Episode Details

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Lacey Tezino grew up believing her biological mother was dead. That’s what her family told her in the ‘80s when she was adopted, and she carried that story until she was 19 years old. Hungover on just one more motherless-Mother’s Day, Lacey somehow found the nerve to call ‘information’ to see if that was true. Her mother picked up the phone. That call became a decade-long relationship that Lacey describes as beautiful, heartbreaking, and nothing she was prepared for.

The complications didn’t end with the reunion. Lacey’s mother had her own life, her own rhythm, and her own relationship with alcohol. So did Lacey. And when her mother received a stage four lung cancer diagnosis, the urgency it created forced them both into a kind of honesty they had never quite managed before. They sat through chemo appointments and asked the hard questions. They talked about what they’d each been holding. And Lacey has spent the years since wondering why it took running out of time to get there.

Lacey is the founder of Passport Journeys and the author of Therapy After Mom Died. She now works with mothers and daughters to help them heal together before a crisis forces their hand, matching them with therapists, building structured connections, and asking the eight questions that reveal exactly where a relationship has come apart.

This conversation goes somewhere I don’t hear talked about often enough: the way our kids watch us reach for a drink at the end of a hard day, and what they quietly absorb from that. Lacey tells the story of her own Friday night ritual, margaritas that offered tired parents decompression, the moment she realized her children were watching all of it, and what they might be learning. 

If you have a daughter - or son - you love and a relationship that feels like it’s missing something you can’t quite name, this one is for you.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• What Lacey said when her mother, who she thought was dead, picked up the phone
• The unhealthy Friday night ritual she couldn’t unsee once she saw it
• The gap she keeps finding between what moms believe and what daughters feel
• Why, as a parent, you have to connect before you correct
• What it took for Lacey and her mother to finally be honest with each other

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Passport Journeys website
• Therapy After Mom Died - Lacey’s book 

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