Carmichael Podcast 2

Mia Carmichael interviews her guest, Katie McCune, about her family. Katie describes her family demographics and their origins in Kentucky and Missouri. She also discusses their family values, which include spending time together, loyalty, and trustworthiness. Communication is their biggest family strength, and they stay connected through daily calls and texts. Katie admires her parents' equal partnership and the way they balance responsibilities. She also talks about the challenges they face, such as occasional communication issues and the need for boundaries. Katie looks forward to seeing how her own family dynamics will evolve in the future. Overall, communication is key in her family, and she believes it is important for other families as well. Hello everyone, my name is Mia Carmichael and I am a senior at Eastern Kentucky University. My guest today here is Katie McCune and we will be discussing the elements and characteristics of her family. And Katie would you please just introduce yourself and tell the audience a little bit about you? Hi, as Mia said, my name is Katie. I am in my master's program here at EKU. I'm getting my MBA. My undergrad was in psychology and I play volleyball here at EKU as well. Wonderful, that sounds like you had a pretty good student-athlete life here so far. Yes. And so welcome Katie. Now first, could you please just describe your family demographics? This could include the various marriages in your family, grandparents, how many children you have in your family. So my family is my mom and my dad and then my sister. My dad's whole family, so grandparents, great-grandparents, everything like that. They're all from Louisville, Kentucky. And then my mom's side of the family, her grandparents, great-grandparents, my grandparents, and so on. They're from a really small town in Missouri, so kind of a little bit of everywhere. But then now my family, my immediate family, is in Louisville. And do you know like the family, like your history of where your family originated from? I'm pretty sure it is in Europe or somewhere over there, but yeah. Wonderful, thank you so much for sharing. And it sounds like you have a long family history from Kentucky, which is really cool. Next, may we discuss what you believe to be your family values? So these could be either religious or moral values. Yes, so my family is Catholic. However, I would say our family values really just fall back on spending time together and being loyal to each other and very trustworthy and having like an open relationship with every one of my family, whether it's immediate or extended family as well. Very cool. And that is fantastic, and it sounds like your family has a really strong bond with each other and its extensive history. And speaking of strong bonds, could you please discuss like some of your family strengths? Yes, so I would say our family strength is definitely communication. We obviously, we love to communicate. I come from a very loud, we are always talking kind of family, so I think that communication has always been something that we've always been really good at, and it did take time to develop the skills of like good communication and having things like that, but I would say that's probably our biggest family strength. It's like open communication and understanding everyone's side of it. And do you think as you guys, you know, the children in your family have gotten older and sort of moved away from home, what are some ways that you guys stay connected to each other? Yeah, so we call every single day. That's something that we do literally all the time. We text all the time as well, so if we're not calling, we're probably texting. So it's a good thing to have though, because that just means I come from like a family who really cares and who always is looking after me and just wanting the best for me, which is really good. Awesome, awesome. And it sounds like you have like a more public family dynamic where you guys really care for your children and raising the next generation, which is very cool. And those strengths and values sound like a really strong foundation for lots of love and care. Yes, yes. And so moving on, could you please discuss some of your family characteristics such as different marriages, the role of woman, and are children the main focus? Yeah, so starting with my parents and like the kind of like role of woman, I guess. My parents are pretty equal when it comes to like doing everything. So like when it comes to decisions or both of them work. So it's like actually my mom has a very strong job and it's like she's awesome, so she has a great job. And then my dad is an insurance agent and like has his own book of business. So both of them are like doing really well and they just kind of like bounce off each other and they realize that like someone's gonna carry the weight sometime and then other times they're gonna be carrying the weight. So it's kind of just like back and forth that way, which I really look up to because I know like the role of woman has always like hasn't always been that way. So it comes being a woman and the way that we're like moving up in the world and that kind of thing. Like it's just really cool to see how my parents have like distributed that and shown a good example for what I would want my future family to have. And what are some like between your sister and your parents, what are some of their like personalities like? Yes, so my dad and I are very similar where