Woman Thanks Ex-Boyfriend's Kid For Making Her Feel Loved
Jen and her brother, Todd, were just 10 and 12 years old when their father began dating Shirley Norton. It was 1986. Their love affair was short-lived, lasting only a year.
And while it may have been brief, it left an impact that stayed with Shirley until she died.
Eighteen years later, Jen received a phone call out of the blue. It was from a bank manager, informing her that Shirley had bequeathed $50,000 each to her and her brother. But in addition to the inheritance, Shirley also left behind a note.
A Random Phone Call
@intoxicatedinsights69 Absolutely gut wrenching story! Step parents truly are angels on earth. Thank you guys for all that you do. Thank you to the endlessly fascinating Jen, for sharing this story with us. Full episode is out. Link in bio
Jen recently shared her story on her podcast, Intoxicated Insights. She also posted a clip of the episode on TikTok where it has gone viral, garnering more than 2 million views, 237,000 likes, and nearly 5,000 comments.
"I get a random phone call, this is like 2004, I have two small children," she explained to her co-host Sage.
"I get this random call from this woman from Utah who's a bank manager telling me that one of my dad's ex-girlfriends has passed away and left me and my brother $50,000 each."
Jen via TikTok
Initially, she thought she was being punked. It took the bank manager more than half an hour to finally convince Jen to provide her address.
She explained to Sage that the woman the bank manager called her about was "legit" one of her father's ex-girlfriends and they had only dated for one year before he broke up with her. But throughout that year, Shirley took care of Jen, buying her clothes, decorating her room, and being "absolutely sweet" to her.
Jen remembers the day Shirley left. She begged Shirley to take her with her.
"I might have seen her like maybe one or two more times but my dad got a new girlfriend and that was that."
Until 18 years later...
When Jen received the mail from the bank manager she discovered that in addition to the cash, Shirley had also left behind a two-page letter.
Jen has held onto that letter for 20 years.
The Letter From Her Father's Ex-Girlfriend
Jen's father's ex-girlfriend bequeathed $50,000 each to her and her brother. But in addition to the inheritance, she also left behind a note.
Youtube/intoxicatedinsights
Holding back tears, Jen read Shirley's letter aloud:
"Dear Todd and Jenny, I bet you both are asking yourself, who is she?" the letter began.
"I met you and your father in 1986 when you were about 10 and 12 years old. You each made a remarkable impact on me. You were both great kids. You were friendly and made me feel welcome in your lives."
To further jog the siblings' memories, Shirley wrote that at the time Jen wanted to be an actress and own a pink Ferrari. She talked about going to SeaWorld and spending Thanksgiving at Lake Tahoe. She reminisced about Knotts Berry Farm and eating dinner together on the Queen Mary.
"Todd, when we went to Circus Circus, you won a little stuffed lion for me," she added. "I still have it."
And when Jenny went to camp? She made Shirley a wall hanging out of a pie plate. "I still have it too," Shirley wrote.
"I never had any children of my own," she added. "But for that one year you made me feel like I was part of your family."
Cue the tears.
Shirley also shared in the letter that she'd had a kidney transplant in 1992. "This gift of life gave me many extra years so I could enjoy this amazing world."
She ended the letter, writing: "I had a good life. I would like to make your life a little easier and more secure. I pray you both have wonderful lives. P.S. Jenny, please don't buy a pink Ferrari," she joked before adding, "But if you really want one, buy it."
"We don't always know the impact we make on someone's life"
@intoxicatedinsights69 Replying to @AileneTH jen says thank you!
The money came at a time when Jen needed it most. In a follow-up TikTok she explains her son had just been diagnosed with autism.
"At the time my youngest son had just got diagnosed with autism and so the money was great because I paid for a lot of therapies for him."
She also shared that the family moved "and it did make my life a lot better." (Although she never did get that pink Ferrari).
But it's the letter that is truly priceless.
"The letter was the best. I've held onto it for all these years. I read it, it's sad, and it always touches my heart."
Jen via TikTok
It's also touched the hearts of more than 2 million TikTok viewers.
"Perfect example that we don’t always know the impact we make on someone’s life. She never forgot you," one commenter wrote.
"Omg I’m sobbing 😭.. that was so so sweet," wrote another. "All the memories she still had of the kids ❤️❤️"
A third said, "As an adult child of divorce who’s Dad had many girlfriends that I loved but never got to say goodbye to, this helped to heal me. Maybe they loved me as much as I loved them."
Sometimes people aren't meant to stay in our lives. They are there for a short time and then they're gone. But just because they are no longer with us, it doesn't mean they are forgotten.
