Fall Trends Part I & TLC's "Sister Wives"
In this episode of the Uploft Interior Design Podcast, I share my excitement about attending my dear friend Yelena’s wedding, reflecting on our journey from client-designer to close friends over nearly two decades. I then dive into the first five of ten fall design trends, discussing earthy palettes, layered textures, vintage handcrafted pieces, the return of cool metals, and the popularity of soft organic shapes in furniture. If you have questions for me, make sure to submit them here.
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Design inspiration, real life makeovers, and the latest in pop culture. This is the Uploft Interior Design podcast with Betsy Helmouth. Hello there. What a week ahead. I’m really excited because I am going to a wedding of a dear friend of mine. We’ve been friends for over well around about
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20 years because I’ve been in business 20 years uh almost exactly to the month. And this woman started as a client. She was one of my first clients and she found my ad on Craigslist and asked me to help her with her apartment. She wanted something bohemian and feminine.
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She had this artwork that her sister had made that was pink and purple and incorporated some fairies. And so she wanted that soft ethereal vibe while also combining her love of plants and her love of all things international especially from the Eastern world. So it was very
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eclectic boho mashup blah blah blah and she was in a very tumultuous relationship. So she wanted this apartment to be very feminine. She was moving out on her own. They were still together, but she was trying to sort of claim her own identity as separate from this toxic boyfriend.
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And so I helped her with her space. And then a couple weeks or months, I can’t recall, later, she writes me back and says, “Betsy, I’m ready for you to come back. Um, I want you to check it out.” So, I came back to check the space out again. I was really excited to see if
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she’d made the layout changes that we suggested. She was going to put this big tie door behind her bed and use it as a headboard. We just had all these great ideas and she already had a lot of things including that artwork that we planned on reusing. So, the fixes were
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simple. I figured maybe she just moved some things around and got a few key pieces. Well, when I went to see her again, I saw that nothing had been done. no changes had been made. And I’m sitting here and I’m like, Yolina, what are we going to talk about because you
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haven’t made any of the changes that I recommended. And she’s like, I know. I just want to ask you some more questions and whatever. I’m like, okay, fine. I will take your money. I will sit here with you, but I’ve already given you some ideas that I think will make a huge
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difference, and you got to do those before we can talk about anything else. All right. So, I left somewhat frustrated, but she’s so sweet and so kind and she loved the idea. She just hadn’t taken action. So, everything was fine, right? Well, a couple weeks later,
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I get another call and it’s Elena and I say, “Yena, oh, great. How are things going? How did it look? Did it turn out the way you thought?” And she’s like, “Oh, actually, I haven’t made any of the changes.” I’m like, “What? What? But I’m also a chiropractor and I own a
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med spa and I’d like you to come make some changes there. I want it to have a fresh look and I wanted to have a similar sort of femininity to my apartment but be more professional. I know you’ll bring some ideas, blah blah blah. So I meet her at the space. We have great discussion. We come up with
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great ideas. and she says, “And by the way,” at the end of our visit, she says, “I would like to have you back to check out my apartment, you know, sometime in a few weeks.” I was like, “Okay, but you actually have to make the changes.” And she’s like, “I don’t know if I’m going
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to like make any changes.” And I was thinking to myself, “What?” And she said, “Betsy, I really just want to be your friend and I just want to hang out with you.” And I was like, “I really like you and I want to hang out with you, too.” like we had been having so much fun and she was such a sweet
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special person even though she was not taking action which is frustrating and so we became great friends and ultimately she was a bridesmaid at my wedding. We have been fast friends for oh so many years nearly two decades. And now I am going to her wedding not with
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the toxic boyfriend but with a man that she met a few years back. And we’ve been watching her whole journey. And by we I mean we have a group of friends now. I kind of introduced her to a couple other of my friends and we became like this golden group, Golden Girls group of
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four. And now we do everything together even though we are far-flung. One is in New Mexico, one is in Minnesota, one is in New Jersey, and I’m in Connecticut. But we find reasons and ways to all get together because we love hanging out so much, and we have this very unique, fun,
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relaxed, comfortable, special chemistry. So, I’m going to Yolena’s wedding this weekend in a barn in Minnesota, and I’m taking my daughter because my daughter is best friends with the girl who lives in New Jerseyy’s daughter. I guess we’re women now, but I think of us as girls
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cuz we were in our 20s and that’s where we’ll forever be for me. Um, but anyway, it’s going to be so much fun and I’m so excited to celebrate. And now I must say for those of you listening who have your own interior design firms or who are taking clients, I do not recommend do
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not recommend I cannot add enough exclamation points becoming friends with your clients because you lose the client. Like now I cannot charge you Lena for my interior design advice. I cannot like sell her a plan online or whatever. We’re friends now. So I’ve lost a
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client. I’ve gained an amazing friend. So, was it worth it? Yes. But if you do this with every client you have a connection with, your pool of clients is going to reduce. Luckily, when somebody’s a good friend, they can refer you. They can spread the word. You can
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be really um proactive about asking them to do such things without feeling bashful. But it’s hard to work with them again. Like, she still doesn’t always take all my design advice. And now I can tell her how grumpy that makes me. Like Yelina, just move the sofa bed. Just
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move it. It’ll be fine. You can always move it back if you don’t like it. Uh so, you know, there are those dynamics that come up and it’s just harder and less lucrative to work for friends. So, I’m putting that out there and just putting that as a warning. But it’s also really fun and special.
