KINTSUGIconversations

0:00:11 - Allison
Kintsugi is the time-honored Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold to highlight the beauty of imperfection.

0:00:18 - Cyndi
We believe the same is true for life and motherhood that transparent conversations can impact generational legacy, in the spirit of Kintsugi.

0:00:26 - Allison
We embrace our differences and brokenness in the everyday pieces of life because we can all turn our messes into messages and are each more valuable when repaired with care where before we were broken.

0:00:36 - Cyndi
Welcome to Kintsugi Conversations.

0:00:42 - Allison
Hey guys, I'm Allison and I'm her mom, cindy. Welcome to Kintsugi Conversations.

0:00:48 - Cyndi
You guys may remember us from the duo podcast, but thanks, a very long story and we'll get into all of those details a little bit later. So, allison, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

0:00:59 - Allison
All right, guys. So my name is Allison. Obviously I am 32 years young and I am a mom of two, a wife and a, I guess, influencer. I don't even like that term, mom. Do you even know what an influencer is?

0:01:17 - Cyndi
Well, you know, for you guys, an influencer is someone who basically saw the decisions on what's hot and what's not now. So in a way, you do influence these different people according to trends.

0:01:30 - Allison
I just don't even like that term because I feel like it gives me like too much power and too much credibility when really I'm just out here winging it. So we're going to say that I'm actually a content creator, more so than an influencer. I had a blog and now I have a YouTube channel and I'm pretty active on TikTok and Instagram and I just love sharing about my life as a basketball wife. My husband plays professional basketball overseas, most recently in Japan. We've been married since 2014, and so we have been on this wild ride of living, you know, between Atlanta and between different countries abroad for quite some time now, and I really enjoy sharing about our lifestyle, sharing about my experiences as a mom with two I have a three year old daughter and a one year old son and just sharing my life with the world. That's something that I've always kind of been good at and something that was kind of thrown in my lap thanks to you and dad back in 2006 when you know I was on MTV's my super sweet 16. So I guess it kind of has come natural to me since then to just share aspects of my life, and so, yes, I guess I am a content creator. Slash influencer.

I am also a well, I also have a marriage. I also have a master's degree in marriage and family therapy and so, I guess, by trade, I once worked as a therapist. I worked mostly with couples, but also with individuals, just helping people to kind of rewrite the narratives of their lives and take ownership of who they are. I also really enjoyed working with couples in premarital counseling and helping couples in particular, just kind of master communication in their relationship. I'm also an author. I wrote my children's book the Kintsugi Kid a few years back, following in your footsteps, mom. Since you are also an author, so why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

0:03:31 - Cyndi
Well, guys my name is Cindy. Most of you don't wear Cindy Mathis. I have added another name onto that, but I will go into that a little bit later. I am, believe it or not, 60 years old. Yay me. I grew up in Millard's Field, georgia, a little small hick town. Probably never heard of it, but that's fine. I moved to Atlanta some oh gosh, maybe 55 years ago, when you were five no. I'm sorry, I'm thinking about when you were five.

0:03:58 - Allison
Yeah.

0:03:58 - Cyndi
I'm not that old, don't ever think about it, right? I know I moved to Atlanta some 20-some years ago. I've been here ever since I was married to my soulmate of almost 21 years, the late Charles Mathis. My daddy yeah, I'm sorry my baby daddy Went through 10 years of being alone, and God blessed me to find love again, so I remarried. Before that, though, I wrote a book called Missing Pieces you all can find that on Amazon, please and I have always been somewhat of a I guess sort of a motivational speaker.

I like to talk to young ladies especially who didn't necessarily have the best backgrounds growing up, especially relationships with their mom, and just sort of help them foster some of those feelings and letting them know that they can break that cycle, whether it is abuse or not, feeling love or whatever the case may be. And so now here we are Again. Allison told you about my wonderful grandkids, so I also split my time between Atlanta and Boston another long story that we'll go into later. Here we are now doing Kansugi Conversations and I'm looking forward to this.

0:05:14 - Allison
I feel like Mom, you saying that you are a motivational speaker just is really important to your story and part of what you will bring to the podcast, because you were one of those women who did not have the relationship that a lot of your peers maybe had with your own mom, but kind of broke those generational curses and somehow was an amazing mother to me, the most amazing mom I mean, you still are the most amazing mom and made sure that we had a really really great relationship and could talk about anything under the sun and that I always felt loved and supported. So I don't know, I just think it's important to highlight that that's not a small feat and that's a large part of why we're here right now.

