Normal Is Overrated, But Dysfunction Is Exhausting

We explore how the HBO series 'Shameless' mirrors real family roles and why survival isn’t the same as healing. Solitude, music, and honest boundaries help us trade scripts for action and choose love without chaos.

• letting a “normal” connection go and why it didn’t fit
• Shameless as a lens on family dysfunction
• Fiona’s survival strength and hidden cost
• Frank’s chaos, choice, and human flashes
• Monica’s returns, hope, and repeated rupture
• Survival tools versus true healing
• Solitude as a classroom for clarity
• My trailer becoming home and sensing possibility
• Music as memory and mirror for patterns
• Control, power, and the relief of letting go
• Boundaries with an adult child and action over scripts
• Choosing partners beyond normal or dysfunction
• Writing the next chapter with courage

If there’s any situation or dream or person that you want to have in your life, fight for it. Change for it. Be the person that you were meant to be in your life, and never, ever give up because it’s so important

Transcript

Shameless As A Mirror

Fiona And The Cost Of Survival

Frank, Chaos, And Choice

Monica And The Pain Of Hope

Adapting To Dysfunction

Solitude As A Teacher

Trailer, Home, And Possibility

Music, Memory, And Patterns

Power, Control, And Healing

Boundaries With An Adult Child

Choosing Growth Over Scripts

Writing The Next Chapter

Redefining “Normal” In Love

SPEAKER_00 0:12

So I did something this week. I let a conversation that I was having with someone go by the wayside. And it seemed normal. It seemed nice. It seemed very 53-year-old-ish. And it seemed like it could have possibly had some potential. But you know what the problem was? He was too normal. So I've been re-watching shameless lately, and every time I do, I have the same thought. Strip away the chaos, the wild storylines, the outrageous language. And what you're left with is something strangely familiar. A family trying to survive while carrying wounds no one ever properly named. And that's what makes the show land. It's exaggerated, sure, but underneath all of that noise is something painfully real. People doing the best they can with the emotional tools that they were given. Generational tools. Sometimes that means loyalty. Sometimes that means survival mode. Sometimes it means making a decision that looks absolutely baffling to us, the watchers. And I would got introduced by Shameless by my ex-husband. We were sitting down in the basement. I was probably on my phone or laptop working. And he was watching this show. And I was like, hearing the vulgar language and the sexual activity and the drugs. And I'm like, what are you watching? And he said, shameless. So then I started getting into it. And then he finally said to me, Do you want to start from the beginning? And I'm like, okay, let's start watching it. And it actually was quite comical when I was watching it at that time. But now it's it makes me think. It makes me really think, even though it's absolutely outlandish. And I want to go through a couple characters with you. And Fiona is one of the lead characters, and she held the family together, held the family together. But Fiona Fiona was also deeply dysfunctional. That's the uncomfortable truth at the center of the show. Being the responsible one doesn't mean you're healthy. It means you learned how to survive. You know, Fiona raised her siblings, paid the bills, kept the lights on when their parents disappeared into addiction and chaos. From the outside, she looked like the strong one, the stable one. But underneath that was a woman who never learned what stability actually looked like. And her relationships, all of them, were messy. Her decisions were impulsive. She sabotaged things that were good for her. Not because she was careless, but because chaos was the environment she grew up in. And when chaos is normal, peace feels foreign. And I feel that. It hits home for me. And when you grow up around dysfunction, you don't magically become healthy just because you are the responsible one. You just become the most functional person in a broken system. You're strong, you're capable, but you're still carrying the same emotional blueprint everyone else is. And it takes years to see that clearly. Years to realize that survival skills aren't the same as healing. That's why Fiona eventually leaves. Not because she stops loving her family, because she finally understands something important. You can build a different life while living inside the same cycle. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is step outside of the rule that defined you and start learning who you actually are without it. So while Fiona represents survival, Frank Gallagher represents something entirely differently. Frank is the chaos generator. In Shameless, he's the alcoholic father who drifts in and out of the family's lives, leaving wreckage behind him. Manipulative, selfish, destructive. Most of the time the kids treat him like background noise, a nuisance, a problem to work around rather than solve. But what makes Frank interesting isn't just that he's terrible, it's that he's also human. Every once in a while, you see flashes of intelligence, humor, even insight. You catch glimpses of the man he could have been if addiction and ego hadn't consumed him. And that's the uncomfortable part of the character. He's not a monster in a cartoon sense. He's a man who kept saying choosing the easy escape instead of the hard work of change. Most families have a Frank somewhere in their story. I think I had a lot of relationships that resembled Frank. And maybe not as dramatic as Frank, and maybe not as loud. But someone whose decisions ripple through everyone's life. Someone whose instability forces the rest of the family to grow up faster than they should. And that's how the cycle starts. The Fiona in the family becomes responsible too early. The kids learn survival instead of security. Everyone adapts around chaos. Watching Frank is frustrating because you keep thinking the same thing. He could have chosen differently, but he didn't. And in real life, that's often the truth people struggle with the most. And then there's Monica. Monica Gallagher