Faith, Addiction Recovery, and Rebuilding a Blended Family w/Darryl and Tracy Strawberry

I'm delighted to talk to you both. Thanks for coming on Marriage Therapy Radio. Did they tell you the deal? We're going to do an intense counseling session today and you have to air all your dirty laundry for 7 billion people.

We do that anyway. Hopefully it'll help someone. Yeah, because I think the dirty laundry is now clean, right, hon?

So most definitely. That's the key for sure. Yeah.

Of course, you have spent plenty of time in the limelight and have, uh, have had lots of people pay attention to your life and know what's going on. But I'm actually really interested to know kind of what happens behind the scenes. Like when, when you guys are just hanging out with each other on a random Tuesday afternoon, what is, what's life like for you? What's marriage like for the two of you?

Well, it's pretty cool. Pretty laid back. My wife is always building some new project or, uh, shifting us somewhere in a different direction. And, uh, we had, um, a lake house that she just transferred from our old house to us moving in the lake house. She added on and built that. So we're kind of like starting all over again. I'm like, here we go again. There she go. She's fantastic at it. I mean, I can't do it. I mean, she has a vision where she can see what it looks like.

Yeah.

I have no idea what it's going to look like until the end. And once I got into it, Last Sunday, I believe, I was like, okay, this is pretty cool. Because I'm on the go all the time, so I really don't pay a lot of attention. And she's back and forth putting things together. And she's just a wonderful woman. She's bright. And I respect the intelligence that God is giving her, the gift that she has. And she's a pastor. She loves people. She cares about others. And I think that's why it makes marriage so good, that we We don't put ourselves above anything else. We put others and we make them important. And she taught me that. She taught me that was a valuable lesson that I had to learn coming from where I came from.

Tracy, what do you think? What does the average marriage for the Strawberries look like?

Sure. Very different, I think. I think people's normal is what you make it. So with Darrell pounding the pavement about 285 days out of the year, We've had to come together and make things work. So I understand what God has called him to do. He understands what God has called me to do. And we had to sit down and really iron out, okay, how is this marriage going to remain filled with love, stability, safeguarding our marriage, still filled with joy, and being able to operate in purpose? Because when you're operating in the purpose of God, you are filled in a different way because your partner cannot complete you. You know, it's our wholeness in God that makes us a better half. So a typical day, a typical week, a typical month for us is being able to stay in contact via phone, just loving one another in the ways that we have set ourselves up to do that, and we stay faithful to it.

Right on. This is not your first marriage. You each have been married before.

That's correct.

What's different? What's new? What's the, what's the differentiating factor for you both?

Great question. So Christ being the center and the foundation of my life, I can say for sure, and having him transform me and understanding that marriage is work, and that Christ is in the center. And also learning that unhealed wounds and unhealed patterns of the past will bleed right into your marriage and shred the hearts of you both and actually just break your marriage, if you will, eat away at your marriage if you do not acknowledge the wounds that you have in your heart, the wounds of the past, and the problems of the present. You have to sit down, you have to deal with them, and you have to deal with them With each other in mind. So if it's important to Darryl, it's important to me. If it's hurting him to such a degree, then it should hurt me too. And it should be definitely important enough to talk about and to come to a solution instead of fighting with these fiery arguments, never getting to the root cause of what's causing those problems. Getting to the root, getting to the core, and focusing on solution.

Darryl, what do you think? What's different about this? What's the differentiating issue for you in this relationship?

I think the centerpiece is our faith in Christ more than anything and walking the daily life and allowing him to be Lord over our life and not us being Lord over our life. Like my wife said, there's the wounds that are inside of you that you have to deal with. You have to allow God to heal them because a lot of people come together. And everybody's got some, I call it junk in their trunk, and they bring it together. And if you don't clean it up, if you don't clean it up, it's messy. And that's something that's very valuable to us, what we did in our life. We cleaned it up. We allowed God to clean it up inside of us. And that's how the two become one. And now that's how you really truly learn to work together. Because when you join each other, by the hip and you walk together and you walk through everything together. Her problem, her issues, her health problems, my health problems, my issues, whatever it may be, are our problem. It's not just one particular person dealing with the situation. So we deal with it together and we're caretakers of each other. And I think that's so important. It's not to be selfish in a relationship. And I think— And the first 2 marriages for me was more about being selfish, what I wanted, how I wanted to be, the way I wanted to do things.