0:06:05 - Cyndi
Oh, thank you Thank you.

0:06:08 - Allison
So, as we said earlier, we used to be the Duo Podcast. We podcasted from about gosh I guess it was about 2016 to 2018. We really enjoyed podcasting and we were talking about pretty much everything under the sun, having really, really fun and deep mother-daughter conversations, and the point of the Duo Podcast was to, you know, kind of shed light on the generational differences that might exist between mothers and daughters, but to continue to foster close relationships between the two regardless. Mom, it doesn't even feel like it's been five years since we stopped podcasting, does it?

0:06:54 - Cyndi
No, it doesn't at all, and we never meant to be gone this long. But again, life happened.

0:07:00 - Allison
Yeah. So basically, you know for those of you who might have come from our duo podcast days we really just like went on a midseason break and had every intention to start back podcasting. You know, a month or two later, however, life happened, like my mom said, at that point, my husband was playing in Fort Wayne, indiana, and my mom was living in Atlanta, and so we were kind of separated by like literal space. At that time, and back in those days you know, like it was forever ago it was actually kind of hard to like do podcasts from two different locations and we're actually podcasting right now from two different locations she's in Boston and I'm in Atlanta but at that time, like it was really hard at least for us to figure out how to do that, and so that was one thing that kind of prevented us from recording and releasing new episodes. And then let's see what happened next.

This was 2018. So when I did finally come home after that basketball season, you know we're like, okay, we're going to get back going with our podcast, and then, lo and behold, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. So that happened and, thank God, it's really not a big deal and a big part of my story, but it was like a little hiccup and it did definitely slow down our progress. You know, we were really focused on helping me to recover from surgery and all of that jazz, and so recording wasn't necessarily at the forefront of our minds at that point, right, mom?

0:08:31 - Cyndi
Right, but you say it's not a very big part of your story, but it really is, because it kind of helped to shape you into the person that you have now become. So you know, with every curse there's also a blessing. Yes, so you know, I look at it that way.

0:08:46 - Allison
And that's honestly like what you know kitsugi conversations is all about. That's kind of where our name comes from is because we are big believers that with every you know curse, with every bad thing we go through, with every hard thing that happens, with all of even like the little messes in our everyday you know mundane lives, that there is like beauty on the other side of that. So after we kind of made it through the whole process of my brain tumor and my recovery, my mom was focused on finding love and, you know, reestablishing herself as a wife to be. That's around the time that you got engaged, right yeah.

0:09:28 - Cyndi
I want to say I got engaged in yeah, well, 2019.

0:09:32 - Allison
So yeah, not 20, 2018, because it was the summer after my brain like literally remember I was like we were in Hilton head and I just had brains or three, a few months. Okay, you're right.

0:09:42 - Cyndi
Just, I just was not. You say I was focused on that. I wasn't focused on that. God just had other plans for me and I accepted it. But yeah, that happened. You know I was lucky enough, I should say, to find love again. You know there are so many people that once you go through the trauma of losing you know your first love, to be able to find that again is really special. So I don't take that lightly either.

0:10:10 - Allison
It is really special. And so you know, pretty much like as soon as you got engaged we kind of dove pretty much headfirst into your wedding planning, because you knew that you weren't going to have a super, super long engagement and we also knew that I would be headed overseas for the basketball season and so that started keeping us busy. And then I did leave for the basketball season and so, you know, we were again separated and kind of unable to figure out recording. And then during that basketball season I got pregnant with Harper.

And right, you know that is my three year old and, honestly, like once Harper was born, we kind of like forgot all about podcasting for a little bit because we were both so focused on her. She became the center of both of our worlds exactly. She thinks she still is the center of the universe.

Right, right. And then you know, I had another baby. So life really just happened, guys, and while we never meant to be away from podcasting so long, I am kind of glad that we took a step back, because I do think that a rebrand was a hundred percent necessary, just based on how our lives have changed. Mom, did you realize how much our lives have changed, like since 2018?

0:11:22 - Cyndi
I really didn't you know, things were moving along and then you know COVID hit, and then things, things changed even more drastically and Again. Now here we are again, you know, two babies and a husband later, and right, you know, but it's, it's good that we had those changes. It gives us new and exciting things to talk about and it's just again, it's just life.

0:11:48 - Allison
Yeah, and so, since our family has expanded so much, since so much has changed in our life, our podcast is going to be more Legacy focus. I would say, mom, don't you?

0:11:59 - Cyndi
agree, I think so, legacy focus, but again, we're gonna be very authentic and share our authentic selves and, you know, hopefully, along the way, helps the people.

0:12:11 - Allison
Right, I agree, I think that me having kids of my own, just kind of it hasn't changed our relationship, because we're still as close as ever, but it has changed our dynamic in that like I understand things about motherhood that I didn't understand the last time we were having these conversations, because I didn't I was not a mother, I was only speaking from the perspective of being a daughter, right, and so I feel like now I'm able to Not only speak like as your daughter but also be like okay and as a mom myself.

You know, this is how I'm doing things, or this is like how I understand why my mom did things the way that she did, xyz. So I think that that is gonna be really, really fun and like add an extra Kind of peace, an extra little bit of spice to our conversations. And then also, like we get to talk about how the things that the decisions that you made as a mom Thankfully mostly good how those decisions are impacting how I am parenting my kids, and like the legacy that comes from that that you know is gonna be passed on from generation to generation. Mom, like you did the hard work by being the one that broke the generational curse and now we literally get to see the fruits of that, you know.

0:13:22 - Cyndi
It is fun, too, to have a different perspective, as, like you said, you know, I got to do things as your mom and try to, you know, guide you along that way, but now I also get to guide you as the grandmother and Right to sort of you know things that you do as the mom. Now, as grandma, I can come back and say, oh no, let's do it this way, so that'll be fun.

0:13:48 - Allison
You know you, you grandparents are real different, right, like I mean, you were never like a strict, crazy parent with me, but like the things that you allow my children to do are totally different than the things that you know I, I Did or I wasn't allowed to do. I remember I would say hey, mom, hey, and you would say Allison, hey is for horses, we say hello and hi. Harper can say hey, and you're like oh, she's so cute, she said hey.

0:14:13 - Cyndi
That's my little peanut. So.

0:14:16 - Allison
Even, like you know, with me, you know you'd call me, I'd say what, what? Mom? You don't say what to me. You say, yes, harper, meme. You call Harper, harper, she's what. And you're yes, sweetie, yes, yes, sweetie pie. And I'm sure you'll be the same with Jackson too. It's just so funny to me how the dynamics change. And then it's also funny to me how, like things that you said to me, like, for example, like how I wasn't allowed to say what, like now, if I call Harper and she says what, like I'm offended, I'm like, did you just say what? Like say yes to me. So, as a mom, now I do get it.

0:14:53 - Cyndi
Yeah, those things are so funny. I also see a little bit of Harper's dress too. You know some things that I would not let you wear. You're like oh no, harper, you can't, we're going out. You can wear this at home, but you can't wear this out.

0:15:06 - Allison
Yeah, it's so funny how that happens and how how I get it. Like you know, the saying is like you know everything that my mom told me, like she was right about everything and I won't say everything, but a good, good, good, good, good bit of it you were right about I'm glad I said somewhat of a pretty fair example for you to lead. For you to follow. I'm sorry.

0:15:30 - Cyndi
Well, you know, all in all we've had a very hectic five years, but it's also been a great five years because we've had so many wonderful blessings to our family. But I am so excited to be starting continued conversations.

0:15:44 - Allison
Me too, mom. But before we formally and officially say goodbye once and for all to the duo podcast, I do have to ask what, if you could remember, was your favorite episode that we did of the duo podcast.

0:15:59 - Cyndi
Oh gosh, I would probably say my favorite were. Well, there was two. There was one, the one that we did about extended families or bonus families that I really enjoyed because there's so many people now that have blended families and we got so many good questions and responses from that that I really enjoy doing that one. And also, strangely enough, I enjoy the one that we did about grief and losing, you know, a loved one, because, again, you know that's something that not many people talk about and so it just kind of to me, opened the door for a lot of external conversations.

