My beautiful friend Chris Rich at https://www.chrisrichcoaching.com/ shares some love and relationship insights about mixed faith relationships. Listen or read to hear her examples, as well as stories her amazing mother-in-law and daughter too.
Welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law Podcast, where my mother-in-law, relationship expert and master certified coach, LeAnn Austin, will help you create more love and connection with your daughter-in-law and everyone else you care about.
Hey y’all, welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law, Episode #96 Mixed Faith with Chris Rich
I love observing and connecting with other humans, especially noting how they feel and implement love into their lives and their relationships.
We have the amazing Chris sharing some beautiful love and relationship insights with us today. Alright Chris, tell us a little bit about you.
Wow I love that title. The amazing Chris. Thanks LeAnn. My name is Chris Rich and I live in the beautiful state of Massachusetts. My family and my faith are my top two priorities. And I’m the mom of three awesome kids. I’ve got a 14 year old son, a 19 year old son, and a 21 year old daughter. And I’m married to their awesome dad.
And we have an interesting family dynamic, none of my husband or my kids have any interest in religion. And so we definitely, we’ve got, and we have an amazing family. I am a life coach and that’s how I met you LeAnn, both through the life coach school. And I help active believing members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints create thriving mixed faith relationships. So that’s a little bit about me.
I love that so much. And I’m excited to hear more how you do that, because that would be a tricky situation having different religions or no religion and one religion and all of that. So I’m excited to hear more about that.
Alright, so five questions. Number one: how do you incorporate love into your business and life? And how does that impact your relationships? I love your questions. I just, they’re super fun to think about. I think of like, if we could have a platter of emotions, there are so many different options that are on that platter.
And I’ve learned for me that love feels the very best out of all the emotions. And it’s always an option. Sometimes it’s not an easy option, but I’ve learned that love is always an option. And I think the beautiful thing with love, so our emotions are the fuel for our actions. And when I’m fueled, when my behavior is fueled by love, I like how I show up.
And I think that we can never control what other people do or how they behave, but when my actions are fueled with love, I like who I am and how I show up. And that affects me that I can show up on my relationships with confidence and love and know that I’m doing the very best I can. And for other people, hopefully that helps them as well too, because if I’m showing up as my best self. Then hopefully that works out for them as well. Absolutely. I think so too, I think really is having that love for ourselves really helps in whatever relationships we’re in. Yeah. Totally. Ah, awesome.
Alright so what is something you love about you and why? Well, and I’m going to keep going with the same theme. One of the things that I love about me is that I love me. It was up in Maine. I know your listeners can’t see this, but I found this sticker that says, I love ME. And I know it’s for the great state of Maine, and I do love that state, but I love me.
And I think it’s fascinating we have this commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves, but a lot of times we forget that we need to love ourselves. And that is something that is super important to me. Am I perfect at it? No, I’m not. But that is something that I really try to be my best, my own best friend, my best cheerleader. I validate myself and I’ve just found, we talk about the golden rule to treat others as we want to be treated, but a lot of times we don’t even pay attention to how we treat ourselves. And I think that’s important to treat ourselves as well as we would treat others or better, you know, to start with that self love because it affects every relationship.
Ah, that is so true. And I think that’s one of the things that drew me to you Chris, cause you do, you like radiate love and it starts with what you do with yourself, and you’re just so fun and kind and loving. And I love that it starts with you and that’s awesome. I love that. Yeah. Thank you. So great. Right back at you. I love you too girlfriend.
Alright, so number three, I love talking all things, daughter-in-law, any thoughts about either having or being a daughter-in-law? Yes definitely. So my own mom, who I was really close to, she died the day before my 25th birthday, just six months after my husband and I had been married. And I really think that she waited around until I had another amazing woman to take care of me.
And I won the mother-in-law lottery. I adore my mother-in-law and my father-in-law, he’s pretty great too. Just they’re amazing. And there’s a bunch of things that I love about her, they also have a mixed faith family and I’ve just by watching them, I’ve really learned what unconditional love looks like.
And there are several of my in-laws that are runners, and my in-laws are always there cheering. They’ve got cowbells and posters. And so they cheer at the races, but they always, they cheer us on in whatever it is that we have going on in life. Maybe it’s not really ringing a cowbell, although they do that. They’re just always cheering us on. And I know that my mother-in-law is always going to have my back. I feel like I can talk to her about anything. And I just, I always feel like I’m included. It’s never been like, Oh, I’m a daughter-in-law and that I don’t fit in like one of her daughters. She has this gift of making me feel included.