I hear you. And I hear people say this phrase quite a bit, this idea of Christ is at the center of our marriage. I have some fluency and some familiarity with Christian language. I grew up in the evangelical church. I always tell people though, that I think that like 23-year-old me wouldn't call 53-year-old me a Christian. I think they're just, I think I've deconstructed enough, but I'm interested to know what you mean. What do you mean exactly when you say Christ is a sinner, or we orient around this thing, because the Bible itself, of course, doesn't actually say a ton about marriage. It says, okay, it's because a few— there's some stuff in there that is meaningful, but it's mostly about other stuff. I wonder how you personally together draw the link between your faith and how that invites you to show up in marriage without specific, like, I don't know, directives from scripture itself? You know?

That's, I think it's not directives. I think it's according, living according to the way his principles are makes it better. And it makes you do things the right way. I think you have to change old habits. And I think a lot of times people don't wanna change old habits. What I mean by that, People wanna operate from the flesh all the time.

Mm-hmm.

And the flesh is, and the flesh is absolutely so stupid. It's gonna always tell you to do stupid things and say stupid things. So I think when you allow yourself to walk with Christ, you allow your spirit man to lead you and guide you more than anything in a relationship and your everyday life. I think that's what has made our life so strong together. That's what has made us build a foundation from a totally different perspective than we ever have before because we didn't have that before. And we would always throw up these knuckles. We don't wanna fight about everything. And of course, of course, do we go through battles and butt heads sometimes? Yeah. Male, female, you're gonna butt heads. But you know, if I say something stupid, I go back in the other room and there it is. The Holy Spirit convict me and then I have to go back in and apologize immediately to get it over with.

Mm-hmm.

And, and that's just part of it. It's a different way of doing life than I did before.

So it's almost like, uh, an invitation to, or an invocation to humility.

Most definitely. You gotta learn how to humble yourself.

Yeah. I think in my experience, a lot of people bump up against the, the, the tension between what they might call humility and then humiliation. Like somehow if I'm, if I'm humble, I'm also humiliated and you have to pull those things apart, it seems.

Absolutely.

Well, to be humiliated is to withdraw from the inner person. And it's to feel shame. It's to feel guilt. There's a weight of what has happened that you're holding. And humility just says, I'm willing to come down and us both be on the same level and talk about a situation so we can get to the other side of things. Humiliation, and especially if you're making each other feel humiliated, that's fighting dirty, and that's not fair. Now you're trying to hurt one another with wounds instead of sitting down and learning how to communicate and learning how to search for solutions. And I know I needed help with that. Darrell needed help with that. You know, we're not born with this innate ability, right, to fix these problems in marriage. If we were, nobody would be divorced. So, yeah, we have to fight fair and learning how to do that. And like you were talking about before, Zach, and I want to say something here as far as some people, the word Jesus Christ or the word church, that's a trigger word. They already want to turn the interview off. I was that way. I was angry at God. I didn't want to hear about it. And I think A very important thing is to dismantle the church hurt and the hypocrisies, all the other things, and clear all that stuff out. And at the end of the day, what is my personal relationship like with Jesus? How does he talk to me? How do I talk to him? And learning those things. For me, it was learning what the Bible said and really walking with people who were living life in a very real way. And that's how I learned about Christ. I brought my anger, I brought my pain, I brought my frustration. I mean, for me, when I first started praying, I was cussing at God. He can handle it. You know what I mean? Like, are you kidding me right now? Like, really? You better show up. I mean, this is just how I was. And I hope that helps somebody. Like, he can handle it. He's the great God Almighty.

Yeah.

And sometimes I think we need to step out of a religious law or perspective, if you will, but also have this honoring position with God. That's learned with God. When you step in with Christ and you get to know Him on a personal level, then you start to trust Him. He doesn't ask for anything more or less. He just says, come to Me. I can handle you, My son or daughter. We'll work it through. Just keep coming. Just keep coming and don't walk away.