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All right. Now is the time that you’ve all been waiting for. People love it when I talk trends. So, we’re going to dig in. We’re going to discuss fall trends. Uh, I’ve been seeing a lot of things online that really align with what everybody’s talking about in the design world. You
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guys know I don’t follow trends to the letter. You guys know that I think that interior design should be somewhat timeless and should last you for a good while. So that way you’re not constantly flipping out drapes, flipping out rugs. Easier said than done. And with the
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tariffs that are going up this coming week, it’s going to be a lot more expensive to do so as well. But the reason I think trends are really valid is because the stores are following the trends. The retailers create and get these trend reports in advance of designing their collections. And so by
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knowing the trends, you’re going to know what’s on the shelves. You’re going to know what’s going to be readily available when you want to go shopping. And then you can pick and choose the trends that align with your tastes, that resonate with you, and that fit well with those forever pieces. Whether
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they’re heirloom pieces or whether they’re just pieces you spent a lot of money on or that are just really special to you, you know, you’re going to want to weave in new items with those preexisting items. So, how can we integrate trends in a way that feels organic and doesn’t make the pieces we
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already have feel old? So, that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. Um, and then after this, we’re going to do a small recap of Sister Wives because, believe it or not, Sister Wives is back on the air for I think season 20. And um, lots is going on, but it feels
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also like the show might be petering out. So, I’m excited to share with you my thoughts about this new season and hear your thoughts about the season as well. Um, one sec. Sorry about that, guys. Sometimes my clients write me and, you know, they need an immediate response and I’m here
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for them. I’m here for them. I am really rushing to get everything done because I’m leaving for the wedding tomorrow morning and I have clients who want to get wrapped up. I have other things that need to get wrapped up. Sometimes going on vacation, the juice is not worth the squeeze because I have
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to stress so much before I leave and stress so much when I get back that that middle rest kind of evaporates. But it’s fine. I’ll handle it. It’s fine. Okay, let’s talk about trends. Now, we’re going to do a two-part series because there’s two 10 trends I’d like to focus
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on, and that’s a lot for any one show, especially when we’re also going to talk sister wives. Okay, the first one is earthy grounded palettes. And I am definitely seeing that. I was working with a DC client this morning virtually. And we were exploring tones like rich
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terracotta and rusts for her throw pillows in her bedroom, but also for a rug in the living room. We were looking at forest green cuz there’s an amazing sale on a CB2 forest green rug. Now, it’s not to be confused with emerald, which is a little bit brighter. Forest
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green has a little bit more brown to it. Is a little bit more moody, is a little bit It’s equally rich and shaded. It’s just darker and sort of more foroding. But that’s kind of fun, too, because we want to think about if we’re incorporating a 10 by4 forest green rug,
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which is what we were exploring with this client. Then we want to think about brightening and lightening with those accessories and even the sectional. So, I’m doing a cream colored sectional in a performance fabric so that it’s quite durable even though it’s a light color.