is the love of Frank's life, his first wife, the mother of his children, his soulmate. But Monica only appeared when it worked for her. She would sweep back into the family's life with emotions, promises, and big declarations of love. For a moment, it looked like the missing piece had finally returned, the mother, the woman who was supposed to anchor everything. And just as quick just as quickly she'd disappear again. Usually when things became real or difficult or required responsibility, she would go silent. Monica lived entirely by her own rules. She came back when she wanted comfort, attention, forgiveness, or money. When the chaos settled and life demanded consistency, she was gone. That dynamic is brutal for a family because the kids aren't just dealing with absence, they're dealing with hope that keeps getting revived and then ripped away again. Every time she returned, there was that small moment where everyone wondered if maybe this time would be different. And every time it wasn't. Frank loved her like she was the only woman in the world, but love didn't make her stable. It didn't make her reliable, it didn't make her capable of being a parent or partner. Sometimes the people who love each other the most are also the ones who create the most damage together and for their children. And that's another truth about shameless. They really understood things well. Love by itself doesn't fix dysfunction. What the show also captures underneath all the noise is what happens when people grow up inside dysfunction. You learn to adapt, you learn to manage it, you learn to survive it. Sometimes you even learn to function inside really well. But that doesn't mean you understand it. Understanding comes later. For me, that understanding didn't arrive while I was surrounded by people. Ever since my breakup in 2019, I have been surrounded by people and noise and chaos. It actually arrived when I step away, stepped away from the noise of relationships and expectations and found myself walking through a very quiet chapter of life today. I'm alone, and the loneliness is a strange teacher. When you sit in it long enough, you start seeing things differently. The patterns, the rules you played in your family, the relationships you chose, the people you tried to fix, the chaos you tolerated because at some level it felt familiar. Solitude removes the distractions. And when that happens, the truth about your life becomes much harder to avoid. I've spent this season of my life in that kind of solitude. Not running from it, not filling it with noise, just sitting with it and learning. Learning about other people, learning about what caused me to react different ways, learning just about myself as well, and my little dysfunctions that I have as well. And what I'm beginning to understand is this loneliness isn't always a punishment. Sometimes it's a space where clarity finally shows up. So I ask you, when when is the last time you took the time to be absolutely alone in your mind? No games, no doom scrolling, no binge watching, no settling for a relationship that you didn't deserve. When were you truly alone in your thoughts? And if you did take that time, it's really hard, isn't it? A friend called me today and asked if I wanted to join a bunch of people from the trailer park for lunch tomorrow. I said yes right away. I told her something honestly, that I've spent so many days alone that I started to worry. You read about it happening, people isolate so long that they forget how to be with others. They get comfortable in the quiet, a little too comfortable, and I don't want to go down that road. So I went to the trailer, and I may have done something that could have got me in a little trouble. Because truth be told, I've got a little gallery of me too. I opened the slide out. Technically, it's still winter. Technically, we're not supposed to yet, but I need to see it. I needed to stand inside that space and take a proper look around. Not just at the trailer, at the life I'm building there this summer. I walked through and started evaluating everything. What needs fixing, what needs cleaning, what needs to change. Because this year, that trailer isn't just a weekend getaway. It's it's gonna be home. And maybe that's the bigger realization today. After a lot of quiet days and a lot of rebuilding, I'm starting to feel something again. Not loneliness, but possibility. On the drive today, I put on a playlist of 80s love songs, Why Don't Ask Me. But it was the ones that take you straight back to another chapter in your life. And then Take My Breath Away by Berlin came on. And then it came on again and again. It was a long drive. For a moment, it almost felt like my ex-husband was sending a little signal from somewhere beyond. That song always belonged to him in my mind. I don't even think he knew that. Some songs live quietly in our memories like that. But as I was driving, something else started to settle in. The music, the quiet, the loneliness. All of it has been teaching me something. Even this podcast. When life gets this quiet, you start hearing yourself again, your own thoughts, your own memories, the pieces of who you were, and the pieces of who you were be you're becoming. When somewhere between those old love songs and the empty road, I realized something. Loneliness isn't always a punishment. Sometimes it's a classroom where you finally learn who you are. Then Rough Boy by Z Z Tob came on. I laughed when I heard it. That was my favorite song when I was a young teenager. And suddenly I wondered if that song had been telling the truth about me long before I understood it. Maybe somewhere deep down I already knew the kind of men I would choose, the rough boys. The ones who carried their own wounds, the ones who made life a little harder, a little more chaotic, as we tried to work through our own dysfunctions together. It's funny how music does that. It holds a mirror up to the different versions of ourselves. The girl we were, the woman we became, and the woman we're still learning how to be. And since we're on the 80s songs, I think a great song to like it dive into and look at is Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears. It really supports dysfunction, reflection, and