How does that show up for the two of you, like boots on the ground, and when you're in your house and maybe there is some kind of conflict or something flares up for one or both of you, even if it's an old wound, how do you, what's the next step for one or both of you as a result of your, this, this faith that you're surrounded by or that you're, uh, what's the right word? Sort of you're leaning into that you're leveraging.

Well, I think the next step is to get over yourself. Um, put your ego to the side. And I always say ego's a 3-letter word, easing God out. So that means you're stepping in and you're trying to play God in the situation, and you gotta remove self. I think a lot of times people don't remove self. They keep self in there and they just wanna nag, nag, nag, nag, and fight, fight, fight. So nobody really wins in that particular situation. And you go off and you go to a separate place and— but we always come back. And we always come back together and we always remember What got us here.

Mm-hmm.

And never forgetting where we at today in life. We didn't do this ourselves. We did this with the help of God's will and word and the surrounding, like my wife said, of people. If you get on the phone and jump on the phone to talk to somebody else about your business, then you are in trouble. Now you're spreading your business to other folks and they gonna spread it to somebody else. And it just becomes a vicious cycle where they have a problem and they supposed to be believers. We keep whatever's going on in our house, it stays in our house and it doesn't come outta our house. And I think that's a valuable lesson a lot of people need to learn in marriage. Keep your business inside of your own home and deal with it. 'Cause you can't deal with it with outsiders' opinions. You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to confront the things that you are dealing with together. And I think me and Tracy have done that real well. We, we, we've had, we duke it out and we've had our dukouts and, but we, we come back and I give her a big hug and say, I'm sorry. And you know, I'm wrong. I, I'm not, I'm not that big of a man where I gotta, I gotta win all the time. That's, that's what guys' problem is in marriage. They think they have to win. You do not have to win.

Mm-hmm.

You know, God, God loves a man with a humble heart who, who walks in humility. He can exalt you if you're able to learn that and do that. And I think that's why we're in such a great position today and we have such great strength and we have beautiful kids. We have 9 children together. We got a blended family. See, people don't do that type of stuff. She brought the entire family together. I didn't, I didn't have the ability and the skills to do that. She had that skillset where she bring 9 kids into one family. with the outside surrounding of everybody else, the other parents, and everybody's got to get along. That's just the way life has to be. If you really want to, if you really want to live this joy in your life that you talk about and be able to go out and express yourself and help somebody else.

What's the, your 9 kids, they range from what to what? How old are they?

From 40 to 26.

So all of you, you're raising adult, you're, you're, you have adult children, basically. I've been saying for years, tell me what you think about this, that raising adult kids is harder than raising young kids. Have you, what is, what has this been like for the two of you as you transition through this another life version of your life? It's interesting, Darryl, you said we leave our stuff at home and then you wrote a whole book about your, all your stuff. It's sort of like, how do you reconcile that? But like, what's it, what has it been like to have your kids along for the ride?

It's a beautiful thing. So, um, to be able to share the problems that we've had, Zach, and that's a very good point in the book Another Life, is we don't just share the problem. We want to share the problem with the solution. And Darryl has done an amazing job in the book and his author, Jerome. So we put our life out there now because we had so many problems and didn't know how to solve them. We needed a place to go to be able to get some advice, to get some counsel. We needed to talk to people about how do you overcome raising adult children in the middle of your marriage and 2 divorces later. It takes 19 people to make our blended family work. 19 people.

Hmm.

So, that's the purpose of the book is, okay, you know, I need some advice from people who have been through the fire because we were on fire for a long time, didn't know how to put out the flames. So raising adult children, getting back to that, Zach, is, um, adult problems are much bigger problems. There's a lot more at stake. So you're talking about now your children may be carrying— going back to the old wounds— carrying wounds that you didn't know how to deal with, like Darryl and I didn't know how to deal with. So those were passed on to our kids. Divorce is not the fault of the children. They don't get to choose it. They don't get to choose who you remarry. They don't get to choose. They have to do split families and split holidays. And we have just torn their lives apart. And that's just a fair statement. It's just reality. So for us, raising adult kids means being a great listener.