I don’t have my own daughter-in-law yet, but I do have some thoughts on that too. So my daughter was on a study abroad in Germany, her senior year of high school. And so she lived with this host family, you know, across the world. And I was so excited for her to have this experience. And then when she got there, I had all this jealousy that came up within me, and it was, you know, I felt like I was being replaced.
She had this other mother that was in Germany and I got coached on it a lot, and I’m so thankful for coaching because I was able to learn, like, actually I wasn’t, nothing was being taken away from me. My daughter would call me several times a week. We would FaceTime and we had this beautiful have not had, but we have this great relationship. And in addition to that, she had another woman that was there to support her and to love her and to teach her things that I might not teach her.
And I realized that this was a gift. And I think we can apply this lesson to, you know, like when, if she gets married or when my kids get married, I think sometimes we feel like we’re being replaced and to recognize like, no, this is another person that is here to love my child, to be on their team, to support them.
And I might need you to remind me of that when I get to that point, that’s my goal for now. I love that so much, Chris, just thinking of it as another person to love, another person to love them, another person for me to love and, and your example of your mother-in-law. Oh my goodness. She sounds amazing. And yeah, just the inclusion and what a good lesson to all of us. The cheerleading, you know, with cowbells or not cowbells, whatever. I think that is key in a relationship with a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law is just really cheering and supporting them. And yes, and there’s another human to love them. Exactly. I love that so much. Great examples. Awesome.
Alright so anything else you’d like to share and where can our audience go to find out more about you? I was just thinking going on that same dynamic, I know it can probably feel I’m not there yet, but I’m sure it can feel competitive, you know, so you’re the mother and then your child marries into another family. So then they have a mother-in-law looking at that same dynamic that here is another person on their team as well. So not just the person they marry, but another mother to love them and to support them. So that’s my other thought.
As far as where you can go to find me, you can go to my website, chrisrichcoaching.com and Chris is with a CH. And I also am the host of the Mixed Faith Relationship Podcast, which you can find on iTunes and Spotify. And right now, if you go to my website chrisrichcoaching.com you can get a freebie where you can, there are 10 things that you can do to connect with your person. So that’s a fun thing that applies to any situation. So that’s where you can find me. And I’ll put those in the show notes as well. And I highly recommend y’all listen to her podcast, especially if any mixed faith relationships that you have, Chris does such a great job. So recommend listening to that as well. So thank you. Thank you.
Alright, last question, what is your favorite question or quote about love and how have you used it for yourself and in your relationships? This was a hard one because there’s so many great questions and quotes, but I think my very favorite one is, “What would love do?” Sometimes we’re in situations where like, you know, for me with my mixed faith family, we’ve got different opinions. And sometimes people make choices that I don’t love. There are things that go against maybe what I believe or all sorts of options to use this question. But I just love the question, what would love do?
And it helps when I ask that question, it helps me to show up as the person that I want to be. And that sometimes that is, you know, like, let’s say you’ve got a mouthy teenager and asking the question, what would love do? Sometimes this is kind of a variation on that, but I ask, or I use the statement, I love you and I love me. And because I love me so much, I have a boundary and you can’t talk to me like that. Or I can use it as just thinking of loving everyone in the relationship. I think that helps me. It helps me to be a better listener. It helps me to, when I’m trying to choose like the actions I want to take, asking that question, what would love to do? Do I get it right all the time? Nope. But I sure try. It helps me when I use it.
I love it so much and yes, we’re all human and we’re not going to get it right all the time. But that question is just gold. What would love do? Hmmm, something to think about.
Alright, thank you so much Chris, for sharing your love insights with us. So appreciate you being here. Well, thank you for the opportunity and thank you for all the great work you do and put into the world. I just love you. I love you right back. Alright y’all. It’s a love fest. Exactly. Have a good one, and here’s to mixed faith and love.
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If you enjoyed this podcast, check out LeAnn’s Lovin My Daugher-in-law program, where she coaches and teaches a variety of ways to have more fun and connection in our relationships. LeAnn also shares the five secrets she uses to create a beautiful relationship with me and her other daughter-in-law. She’s the real deal. I highly recommend you check this out.
And, if you want one easy question you can keep in your back pocket and use to increase the love you feel for your daughter in law today, go to leannaustin.com and get the one question.