we, so my mom and my sister are both psychologists. So my sister is four years older than me, so she is ahead of me in like school and all that stuff. So she is a psychologist and then my mom also is. So they kind of have that side of it where it's more like chill, relaxed, like talk when they need to talk. Whereas me and my dad on the other hand, we're the talkers. So we kind of like are the ones that carry the conversation and do a lot of the different things. And so I would say like we're very similar in this aspect of like me and my dad are very extroverted and outgoing and could talk to literally a brick wall. Whereas like my mom and sister are more like, not that they're introverted, but they are more on the introverted side than me and my dad. Very cool. And it's just so awesome to hear like your family is so, you know, goal driven and you just have so much success being, you know, psychologists and, you know, you're pursuing your MBA and it's such a shift from our course talks about the nuclear family and how isolating it is, you know, for the woman and their role in the family. And now it's cool to see in modern times that women are just really pursuing their own individual goals. Yes, yes. And thank you so much for sharing. And next, could you describe some challenges your family may have faced? Maybe some boundary problems or lack of communication or just any challenges in general you guys have seen? Yes. So like I said, communication is something that we, we value a lot. And I think that we are very good at. So it's a very high strength, but also like that can come with weakness sometimes. So sometimes it's not always going to be the most perfect communication. So there has been sometimes, especially when we were like younger, where either communication wasn't the number one, like thing that we did or something like that. So like my sister, I learned a lot from her mistakes with being four years younger than her. I just always took note of like, okay, she got away with this or did this and like kind of just seeing what was right and what was wrong as I grew up in the world. So just like watching that play out was really interesting and seeing how like lack of communication on her part could cause problems between like her and my parents or something like that. Like watching how lack of communication is just a big problem, especially in our family who has like, who values communication so much. And so just like learning that communication is really important and seeing how lack of communication within our family dynamic is not very good. And then I would say like, as for like boundary problems, not that like there is really any boundary problems, but like it has taken time, like as we've gotten older for like, whether it's my dad or like my mom, I'm obviously the youngest in the family. So seeing me grow up and that kind of thing, like there's just like certain boundaries as we've gotten older that are like, have needed to be put in place. And so it's just been interesting seeing how like growing up and that kind of thing, just having to like set the different boundaries and stuff like that. So it was difficult putting those boundaries in, but it's important, especially for our family and the way that we all like to talk and be around each other, having to put up like a boundary, like, oh, I need to go to my room for the night because I'm just had a long day or something like that. Putting that boundary up and everyone understanding that was obviously like hard to do at first, but now it's more like everyone's understanding of it. And it's very cool that your strengths as a family, as you mentioned earlier, with communication is, you know, the solution to your guys's challenges that you face. So they don't really go hand in hand. So thank you so much for sharing about that. Is there anything else you'd like to comment on or share with the audience about family dynamics or anything? Um, I just think that it's going to be really interesting on, um, as I head into like my future, I've had a long term boyfriend and seeing like the way that I've learned his family has, has done their like family dynamics. It'll be interesting seeing how like when ours come back, like we create a family, like how that's going to play out and how, um, our roles from both of our families are going to combine, especially because like, I know my parents had to go through the same thing when they combined and like got married and had kids and stuff like that. So I'm just interested to see where that'll take me. But I think it's really interesting just hearing all these different people's dynamics or family dynamics and how it all like goes together in the future. So yeah, that's very cool. And it sounds like, um, you know, bringing both the different perspectives from each of your families, hopefully your boyfriends and your own family will create an even stronger bond. Yeah. Um, but very cool. So well, I believe that is all the time we have. Thank you so much for sharing your family culture and dynamics. And it's so interesting to find out, you know, how, uh, important communication is within your family. And hopefully more families can learn from that as well. We greatly enjoy learning more about your family and we wish you the best here in the podcast. Thank you. We would also like to thank the audience for listening to our podcast. Thank you all. Thank you. We love your support and we will see you next time on the podcast. Thank you. Bye. Bye.