Hmm.

What's going on with you? Being able to listen and ask deeper questions. Also, being the adult in the relationship. We are the adult, they are the children.

Mm-hmm.

So, how do we bring the lessons that we have learned into these adult problems that our children are now facing? And at the end of the day, the devil's not up to anything new. So, it's either money, it's either selfishness, it's either cheating, it's either lying, whatever. I mean, it's— the sins are the same. The stuff Stuff is the same. And how do you get to solution once again? And giving them a safe place to heal, letting them know that you're there, and also letting them know, hey, I'm going to give you advice from a place that we have overcome. Please don't make the same mistakes that we have made because it'll cost you too much. This is what we did to get out. Here we are offering you this solution. At the end of the day, you're going to make your own decision, but I hope that you make a different decision because you all have personally experienced the consequences of the decisions that we have made in our past. So hoping that would be a pathway forward to their healing process and being able to walk them through situations that we've been through. We've been through adulteries, addictions, being broke, you know, everything from IRS problems to all kinds of problems. So we are very blessed that our children come to us because they know how much we have Overcome. We are not parents that have stayed stuck in the past and stuck in the muck and fighting against each other. We are healed. We are whole. And we have something to offer them.

That's awesome.

Yeah, but it's pretty— but it's pretty cool because they get a chance to see our life today, to see the different part of our life or who we are. And I think that's what's so important to every last one of them. They were young when we were like lost in all these different places, but as they got older, they got a chance to see us have a happy home. So they would all come running back to this home of me and Tracy because we called it the healing house.

Yeah.

They, they, they know they just, you, you can come here, you can stay here, but you can't, you can't be out all night. We don't drink here. Uh, we go to church every Sunday. We're not forcing you to do what we do, but They, they got a chance to see it with their own eyes and realize that this is real. This is, this is different. And the way they live is, is really fun. I'm probably not, I'm probably not where they're at, but we're, we're living the example for them to, to try to leave a legacy for them.

Mm-hmm.

But this is the way it is because that's what my mother left for me, a legacy. And that's what Tracy's family left for her, her mother, a legacy. Of living the right way.

Well, you have all these stories about adulteries and infidelities and financial insecurities and whatnot, but that's just the— that's like part one, right? Part 2 is the recovery. Part 2 is the— is that— so I'm interested to hear you talk about recovery a little bit. You know, Darryl, I, I was not a huge baseball fan when I was a kid, but I, you know, I, I saw the headlines everybody else saw. Darryl Strawberry, cocaine, blah, blah, blah, here it comes. And then The rest of it sort of spun out and I was half paying attention. And here you are again, clearly come all the way through the arc. What, what have you learned? What's the philosophy that you've formed around recovery from any of that stuff? It doesn't have to be the substances itself, right? It's usually, well, I have my own theory, but I want to hear what you guys think about this.

You know, I think it's just all part of a person's journey until The wounds on the inside are healed. I mean, because the wounds keep you in deep darkness, keep you lost, keep you separated, keep you trying to fill the empty void on the inside. I had money, I had cars, I had a home. All that stuff doesn't fill you. It just satisfies you for a hot second, and then you go get another car and think that's gonna make you better. And it's just an open part of you inside that empty and you're trying to fill it with whatever you can to escape from whatever's hurting you. And that's what it was for me. That's what drugs was, just to escape for the moment in time. But as soon as the high was off, I'm still back in the same place. So it's just the insanity of doing— you're doing something and trying to look for a different result, but you're not getting a different result from it. And you're drinking and you're pilling and you're this and you're that. And it's not until you actually surrender to it all. Mm-hmm. It's not until you come to a place where it has to be cut off. If it's not cut off, you are going to still be the same person chasing for something that's lacking inside of you that has not been filled with God's love, God's compassion, his understanding, his sympathy for you. Because people could say, Oh, I feel for you. But do they really feel for you or do they really point at you? Just like, just like they all pointed at me and judged me when I was going through the storms of life. But when I got on the other side, they goes, okay, well now he's gonna be a different person. Let's see how long this will last. Well, it's been over 20-something years we've been together, 25, 20-something years. And some of 'em are still waiting for me to come back and they just don't understand. A transformation is not from just a man. A transformation from God is holy and it's different. It purifies you and it liberates you and just separates you from all these other things that used to hinder you and hold you back. And that's what recovery has meant to us.