healing. At first, listening to it feels upbeat. A driving rhythm, classic, classic 80s energy. But the lyrics are actually about power, struggles, control, insecurity, and the consequence of chasing the wrong things. That makes it a surprisingly powerful framework for talking about dysfunctional relationships and personal growth. And what the song is really saying right out of the gate, the lyric lands. Welcome to your life. Those no, there's no turning back. That line alone sets up your theme. Life happens, relationships happen, mistakes happen. Once you've lived through them, you cannot undo them, you can only learn from them. Then the core area, everybody wants to rule the world. In relationships, dysfunction often comes down to control. Someone trying to dominate the emotional space, someone trying to manage outcomes, someone trying to win. And when two people are operating from fear or wounded places, the relationship becomes less about connection and more about power dynamics. And this is where healing comes in, if you're open to it. Another line quietly shifts the tone. Help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure. And that's the healing moment. Because when you step out of dysfunction, you realize something simple but powerful. You don't need to control anybody. You don't need to fight for emotional territory. You just need freedom, peace, and clarity. As I was on my drive today, my daughter phoned, and we were talking about a specific topic. And I started asking her questions, and she started getting anxiety and really thinking that I'm coming at her. And I'm like, no, I said, I'm asking you questions because I need to understand it on how I'm going to create the situation on my side. It was business related, not personal. And it escalated again. And I said, but you're not understanding what I'm saying. I'm trying to totally support your decisions. But with your decisions, I have to make some decisions as well. And they're not negative decisions. They're not shutting you out. They are making decisions for my personal growth growth and my business growth. Then she said, Okay, I hear you, I listen. And I said, Okay, that's a script. That's a script that many people use. I need action. Just like when I was a terrible, terrible mother to you, when our husband my husband and I broke up, I I had to put words into action in order for it to be believable. Because if I just used the script and kept being the person that you disliked, then it nothing would get resolved. The dysfunction would continue. So I've had to let you live your own life, let you make your own decisions, not put my nose into everything that you do or criticize or say maybe you should do this this way. If she wants that advice, she's gonna ask for it now. I'm not gonna step in and give that advice unless it is asking for it. She is a grown adult, and I will not do that. And I will also not allow myself to get angry, frustrated because I need to control her. I raised her and at 18 years of age, it was time for her to make her own life, and I helicoptered her for a very long time. Her decisions are her decisions. Whether I like them or not, it's not in my control. And I feel that what happened between her and I really allowed me to grow and understand putting words into action is so incredibly important. And yes, when you put words into action, there's some people that may despise you because the decisions that you made for the betterment of yourself. Because A, you're a wounded person and B, you're dysfunctional. But no one, no one, whether it's your ex or whether it's your kids or whether it's your parents, should ever allow you to not make the decisions that you want to make. Because at the end of the day, with this loneliness and with this aloneness that I've been feeling, you really are alone. You came into this world alone and you will leave this world alone. How you choose to live your life from the beginning of your story to the end is truly dependent on what you want to do. Now you may have a really healthy, romantic partner, spouse. You know, you do have to abide or not abide by, but just work together in in achieving your dreams. But at the end of the day, you do have to stand true to what's important to you in your life and the dreams that you want to fulfill alongside that person. And it's so darn important to have the boundaries to do that. And it's scary to do that, I know, especially if you're in a dysfunctional relationship. Because everybody does want to rule the world. And you know, the thing about dysfunction, it doesn't disappear because we finally say the right words. It changes when we decide to do the harder work and becoming different people. And maybe that's what these quiet drives and old songs have been teaching me. Back then I was just living inside the chaos. Now I'm trying to understand it. And somewhere between the music, the memories, and the road ahead, I realized something. You don't erase where you came from. You just learn how to write the next chapter better. And maybe that's what healing really is. And for all of those that are curious about this mock-up in my conversation I had with a gentleman the last few weeks, I've decided I don't want normal. But I don't want dysfunction either. I just know that the normal that we were talking about wasn't for me. I want someone that's gonna go out and take photographs and drone with me and play silly games and laugh and go visit friends and not feel uncomfortable if I go to a friend's place that is a little dysfunctional, and I'm thinking my partner is judging them. They've been lifelong friends, I've accepted them into my life. You know, we don't all live by the golden rule of normal, because I don't think there actually is normal. We all have to live and breathe and exist with one another while staying true to ourselves, opening our heart to possibilities, and moving forward with the changes that we allow ourselves to bring and also fight for. If there's any situation or dream or person that you want to have in your life, fight for it. Change for it. Be the person that you were meant to be in your life, and never, ever give up because it's so important. Life is short, be true to yourself.