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And then we’re doing some rust throw pillows. And the artwork above the sectional is really big. 4T by 8 ft. It’s a dip tick. So each piece is about 4T square that’s going above this over 10 foot long sectional in this DC room. And the artwork has navy, teal, white, forest
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green, the terracotta rusty orange color. So, it’s this really abstract landscape adjacent vibe that I found on Paragold and pulling out that thread of forest green and introducing it in the rug I think is amazing. So, I think we’ve toggled from doing an orange rug to the green rug and then doing the
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orange pillows that will again tie in with the ribbons of orange or that kind of deep russety orange that’s found in the artwork. Um, so we’re also thinking when we’re thinking earthy palettes, it doesn’t just mean dark. This could be any number of browns from a light tan
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all the way to a camel and then a chocolate brown. It could be a kind of clay or putty type neutral. And it could be a creamy ivory. Any color that you find naturally, say, in the woods. So, we’re not talking about nature all over and including blueberries, strawberries, whatever. Now, we’re talking
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rich, deep, saturated fall hues. And just because it’s fall trends does not always mean that we use fall colors. So, that’s something to think about. Now, the next trend that I think is always on point, but um there is a little bit of a fresh take here are layered textures and
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materials. I don’t think it’s a good design. If you aren’t already layering materials, layering stone, layering wood, layering fabric, layering glass, you want to look around your room and make sure that this space has a complex use of these materials. I was designing
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for a space in Harlem the other day and this woman, all of her inspiration photos were basically just like wood showrooms of walnut furniture and she just wanted her home to be filled with walnut furniture. And the problem with that is there’s no contrast. There’s no
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layering of materials to make it look complex and designerly. instead. It looks like you went to the walnut wood factory and said, “Give me everything that I see on this catalog page three.” Right? So, even if the case goods need to be wood, which in her case they did,
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she didn’t want um you know, some kind of metal bar cabinet or some kind of glass and metal or glass and wood buffet. She wanted like a lot of opaque doors. She likes the heavy quality of wood. Well, you can do painted wood. That can also count as a different material if there’s not a
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visible wood grain. So, we mixed a lot of black and marble in with the walnut. The walnut was still predominant because that’s what she was really excited by, but we had to make sure that as her eye moved around the space, it didn’t land on walnut twice in succession. So, for
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instance, if there was a dining table that was walnut, the buffet that’s adjacent to it absolutely cannot be walnut. So, I made it black with a marble top. And then the chairs that are around the walnut table absolutely cannot be walnut, nor can they be black because the buffet is now black. Meaning
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that these chairs were a mix of metal as well as fabric so that they were really comfortable and upholstered. My view and perspective on layering materials does not change depending on the season. But the thing that’s new, I think, are these Boulay fabrics. The Boulay fabrics are kind of like a NY
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teddy bear. They’re so soft. They’re so comfy. I will say I bought myself two Boulay dining chairs for a game table that I have in my space where we do puzzles and play sorry and all that. And the cat has shredded the boulay. It’s like his favorite cat tree come to life.