Mm-hmm.

It has meant a great deal of, you gotta have respect for it. You can't put yourself around people, places, and things no more. And you just gotta safeguard who you are. Like my wife said, if you don't safeguard who you are, you gonna fall for anything.

Yeah. Tracy, was there a moment in this, in this, uh, process that Darryl's describing, like where you went from maybe skepticism about his recovery or his process to something like trust? Was there a transition period that you, experience that made you go, oh no, this is, this is real this time, or something similar?

Sure, it's a valid question. I have 25 years clean and sober as well. I lost custody of my sons from active addiction, so I understand addiction from a personal perspective. I also understand the manipulation that goes with it, being lost. I also know what it looks like when the person's not ready yet, not tired, all these different things, because I know how I was. So when I saw Darryl, when I first met Darryl, he was still in his addiction. But here's the gift that God gave me. Even I was one week clean and sober when I first met— or one week, excuse me, saved. I gave my life to the Lord one year clean and sober when I met Darryl. So when I saw him, I could see the greatness on the inside of him. And, you know, God has created us, so there's greatness inside of each and every person. And God has given me the ability to look past what the person is doing. And it's different because you can see the suffering. But what happens is, the hard part is this, Zach, is when you love a person so much and you are watching them kill themselves slowly, that's when families get tired. That's when people get tired. Because what happens is the excuses, it's enough. And it's not that I don't believe in you. It's not that I don't love you. I cannot watch you kill yourself anymore. You are too painful. to love. And it's not that you're not worth loving. You're just too painful to love. It's not that I don't believe in you. It's that I can't handle another thing. I've done all I can do— the cleanup, the cover-up, trying to change you. I've done it all. And now I have to take my hands off because if I continue to keep my hands on, now I'm enabling you, if that makes sense. I'll come to the rescue to take you somewhere to get help. But if you don't want help, I can't come and get you.

Yeah.

participate in your dysfunction. So when Darryl came to me, finally, we had broken up. It was tumultuous for 5 years. We had broken up, come back together, broken up. I want to believe the lie because I want to experience the greatness of this person that I know is there, but he's not ready for that person to come out yet.

Mm-hmm.

So when we were separated and he was in LA and living with his sister, and I was back home in Missouri, You know, there was a difference in him. He started to get back in church. He started to make changes. I could hear a difference in his voice. He wasn't stalking me with the patterns of the incessant phone calls. Pick up, pick up, pick up. You know, this paranoia position that people who are sick will take out of desperation. His demeanor changed. I mean, there were real changes that were consistent because trust means doing the same thing over again. It's consistency over time. So that consistency Consistency had some weight to it, and he was that. He started showing up as a different person on a regular basis. If I told him something, "No, I'm not ready." Okay, honey, I'll give you time. You know, his his answers were different, and his actions backed up with what he was saying. So I could tell that the change was real because he was different, and I took the time to put it to the test. So building trust and rebuilding trust—it's an important thing.

And it takes time.

Trust is not rebuilt overnight. So that's how I knew Darryl was a different person. Um, he just not only spoke differently, but he walked differently.

Hmm. I love that. I love a couple things that you said are intriguing to me. One is I hold, I think, the same philosophy. I have, uh, almost 6 years sober, and I have—

Congratulations.

Congratulations. Thanks. Yeah, I, um, what I found was that, um, You know, I quit drinking. My last drink was on November 13th. By Thanksgiving, I was done thinking about alcohol. Like, it just wasn't a thing. But I needed to then begin my recovery from what I would say is anger and resentment. Like, that was my real drug of choice. Um, when you two think about your sobriety and your recovery, do you— do you have a similar, like, object? If it's not, say, drugs or drinking, like, is it something characterological that you can name and look at and go, nope, Because like for me, when I start to feel unstable in my recovery, it's not because I've walked into a bar, it's because I've been cut off in traffic, you know, and somebody is like, my anger triggers, you know. So I wonder if you have a similar sort of similar object that you can identify that is like a cue or a clue that you're, I don't know, maybe that you need to pay attention or something.

