Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it is that time again for the big
Speaker 1: shout out to our newest Patreon members Katherine S, Jan H,
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Speaker 1: our Patreon members. If you would like to experience being
Speaker 1: a Patreon member and all the benefits that come with it,
Speaker 1: go to One you Feed dot net slash join. We've
Speaker 1: internalized a lot of self critical messages, whether we heard
Speaker 1: them in our childhood, and we've now taken over the
Speaker 1: full time job of repeating them to ourselves and holding
Speaker 1: ourselves to standards that aren't always real and realistic. How
Speaker 1: do we, at that moment take our foot off our
Speaker 1: throat and put our hand on our heart. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us,
Speaker 1: our guest on this EPI. So does Dr Ken Druck,
Speaker 1: a leading mental health expert focused on the areas of civility, relationships,
Speaker 1: and aging. Ken writes regularly for the National Press and
Speaker 1: is the author of several books, including the one him
Speaker 1: and Eric discuss here, Raising an Aging Parent Guidelines for
Speaker 1: Families in the Second Half of Life. Hi, Ken, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Thanks for having me. Eric, It's a
Speaker 1: real pleasure to have you on. We are going to
Speaker 1: discuss your book, Raising and Aging Parent Guidelines for Families
Speaker 1: in the Second Half of Life, which is uh something
Speaker 1: I'm right in the midst of, and I know a
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners are in the midst of, so
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna be a great conversation. But we'll
Speaker 1: start like we always do, with the parable There is
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, and he looks up at his
Speaker 1: grandfather says, Grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says
Speaker 1: that one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 1: your life and in the work that you do. Eric.
Speaker 1: It's a powable that's close to my heart and has
Speaker 1: been a part of my teachings for many, many years.
Speaker 1: It is evolved in what it means to me, and
Speaker 1: what it means to me today has very much to
Speaker 1: do with what I cultivate, what I choose that I
Speaker 1: have in my nature, a small scared part part that
Speaker 1: sometimes wants to react impulsively, angrily, defensively out of insecurities
Speaker 1: that I have. And then there's a part of me
Speaker 1: that believes there's higher ground and that lives on higher ground,
Speaker 1: and it gets to choose whether I react to people
Speaker 1: with understanding and compassion forgiveness, whether I listen and listen
Speaker 1: to myself and get to know my own insecurities and
Speaker 1: defensiveness enough so that it doesn't become part of a
Speaker 1: conversation that takes us to lower ground. So for me,
Speaker 1: it's a profound choice on what ground I choose to
Speaker 1: live on, higher ground or lower ground. And it's also
Speaker 1: very important as a part of my teaching about self
Speaker 1: compassion for us to understand that there's nothing bad in us.
Speaker 1: There is a wolf in us that can get scared.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, we need to learn how
Speaker 1: to harness the fears in us, harness the defensiveness, and
Speaker 1: transform it into awakness, into awareness, and hopefully into compassion
Speaker 1: because there's somebody else right across from us that's also
Speaker 1: having a life and facing their own wolves. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: love that. I love the idea of higher ground, and
Speaker 1: I love the idea of transformation, you know, taking these
Speaker 1: parts of us that are hurt, that are scared, that
Speaker 1: are struggling, and allowing those to inform our transformation into better,
Speaker 1: more compassionate people. So let's start with I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is what got you into this type of work,
Speaker 1: but was a big part of what informed the way
Speaker 1: the rest of your life went, which is that you
Speaker 1: lost your daughter when she was twenty one. Can you
Speaker 1: just tell us a little bit about that and kind
Speaker 1: of what impact that had on the trajectory of the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. You know, everybody is different and
Speaker 1: going through tragedies. Most of us in a lifetime will
Speaker 1: be visited by a tragedy, a major setback. We'll be
Speaker 1: standing in the ashes of our Plan A, and our
Speaker 1: heart will have been ripped out in some way. Our
Speaker 1: future will have been decimated, and we'll be standing there
Speaker 1: and Plan B won't look so good, and we'll be
Speaker 1: trying to summon the strength, the courage and the faith
Speaker 1: to somehow go forward and to begin creating out of
Speaker 1: these ashes, to create a future to live out the
Speaker 1: rest of our time, to reconstruct our plan for how
Speaker 1: we're going to live meaningfully and purposefully. And for me,
Speaker 1: At my daughter's twenty one birthday, she decided she was
Speaker 1: he was a junior in college, she was going to
Speaker 1: go on the adventure of a lifetime, a trip called
Speaker 1: Semester at sea, and everywhere she went across the globe,
Speaker 1: she would call home and and send us information about
Speaker 1: the adventure she was on. She was in Brazil and
Speaker 1: South Africa with Mandela and traveled up the coast and
Speaker 1: went on safari in Kenya. It was truly an amazing departure.