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I do not recommend Boulay if you have a kitty cat who likes to scratch things. But it looked great before he got his claws on it. And the good news is I can shave it down like a fuzzy little teddy bear. And you can’t even tell that texture is missing because the claws are
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just bringing up new texture. So that’s I guess a positive. Uh, velvet is another one where there’s a huge emphasis right now. And velvet has never been hard to find, but certainly now it is everywhere. Whether you want an upholstered sofa, whether you want throw pillows, whether you want drapes, you
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cannot throw a stone without finding some velvet this season. All right, let’s go to the next item that is said to be hot, hot, hot right now. And these are vintage handcrafted artisal pieces. Now, I think there’s a large emphasis on pottery right now on things that look hand huneed. Whether
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it’s a centerpiece bowl or whether it’s bookends or whether it’s a beautiful vase, people are looking for that sort of organically made texture. You’re also seeing it a lot in lamp bases, which I think is a really cool way to use that sort of handthrown pottery vibe without
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it being just an accessory. All right. Um I’ve been seeing a lot of macra for a while. That’s another handcrafted item that’s been around. And of course, furniture with a patina. This is nothing new, but we did see that shabby chic go away in the early as and it’s making
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somewhat of a comeback depending on your personal style. So, you’ll be seeing a little bit more of that. Um, including those overdyed Persians are coming back. So, that was a really big deal. those rugs that look like they have sort of that Persian style pattern, but instead
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they’ve been dipped in one vat of colors. So, they’re no longer multicolored and looking quite so busy. You can still make out a distinct pattern underneath, but the overall rug is one tone. So, those are coming back in a big way. Here’s another one that has been gone
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for a while. I would say cool metals. And when I’m saying cool, I’m meaning chromes, silvers, nickels, even peuters. They went away around the 2010s and were no longer fashionable. In fact, if you were trying to find them, if you were trying to coordinate with pre-existing
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metal finishes, or if you were trying to make a different statement than what you’re seeing online with the brasses, golds, rot irons, black metals, you were hardressed to find any options. However, before 2010, silver was all you could find. Good luck finding anything brass
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or warm metal that was like interesting or felt of the moment. That hadn’t been back since the 80s. So brass has been back. It has been dominant. The black metals have also been woven in there. And now we’re starting to see that retailers have these silver medals coming back, which I think is really
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exciting because I think they’re important, especially in a place like a kitchen where there’s a lot of stainless steel, especially in a place like a bathroom where you want it to feel fresh and bright and clean. Those cool metals really evoke that sort of crisp modernity that I’m often
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looking for in a space. So, I’m excited to see them back. And of course, the brass and the black metals are still out there and they’re still quite popular. I would say the warm metals more so than those dark black metals. All right, my last trend for today, soft organic
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shapes. Now, this is a trend we’ve been seeing for a few seasons. Whether it’s a curved sofa or a barrel chair, people are wanting their major furniture pieces to have more curving, rounded edges and lines. And I would say that’s been happening for 2 years now. So, I think that this is a trend with
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some legs. And I like it because so many things in interior design have right angles, whether they’re bookcases, credenzas, all these other things, right? And even just the architecture of spaces, a doorway, an opening, an entryway, windows tend to be rectalinear or square. I love the idea that we’re
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introducing curves and I’m seeing a ton of arched furniture, be it bookcases or bar cabinets. You’ll just find that there’s lots of opportunity to incorporate curves in your space with your major pieces of furniture. It used to be that we could only do that with accessories or even patterns on a rug.
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No longer. There are so many furniture options that are rounded or curved. Guys, this was just the first five trends. You will want to stay tuned for next week’s episode where I reveal the next five trends. All right, now we’re going to segue. Now, we’re gonna segue
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to a show that I have been waiting to come back because not because I’m like so enthralled, because I feel like TLC’s Sister Wibes has really played out over 19 seasons and some seasons have been more interesting than others. And after last season, which felt like a
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really natural ending, you know, one of the sons of their 18 children committed suicide, then all the wives except Robin, so that’s Mary, Christina, and Janelle all left Cody. They sold the property that they had jointly together. And it just felt like, what else is there to say?
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I mean, I’m interested in following these sister wives as they go on different paths now that they’re exister wives or as they revealed in this week’s show, now that they’re sister witches because they don’t like each other. Um, but I could follow them on social media.
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None of them are doing things that are that interesting that they could do a spin-off or even continue this show for too much longer. Well, in this first episode, I mean, you know, I’m going to watch it anyway. I’ve watched 19 seasons of this. This first episode, Cody and
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Robin, the two that have remained married, are grappling with the idea of introducing another sister wife. Robin came into the family after they were already three wives because she had always dreamed of living polygamy. She felt called by her religion to live polygamy. And just a few years after she
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joined the clan, everybody left. And now she’s in a monogous relationship with Cody. And that’s not really what she had planned. On this first episode, they resolve that they’re going to maintain monogamy. They’re not going to seek anyone else out because it was so
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traumatic for Robin to come into this family, to bring her children into this family, and then have it dissolve before her very eyes in a lot of ways because of her. And so she just thinks that if they continued to seek another sister wife, there’s a lot of room for hurt, deception
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issues, right? And that she’d be constantly living in fear that the family would dissolve again. However, if you stay tuned till the end of the episode, they tease that they’re going to be looking for another wife. So, I hate it when they do that. You know, it just feels so overproduced when they
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clearly make a declaration at the beginning that, you know, they’re going to unwind towards the middle or the end. So, Mary, the OG wife of Cody, who had to get a divorce in order for Robin to enter the family because Robin’s kids needed to be adopted by Cody. So, there
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were some legal proceedings that needed to take place. Well, Mary is returning to dating, and that’s good because Cody really broke her heart. She’s the one of the sister wives that kind of held on the longest, hoping that things might turn around. She was the one that, in my
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opinion, Cody treated the worst and was really just like, “Get out of this family. I have no interest in you whatsoever.” And perhaps that was due to a catfishing incident that happened a few years before, but you know, you can watch that season to learn more about
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that cuz it’s kind of a moot point now. And now she feels so shy and I don’t know. I’m sort of interested in watching her online date, but not really. Not really. And then Christine, the third wife, has remarried. She found a partner that she’s obsessed with after just a few
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months of dating. And they’re married and they’ve merged their children. and he has a lot of um prior knowledge about polygamy and is very accepting of the whole shebang. Uh and so that’s fine. Like they’re doing well, which I’m glad for, but does it make for great TV? No.