No, I don't think so. For me, I, I think after allow myself to get clean on the inside. Uh, 'cause I had bitterness and anger for a long time.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Because of the rejection of my father and everything. So that really left me kind of crippled. Uh, so I needed to get delivered from that. And I think a lot of times a lot of people don't allow those things to happen. They hold onto those things and, and little things still have a tendency of triggering them. They be mad and, and, and that's why people have a tendency of going back. You know, because they haven't truly, uh, fully surrendered. Because it's not just surrender to drinking and drugging, it's surrendering to everything, everything, everything about your life.

Yeah. But, uh, but to your bitterness and your, your, your angry and your, your fear, your rejection wound, like that's the place that needed the most attention and work. Yeah.

Yes. Yes. No doubt. That's what I'm talking about. That, that needed, that needed real work. You know, I had to really work in that area. I had to really allow myself to get that chopped off of me. Mm-hmm. Because if that, if that doesn't come off, you're gonna still, it's, you're gonna be clean, you're gonna be sober. Mm-hmm. But you're still gonna be angry. You're gonna still have bitterness inside of you.

Right, right. That's what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

Like you gotta, you gotta take care of that piece too.

You gotta take, you gotta take care of all of it. It, it, it all comes together. I mean, cuz drinking and drugging is all over about what I'm mad about or what I'm hurting about.

Mm-hmm.

And so I drink when I'm happy, I'm drinking when I'm sad, I drug when I'm happy, I drug when I'm sad, you know? And that's the experience that we all go through. It's no different. It's just at higher levels. And especially people like myself, you know, celebrities, most celebrities end up dead because nobody ever tell 'em they have a problem. That's just the way it is. You know, everybody wanna sugarcoat it and say, sweep it under the rug. And because he's such and such and she's such and such, and they end up killing themselves because they don't realize— nobody really points to the fact that you need to deal with this. You need to deal with whatever's going on inside of you more than just using and get well from it and, and deal with it to go forward in your life so you, you can become the better you. Not the better of somebody else, but the better you. And I think that was a strong point for me in my way of getting well.

Who was it for you? Who was it for you that looked at you and said, hey man, you gotta pull it together? Was it Tracy?

Tracy. She told me, when you gonna take that uniform off and identify yourself as a man? That blew me away. I was like, oh, nobody ever told me when I'm gonna take that uniform off.

But she wasn't talking about a baseball uniform.

Yeah, that's the one she was talking about. 'Cause she, that's who I was identifying myself as. all the time.

Yeah.

As Darryl Strawberry, the baseball player. And she's like, are you gonna ever take that uniform off? And I was like, that kind of hit me really hard. And I just, I never told her about it. I mean, but she know now. But I thought about it and I was like, man, nobody ever actually said that to me. And you know what? She's probably right about that. You know, I didn't want to hear it at the time, but I said to myself, she's probably right. You gotta take that uniform off before you can even move forward to start identifying yourself as a man. Yeah. And not what you do.

Okay. I have a question that I was, I was like, I don't know if I'll ask this question or not, but which uniform is it? Is it Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Giants? Is that right? Which uniform do you wear? What, who are you? A Met, Yankee, Giant? What are you?

Well, I'm a Met, of course. Yeah. For the rest. Yeah. My number's hanging up on top of the stadium, so I think that's I think that's the right answer.

I okay, I gotta ask you a question. If I can pivot just for one second, this is from my cousin Kara. She's a huge Met fan, and she wanted me to. I said, "Do you want to ask Daryl Strawberry questions?" She said, "Yeah, I do." So here's here. You ready? I'm ready. You guys, when you were a Met, you did a video called Let's Go Mets. Do you remember this? And it was—

Yes, of course.

Ridiculous fun. Her question is, was it actually as much fun as you made it look? And do you have a favorite behind-the-scenes story from that day?

I don't have any favorite behind-the-scenes story, but it was really fun because our team was fun. We were a brotherhood. And for us to be able to create different things and be baseball players at the same time, and be goofy, it made a lot of sense for us. And I think our fans embraced us and they enjoyed that more than anything. And they gave us the push to go. Whereas today, they don't have that with the fans. We had that with them. We had that connection. So doing that and knowing that they were going to be a part of it, it was really fun to do. All the guys enjoyed it. We had a great time.

When you look at it, when you look at that video and you look at that man, Darryl Strawberry, who do you see?

I see a baseball player. I see a person that was really wild and crazy.

Do you see an addict?

Oh yeah, of course. I was already an alcoholic addict at that time, man. I was already in the middle of that lifestyle. It was just part of, it was part of that whole lifestyle, drinking and, you know, taking pills and just being wild and crazy and didn't care.

Yeah. Yeah, that's intense. So here you are now, you're on a different team. You're on Team What Strawberry, the two of you. And, uh, when you, as you, uh, live into that identity, do you ever compete with each other? Like, do you, are you, uh, like, I get that you're teammates, that's obvious, but what happens when you come into competition with each other? Does that ever happen?

No, we do not. We're not in any competition. We're, each one of us have our own personal calling. We respect it. And we know what we're called to do. It's hard at times because I'm always on the go, on the road, and she's home and she's built a tremendous foundation, family foundation home for everybody and welcome our family and our kids. And our kids have such a bond and respect for her that they can go to her and talk to her about anything that they need to.

You talked a little bit about how you stay in touch, uh, when you're on the road and you're disconnected. What do you— what are your rituals, or what are your patterns? What are your themes that are present when you're in the same space?

Well, it's a good question, and I work full-time too. So, um, I work in the recovery— a recovery center, um, the Dream Center here in St. Louis. So the men and women's home And sometimes Darryl's coming home and I still have to go. Um, but when we are in the same space together, a lot of times it's just rest. It's presence, just being with each other. There isn't a lot of pressure to, um, you know, like date night once a week. That doesn't work for us. We're not even in the same state once a week. So we had to figure out, you know, What was going to work for us. He loves home-cooked meals. I know that about my husband. So my question for myself is, when we're together, how can I be the best wife that I can be? How does he feel loved, whether I want to do that thing or not?

Mm-hmm.

So cooking is not my favorite thing, but I know his favorite things that he likes when he gets off the road. So it's okay. I want to cook some of his favorite things. I want to wash his clothes, pick up the dry cleaning. I want to do things that help him, that show him that I love him. And coming off the road, just laying on the couch together and watching TV, definitely going to church together when we're together.

The Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory.

The Big Bang Theory.

Is that your show?

Yeah, watching TV together. We've watched, I think, every episode 5,000 times, you know, because my husband is a creature of habit, that's for sure.

Yeah.

Going out with family when we can every now and then. So, you know, we don't travel much because he lives on the road. I'm gone all the time. So home for us is vacation a lot.

Yeah. Interesting.

Um, you know, I think people need to find out what works for them and how do you feel loved? Like, Darryl, how do you feel loved? And Darryl, honey, how do you— Tracy, how do you feel loved? And giving that to each other and not making it so complicated. Um, Like birthdays and holidays, we don't put that pressure on each other. You know, we're just like, forget the gifts. And again, this is what we are okay with. Like, forget the gifts. We'll celebrate on that end. I love cards. I'm not a big— I don't want you to go out and spend a lot of money on me.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I love cards. So if he brings a card, if he, um, he's the first one to call me or sends, sends me a cool message or something like that, that's the stuff that's important to me. So when we're in the same space, what's important to us? That's what we do. Um, we hang out, we keep it simple. Like, let's just love each other. Life is too complicated, you know? Let's not make it hard.

Right on.

We just, we just lay on Big Fluffy, our couch at home.

Is that what you call it? Big Fluffy? And watch The Big Bang Theory? How on earth did The Big Bang Theory become your show?

That's it. It's hilarious. I just love it. It's just, it's funny. It's clean.

It's clean.

Yeah. So, so many other things are, we always talk about how it's just the same old things unless there's a weekend and we can, I can sneak in a, a Clint Eastwood movie or something like that. Uh, that, that's the only time that comes on. But as far as the rest of it, it's just like, maybe it's just, it doesn't make sense to us, you know, because we don't, we don't follow all that stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, we have to, we have to land this plane. I could probably ask you a whole bunch of questions. I still wanna go back to some recovery stuff because Tracy, you introduced this idea that I think I will think about quite a bit, but the idea of being tired, like just sort of being tired of living, I guess, in your old skin or your old life. But, um, maybe my question right now is what are you excited about? What's energizing you? Like what's, where do you, what is your, what's next or what are you working on? What are you still trying to accomplish between now and the time that you go home?

Well, that's a great question. I mean, I always want to help as many people as I can, and whatever God calls me to do next, you know, I've written books, I've done all these different things that I never thought I would do. Whatever He puts on my heart that's going to help somebody else, of course, you know, that's number one. But certainly spending time, more time with our kids. and more time together as family because we spent so many years apart. It feels like all this time that you have to make up for, you can't make up for the time. Like, one of the biggest things for me in recovery was literally accepting the things that I could not change.

Mm-hmm.

Getting back what I could never get back. It was so broken being separated from my kids for 10 years. Looking back at those things and being tired, but when you're tired, you still have to be willing to put in the work.

Mm-hmm.

You have to put the work in while you are tired and while you feel hopeless. And that was the biggest thing for me. So today, what's so important to me is being able to enjoy that fight, right?

Mm-hmm.

The fight isn't so hard anymore because living on this side of recovery, it's It's the best. And once you do that work, and you start experiencing these blessings, like, I want to live all up in that, just like I did in my dysfunction.

Mm-hmm.

So now I want to spend time coming together with my husband, and coming together with the kids, and making memories, and having a great time, and just keeping it simple, but keeping it real, and staying together. I want to do those things. I want to have fun. You know, everything doesn't have to be so heavy. Recovery doesn't have to be so heavy all the time. If you're working on a deep problem, you better have some clean fun. You know, they got to go hand in hand, or you're just going to be on a sinking ship. So I want to have fun, do what God's called me to do, uh, love the blessings that God has given me. Darryl's one of them. Love that man with my whole heart and soul. Our kiddos and our family.

Right on. You have— surely you have some grandkids in there too, right?

We have 6 right now. I got one, another one on the way, 7th coming in late December or January.

I'm kind of looking forward to grandkids. Uh, I, we're, we're not even close, but I'm like, oh, I like the idea of just like loving on somebody and not having to worry about passing on your generational trauma. Just, um, Darryl, here we are. We're, we're about to finish up Marriage Therapy Radio. You, here you are with your wife and, uh, there's 8 billion people listening and they wanna know what, what marriage is, what's the secret? What's it about? What's it for? What do you, what would you tell them as a, as a parting word?

I tell them to love each other and care for each other on every aspect of life, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And when you put all that together, you put it in a good bag together and you shake it up and it comes out as one. And when you become one, you become strong together in everything you do. And you have purpose, you have a drive to To help others. And that's what Another Life is all about. Another Life is not about me and Tracy. We've been living this life for a long time. Another Life is about going back and giving it back and helping somebody else and showing somebody else that you can too. Do not give up. Get up, get in the game. Don't quit. Fight. Keep fighting. We had to fight for where we at today. And most of the time people don't want to fight. And I'm so Blessed that we did not quit and give up and we ran the good fight and we're still running it. And even with all the health problems and things that occurred in our life, we say God loves us because he's kept us here. So let's keep getting up and going and getting somebody else and bringing somebody else home. That's what it's about at the end of the day. And I think a lot of people need to understand that. Stop thinking it's about you. It's not about you. If you've been restored, Go help somebody else get restored.

Right on. I'm into it. Listen, thank you so much for coming on the show. And, uh, your book is called Another Life. It's out now. You can pick it up anywhere that books are sold, right? And, uh, and learn about this recovery process, this redemption arc for Darryl Strawberry and Tracy Strawberry. Thank you guys again so much for, for joining me on Marriage Therapy Radio.

Thanks for having us, Zach. Appreciate it.