Shirley never forgot the time she spent with Jenny and Todd, even two decades later. Her generous bequest and heartfelt letter were a testament to the deep impact their brief connection had on her life.
It's also a sweet reminder that blood isn't what binds a family together. It's love, no matter how briefly we get to share it.
*Featured image contains photo by cottonbro studio
Emotional Wounds: Why Even Stupid Rejections Smart a Lot
The following is a Goalcast exclusive excerpt from Guy Winch's Emotional First Aid: Healing, Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts, now available on Amazon.com.
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Rejections can cause four distinct psychological wounds, the severity of which depends on the situation and our emotional health at the time. Specifically, rejections elicit emotional pain so sharp it affects our thinking, floods us with anger, erodes our confidence and self-esteem, and destabilizes our fundamental feeling of belonging.
Many of the rejections we experience are comparatively mild and our injuries heal with time. But when left untreated, even the wounds created by mild rejections can become “infected” and cause psychological complications that seriously impact our mental well-being. When the rejections we experience are substantial, the urgency of treating our wounds with emotional first aid is far greater. This not only minimizes the risk of “infections” or complications but also accelerates our emotional healing process.
In order to administer emotional first aid and successfully treat the four wounds rejection causes, we need a clear understanding of each of them and a full appreciation of how our emotions, thought processes, and behaviors are damaged when we experience rejections.
Emotional Wounds: Why Even Stupid Rejections Smart a Lot
Imagine you’re sitting in a waiting room with two other strangers. One of them spots a ball on the table, picks it up, and tosses it to the other. That person then smiles, looks over, and tosses the ball to you. Let’s assume your tossing and catching abilities are up to the task. You toss the ball back to the first person, who quickly tosses it to the second. But then instead of tossing the ball to you, the second person tosses it back to the first person, cutting you out of the game. How would you feel in that situation? Would your feelings be hurt? Would it affect your mood? What about your self-esteem?
Most of us would scoff at the idea. Two strangers didn’t pass me a stupid ball in a waiting room, big deal! Who cares? But when psychologists investigated this very situation, they found something quite remarkable. We do care, far more than we realize. The ball tossing scenario is a well-researched psychology experiment in which the two “strangers” are actually research confederates. The “subject” (who thinks they are all waiting to be called for an entirely different experiment) always gets excluded after the first or second round of ball tossing. Dozens of studies have demonstrated that people consistently report feeling significant emotional pain as a result of being excluded from the ball-tossing game.
What makes these findings remarkable is that compared to most of the rejections we experience in life, being excluded by two strangers tossing a ball is about as mild as rejection gets. If such a trivial experience can elicit sharp emotional pain (as well as drops in mood and even self-esteem) we can begin to appreciate how painful truly meaningful rejections often are. That is why getting dumped by someone we’re dating, getting fired from our job, or discovering that our friends have been meeting up without us can have such a huge impact on our emotional well-being.
Indeed, what separates rejection from almost every other negative emotion we encounter in life is the magnitude of the pain it elicits. We often describe the emotional pain we experience after a significant rejection as analogous to being punched in the stomach or stabbed in the chest. True, few of us have actually been stabbed in the chest, but when psychologists asked people to compare the pain of rejection to physical pains they had experienced, they rated their emotional pain as equal in severity to that associated with natural childbirth and cancer treatments! As a counterpoint, consider that other emotionally painful experiences, such as intense disappointment, frustration, or fear, while highly unpleasant, pale in comparison to rejection when it comes to the sheer visceral pain they cause.
But why do rejections hurt so much more than other emotional wounds?
The answer lies in our evolutionary past. Humans are social animals; being rejected from our tribe or social group in our pre-civilized past would have meant losing access to food, protection, and mating partners, making it extremely difficult to survive. Being ostracized would have been akin to receiving a death sentence. Because the consequences of ostracism were so extreme, our brains developed an early-warning system to alert us when we were at risk for being “voted off the island” by triggering sharp pain whenever we experienced even a hint of social rejection.
In fact, brain scans show that the very same brain regions get activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain. Remarkably, the two systems are so tightly linked that when scientists gave people acetaminophen (Tylenol) before putting them through the dastardly ball-tossing rejection experiment, they reported significantly less emotional pain than people who were not given a pain reliever. Sadly, other negative emotions like embarrassment do not share these characteristics, rendering Tylenol ineffective when we get the date wrong for our office Halloween party and show up to work dressed like Marge Simpson.
Excerpted with permission from EMOTIONAL FIRST AID by Guy Winch, Ph.D. Published by Plume, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2013 by GuyWinch, Ph.D.
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Watch Guy Winch's viral TED talk below, How to Practice Emotional First Aid: