. Yep.
Thee Real Joy:I worked at Charming Charlie. So it was funny because he was at school and he worked that finish line and our stores were literally right across from each other in the mall. So say he worked from like a 8 to 3 shift, then I will work like the 3 to 10 shift and we would literally Pass the baby. Pass the baby. So like, he will like be getting out of work.
Thee Real Joy:I would be going in. We literally hand each other stroller, hand each other the bag, and I will go on work or leave work. And I think we did that for maybe like 3 months, I wanna say. And that was like my favorite time because like I said, I'm like, okay, I'm finally doing something. I don't know what my check was contributing.
Thee Real Joy:I don't really know. But I felt like, okay. I'm getting on the bus by myself. I'm gaining this independence. It's me and my daughter, you know, like, okay.
Thee Real Joy:Like, I'm starting to feel my way out. I was like, I made a friend. Like, everything was kinda looking up. But I think looking back, I just could not get past the anger. Like, there were so many untalked about moments with us.
Thee Real Joy:And I just remember, like, the if I could, like, just look at this this measuring, you know, cup of anger. It just kept rising and rising and rising. And I remember getting to the moment where I started to become uncomfortable. I remember your mom coming to visit while we were co parenting while we're in Indiana. And the way that you were, like, treating me, you started treating me that way in front of your mother.
Ivan Jackson:Yeah.
Thee Real Joy:And I think that was a huge sign for me. Like, okay. So this is like what it is. You know? Like, we're not gonna escape this.
Thee Real Joy:Because usually you try to put on around people and like but when that didn't change and I was said, okay. So I remember reaching out to my mom and making a plan where I wanted to go home. I don't think I necessarily included you in my plan. I kinda like started moving in my own manner.
Ivan Jackson:This is by October. So if she came out there, Jane
Thee Real Joy:No. I didn't come out January. I came out there. Connie was 3
Ivan Jackson:Connie was
Thee Real Joy:maybe 2 It was
Ivan Jackson:she was maybe March, February, March?
Thee Real Joy:Yeah. So
Ivan Jackson:By October, they was gone.
Thee Real Joy:I would say I was in Indian. Yeah. For about
Ivan Jackson:By October, they was gone. Yeah. October 10th.
Thee Real Joy:You know the date?
Ivan Jackson:I know the day, October 10th. By October 10th, they was gone.
Thee Real Joy:Yeah. So I called my mom. I was like, I know you wanted me to try to work this out. This is not conducive to anything that is, like, positive for me. I remember just being in such a, like, fragile space where, like, if someone would've went like, boo, I would've cried.
Thee Real Joy:You know, like, I was very just like fragile. I didn't really have anyone speaking life to me at the time. I mean, Jamie was always like that. I think so our godmother to Kehlani's godmother, we both had the same relationship with her at a point in time. But I think around this time, things start to, like, maneuver.
Thee Real Joy:She's a big part of our co parenting, which we'll probably get into the next episode, like finding our way through co parenting at our village. But Indiana was just, like, such a turning point for me. And I remember, like, making that decision, like, I'm gonna be a single mom. Like, I'm just gonna have to do this. Like, would it be nice to do it with someone?
Thee Real Joy:Yes. So it'd be nice to allow my daughter to have her father in the same house, but maybe that's just not what that looks like for us. So I remember reaching out to my mom and just telling her, like, I can't do it. And her being like, okay. Well, I'll get you a plane ticket and you have to come back home.
Thee Real Joy:And I remember feeling defeated, but a weight lifted off my shoulder at the same time because things were just I had no handle on things, like no grip. Like, everything around me was just like and I was just at a standstill. So I don't I know we got into, like, this last huge fight, and then I was like, okay. We left, and then that was the beginning of our co parenting journey Yeah.
Ivan Jackson:For sure.
Thee Real Joy:For me leaving Indiana and not telling
Ivan Jackson:I think if I could describe those last few months, it still stems back to, like, one thing for me. I really had no clue how sick your mother was. And I think I keep saying that because
Thee Real Joy:At the time, though, she wasn't that sick.
Ivan Jackson:But but I think I just had no purview or any of that. Because it's like as soon as you went home, that's to me, that's how much I I feel like is missing for me in the thought process.
Thee Real Joy:No. She wasn't so
Ivan Jackson:But I didn't even know that y'all were having disputes. So whether Yeah.
Thee Real Joy:So it wasn't about her sickness, it was about us just I
Ivan Jackson:didn't know how she was treating you. Yeah. How she was making you feel. I didn't know that you was going to church and they was making you feel to start, like, because we weren't talking. And I think to preface all that, like before Ebony was a partner, that was my friend, right?
Ivan Jackson:So we had gotten to a point where we weren't talking. Yeah. About any of that. And at a certain point, we spent so much time together trying to survive Wheelock that it wasn't just about her being my partner, like, you know, emotionally or, you know, like a boyfriend girlfriend, but like, alright, this the person that might really know me at this point and really understand me. And we hadn't talked about all of those things that really added pressure.
Thee Real Joy:Like why I came to Indiana. Yeah. Like So it's like I was being treated like shit at home already.
Ivan Jackson:You were boughed by the fact that you wanted to come early because even if we not on the best terms, I'm telling you I need until whenever to get us right. Let me get the money situated. I'm 20 something years old. You don't give me the time. Now we stuck in the same rut with the same pot of money.
Ivan Jackson:I'm resenting everybody. So the resentment wasn't just you. You just so, you know, hurt people hurt people. You was just the closest person to me at the time, and that shit was bleeding everywhere. Yeah.
Ivan Jackson:You know, and I was trying to hemorrhage it. The only thing that could hemorrhage it was the kid, you know. Everybody else was kinda fair game, you know? So I think for me, even think about it now, I think I just had a level of ambiguity around like, yo, what's going on with her mother? Yo, me and Moss are so close now, she treat me like shit, I couldn't stand that.
Ivan Jackson:I couldn't stand that right about the time you was about to have the baby, your mother ain't wanna stand in the crib. It's just mad stuff that she was never doing, she started doing. And I thought that it was just with me, and now that I think about it in full context, she was doing the same shit to you and worse. You know, and we trying to figure shit out. 2021, you still fake a kid.
Ivan Jackson:Yeah. You an adult, you doing adult things, but your your mindset, your thought process is very kid like, so Yeah. I can even think about the anger working with students now, being able to channel that rage, like, yo, whatever monster you feel when you mad, like, you know, you gotta know a monster better than that or a monster that can control it, like
Thee Real Joy:Yeah.
Ivan Jackson:And boys learn that, like that's a learnt behavior, patriarchal learnt behavior. You angry, you act a certain way, and if there's no people around you, don't always have to be a man around you to tell you, but if there's no humans around to check that, it's like a dog. A dog do things around a puppy do certain things around an adult dog. There's a level of correction. Right?
Ivan Jackson:A level of correction that sometimes we as humans, we monitor, but we can't necessarily check because that's not our space. Yeah. Right? There's a level of correction that I needed. Right?
Ivan Jackson:There's a level of correction that didn't exist, and it that shit just all came out as anger. It came out as resentment. And I'm sure that everybody who could watch this, people in the room now, you you've been to a point where you resent somebody for the way that you've always had to show up for them. And the same things that I resented then, I think I still show up in some of those ways now. I'm just not angry about that.
Ivan Jackson:Like, you know, try to be a thought partner. Try to be an ear to listen. You know, try to keep putting Kehlani first because we did all it's no reason for us not to put Kehlani first. We done did all the bickering already. Right?
Ivan Jackson:So the best resolve is kinda like to figure out how do we make sure she has the best life possible? How do we make sure that she gets the words of wisdom that we missed at 10, at 13, at 17, at 21? Like, how do we pour those things into? And I think it's funny because how we dealt with each other informs heavily how we parent.
Thee Real Joy:Yeah.
Ivan Jackson:It forms heavily how we parent. Like, she really not getting over on us because we done said all the nasty, not nicest shit that we could say to each other. So it's like, alright. If it's just about you, whatever you think you say in the house, she gonna tell me anyway because it ain't no there's no qualms in between. You know?
Ivan Jackson:So I think that we had to go through all of these things and feel all of these things. And I think it's unfortunate that we had to grow up together without a certain level of guidance. And us growing up together without a certain level of guidance created all the kind of blood baths that we had with each other. But I think it lends to why we have such more of a sibling like relationship than anything else. Like, I could say this confidently kinda speeding up.
Ivan Jackson:There's certain things that she does or ways that she may show up in a space that's not with me that she'll ask me sometimes. Like, y'all was bugging? Like, hey. You might have been tripping a little bit. Like, you feel me, though?
Ivan Jackson:Like, you might have been tripping a little bit, but it's a ode to a level of we've been around each other 10 plus years. It ain't it's 10 she's 10. But we was in school together, what, 4 years? So it gotta be what? 14.
Ivan Jackson:13, 14 years. 32 years old. Right? So it's like there's a level of understanding your you and your humanity that I have to take out of her being Kehlani's mom, or take out of all the nasty shit we might have said to each other. But, like, we gotta get Kehlani to a space where she has to win.
Ivan Jackson:I see parent situations in my day job that don't work all the time. And it's always about the parents and the adults. It's never about the kid. I work with kids all day. I could deal with the kids.
Ivan Jackson:Can't stay in the adults. Right? The adults are the ones who really need the unpack, and the kids have time to figure it out. So, I don't know where that segue came from, but it was just a lot of this that we're discussing is from a place of not knowing that relationship with your mom, not knowing what was going on. And when I found out, I felt like it was too late.
Ivan Jackson:So my frustration is now I'm mad because you ain't standing on business how I told you to stand on business, 1. Right? Because it's a level of you with me. This is how we moving. How we moving on campus is how you should move everywhere else that you go.
Ivan Jackson:So it's like now you went down there, you're letting them play with you, and you know if I was down there, they wasn't gonna play with you like that. Like, there's a level of that. And it's like, I don't know all of that. So now you're not telling me. Y'all both not telling me.
Ivan Jackson:Fuck everybody. Right? And it's it's about my kid. And those are feelings. Right?
Ivan Jackson:Feelings change. But I think that there's a level of buildup that has led to the resolve that we that we definitely have today.
Thee Real Joy:Stay tuned for part 3 where we discuss the journey through our coparenting. Thank you so much for tuning into the Real Joy podcast. I hope today's conversation brought you closer to finding your own joy and left you feeling inspired. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you like what you heard, share it with your circle.
Thee Real Joy:It might be just the thing they need. Let's keep growing, glowing and finding joy together. Until next time. Take care of yourself and remember to keep it relaxed, relatable and real. See you soon.