0:16:39 - Allison
I agree, and I think that it would be really fun again to have those conversations again through our new lens of kintsugi conversations and like including you know my perspective now as a parent and like talking more about legacy and how that kind of is shaping the way that we think about those things now. Right, because now your family is even more blended. So I grew up in a very blended family. My dad had two children previously from a previous marriage and not only am I very close to my sister who is technically a half sister, but I don't consider her that I'm also very close to my dad's ex -wife. But, mom, you kind of have another blended family situation, right, because your husband has two children, again from a previous marriage.

0:17:27 - Cyndi
Exactly, I'm married to someone who has two children from a previous marriage and I'm very close to his two children and, strangely enough, his ex-wife and I also have a very you know good relationship.

0:17:39 - Allison
So it continues Now, mom we can have that conversation again, like not only talking about like my family of origin, but also talking about like your I say like new family, and talking about Harper and Jackson's relationships with these people and like how that's coming into play now and what we would like to teach them about blended families, you know.

0:18:01 - Cyndi
Exactly, exactly. So you know again the cycle. I don't want to say it continues, but it's changed quite a bit. But now we're just fostering all of these new relationships and again, hopefully, with Consigli Conversations, we can open up some more of these conversations, not only within our own family but with other people as well.

0:18:19 - Allison
Yeah, I love that we would always get a ton of questions and comments from listeners really for you. People mostly like wanted to hear from you, which I loved, and I really hope that that's something that will continue with Consigli Conversations, because it made it really fun and really interactive, you know.

0:18:35 - Cyndi
Exactly, and I love sharing, you know, my story with other people. And again, you know, this thing called life doesn't come with any instructions, doesn't come with any guidebooks or anything like that. You wing it and you do the best you can and you're forever learning and changing.

0:18:51 - Allison
Exactly. I think that if I had to name just one episode that was my favorite of the Duo Podcast, it would honestly be the body image conversation. Do you remember that? I do. I do.

0:19:04 - Cyndi
That was very good also.

0:19:05 - Allison
We did almost like a whole body image I don't know like series, because we had photo shoots with, like remember we did the photo shoot with our close friends Mariah and Terry. Another you know well-known mother-daughter. We did photo shoots with, you know, sine, and we did conversation with her about body image and I really just enjoyed that conversation because I thought that it was very, very relatable for any woman listening, because we all deal with, I won't say issues, but you know we all have some stuff when it comes to our bodies.

0:19:41 - Cyndi
Right, and we were all very raw with our insecurities, the things that we liked about our bodies, the things that we didn't like about our bodies. And, like you said, you know we all go through stuff and it doesn't matter how tall or thin or, you know, bigger you are. We all have things that we want to work on within ourselves, and so it's good to also get that encouragement from other women to be like hey, you know, you're great just the way you are.

We'll continue to work on these things, but you're great just the way you are.

0:20:12 - Allison
Yeah, and I feel like now, you know, as a mom myself, I am really excited to have this conversation again because, first of all, I have a daughter that I'm trying to model for, so I'm trying to set an example for her of like body positivity and loving her body and being proud of her body. And that's sometimes hard, to be honest, and you know it's tricky to figure out what to say exactly and how to do that. And then, on top of that, I have experienced, you know, what it's like to carry a baby and you know experience what they call bounce back culture, when everyone is kind of like always commenting on your way after baby and you feel this like pressure to bounce back to your normal size. And so I have a lot to share. You know about body image that I really didn't, I really didn't know about, you know, when we had the conversation before.

0:21:07 - Cyndi
Exactly. And for me, you know, as we get older, our bodies start to change and again you know, things aren't where they used to be. So that's also another perspective that I can bring now. You know, as I get older and my body changes even more, you know.

0:21:23 - Allison
Just coming from that mindset now, Well, guys, I'm really excited that for all of you that are looking forward to having this a body image conversation with us, that that episode is actually available now and so as soon as you finish listening to this episode, you can go right on over to that episode and hear us talk all about body image from so many different perspectives. Right, mom? That's exactly right. All right, guys. Well, we thank you guys so much for tuning in to episode zero of Kintsui Conversations. We really just wanted to take this time to introduce you to us, to introduce you to our podcast and to say farewell to the duo podcast and let you guys know kind of what we've been up to the last five years. Please, please, please, be sure to you know, subscribe to our podcast here, wherever you are listening. Please be sure to follow us on social media. We are at Kintsugi Conversations and I'm going to spell that for all of you listeners Kint S-U-G-I Conversations on Instagram and Facebook. Thanks for listening.