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And then later they’re going to be um hanging out with Cody. So Christine’s new husband is going to be chilling with Cody. And that feels very forced by the producers as well. Like why are these people getting together? They live states apart. They have, you know, a
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mutual wife in common, but there’s been so much trash talking. I don’t understand what’s going on there besides another reason to try and keep this show on the air. The part that I thought was extremely heartbreaking in this episode, the part that I finally felt was not
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quite as produced and felt a little bit more authentic was when Maddie, Janelle and Cody’s child, was talking about how fractured the family has become since her brother’s suicide and how fractured the family had become even before that with Cody kind of not paying
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attention to any of his other children and just focusing on Robin’s children and the children he made with Robin. For me as a parent, it was just so difficult to imagine what it would take for me to completely stop talking to, disown, not be an active part of the lives of
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like 10 to 15 of my children. I don’t know what that would look like, what type of fissure you’d have to have, but I think there was a lot of hurt on both sides from like COVID restrictions and things like that and the fact that the family had different rules like Janelle’s family
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had different CO rules than Cody’s family. And I must say, as a family who lived through CO myself, even though my husband and I were almost in perfect alignment on a lot of these topics, there were some minor things that we just couldn’t get on the same page. Should our children go back to school?
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Should they have to wear masks constantly, even when we’re outside walking around? Should we be washing all the groceries with, you know, Clorox wipes? Or can we open a jar of pickles without sanitizing it first? These were things where there was some friction. So I can only imagine if there’s five
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adults who are all trying to get on the same page and then 19 kids or 18 kids trying to get on the same page. But as the adult, the onus is on you to fix the fracture. These are your kids. And the one thing I’ve thought, a lesson I heard early on in my parenting journey that I
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think is really helpful now that my kids are a little bit older is you have to forgive real fast. So my kids will say something to me that’s hurtful or they’ll do something that, you know, we’ve talked about 6,000 times they should not be doing, um, a rule they’re
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breaking, whatever. And the minute they apologize, the minute they accept wrongdoing, I just have to move on. Even if I am still wounded, even if I am still, you know, licking my own wounds and thinking about it, I have to deal with that myself and just immediately
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forgive them. With an adult partner, maybe I wouldn’t be so quick to forgive. Maybe there would have to be more discussion and more work on that and getting to the root cause. so it doesn’t come up again with my kids. I just have to flip that switch and forgive and move
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forward and then it happens again and you forgive and you move forward. So, I thought all that was really interesting. It is a season I’m going to watch, but you know, I hope I hope they come up with something interesting because it’s looking like a snoozefest. All right,
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everyone. I hope that you enjoyed this show and the recap of Sister Wives. I’ll be back with you next week for fall trends numero duh. Until then, bye. A big thanks to our producer Jeremy Young and to Eton and the Embassy for our theme music. And shout out to our
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parent company, Uploft Interior Design, your trusted source for expert interior design. Visit uploft.com to explore our services and book a consultation with one of our talented designers. If you’re enjoying the Uplift and Tear Design podcast, please support us by sharing
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the show with friends and leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. It’s the best way to help new listeners find us. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next week with more pro tips and pop culture dish.
Links:
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