Speaker 1: She knew that the world was bigger than California and
Speaker 1: the way she had grown up, and she embraced the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. She thought it was going to
Speaker 1: be the launching pad for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: And when she got to India, she called and said
Speaker 1: she was going to see the taj Mahal. Dad it's
Speaker 1: it's the symbol of eternal love in the world. There's
Speaker 1: no greater symbol of eternal love. And what we later
Speaker 1: found out was that the flight that they were due
Speaker 1: to take was overbooked, had been overbooked for months, and
Speaker 1: that they stuck kids on a bus on the most
Speaker 1: treacherous road in the world, the Grand Trunk Road where
Speaker 1: people die every year, and about an hour from the
Speaker 1: taj Mahal, my daughter's bus flipped over. My daughter who
Speaker 1: was sitting with a girl who was crying because she
Speaker 1: was scared. My daughter died with three other beautiful young women,
Speaker 1: And so my life as I knew it, my world
Speaker 1: was demolished. My daughters truly the light of my life.
Speaker 1: There's never been anything more important in my life than
Speaker 1: being a dad, a good dad. And so for me,
Speaker 1: my heart had been ripped out, and I was at
Speaker 1: one of those wolf choice points. I called it my
Speaker 1: groundhog day, or I'd wake up every morning and I'd
Speaker 1: have a choice. I looked down one path, and it
Speaker 1: was the path of despair, and I could go down
Speaker 1: that path. Part of me felt like giving up. All
Speaker 1: the wind had been taken from my sales and my pain.
Speaker 1: Down that path was the central organizing principle of my world.
Speaker 1: And then I looked down another path, and at the
Speaker 1: end of that path, I saw both of my daughters saying, Dad,
Speaker 1: we're so proud of you. You fought your way back
Speaker 1: into life. You made the rest of your life meaningful
Speaker 1: and purposeful. You honored us in the way you went on.
Speaker 1: And I looked down both of those paths every morning,
Speaker 1: because it's not like you make a decision. It's like
Speaker 1: the wolf parable You don't make a decision today, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the good wolf forever. You make
Speaker 1: that decision every day, sometimes ten times a day, and
Speaker 1: it's the same with honor and despair. You make that
Speaker 1: decision ten times a day to live on honorably or
Speaker 1: to make your pain the central organizing principle of your life.
Speaker 1: And I have aspired to feed that part of me
Speaker 1: that knows what it means to honor my daughter's life
Speaker 1: and spirit, and to honor my own life, the life
Speaker 1: I've been given, and to continue to be a dad
Speaker 1: to my earth daughter. People ask me, you know, everybody
Speaker 1: say I'm gonna kids. You have kids, you know. I
Speaker 1: tell people I have an earth daughter and an angel daughter,
Speaker 1: and to honor both of them. So for me, the
Speaker 1: have a station. And if if you could see up
Speaker 1: close into my eyes, you would see a brokenness, but
Speaker 1: you'd also see right next to it a wholeness. A
Speaker 1: brokenness and a wholeness. Sometimes we try to make it
Speaker 1: are you broken or you are you whole? Well, I'm
Speaker 1: broken and I'm whole. My wholeness comes out of my brokenness,
Speaker 1: comes from honoring the part of me that will forever
Speaker 1: and a day be sad that my daughter didn't get
Speaker 1: to live out this life and that I missed out
Speaker 1: on the joy of her, and I have to hold
Speaker 1: onto the joy that I had in twenty one years.
Speaker 1: You know, I started a nonprofit foundation after she died,
Speaker 1: and uh, and I've helped countless tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: families and I still do who are grieving the death
Speaker 1: of a child, And and I speak to them about
Speaker 1: those choice is that we get to make and about
Speaker 1: something I call the six Honorings. And that's how we
Speaker 1: go on after suffering a tragedy. And that's become kind
Speaker 1: of a roadmap for me about how we go on
Speaker 1: after horrific loss of life loss. Somebody we love dies
Speaker 1: or a living loss. Somebody we love yet sick, Somebody
Speaker 1: we love is getting older. Somebody we love ends up
Speaker 1: being deployed, going into the service, or incarcerated or estranged
Speaker 1: and joins the cult. A living loss could be a divorce,
Speaker 1: it could be an illness or an accident. And the
Speaker 1: way we grieve our living losses became such an important
Speaker 1: teaching for me that when I started realizing that aging
Speaker 1: is grieving the loss of our younger self and the
Speaker 1: challenge of accepting the guy and the gal that you
Speaker 1: are right now and holding that part of yourself dear
Speaker 1: the older version of you, learning to speak to that
Speaker 1: older version of you with love and compassion, patience, respect,
Speaker 1: and courage. That's the segue from what I learned from
Speaker 1: grieving the worst loss, the loss of a child, to
Speaker 1: facing into this chapter in my own life as I
Speaker 1: get older and I try to summon courage and I
Speaker 1: try to get through in a healthy way the grieving
Speaker 1: of the loss of my past and face my future
Speaker 1: in a way that is going to create some of
Speaker 1: my best years ever. Yeah, there's so much of your
Speaker 1: work we could cover. You've got the honorings that you
Speaker 1: talked about. You wrote a book called Courageous Aging, which
Speaker 1: you know, again a lot of us need right now.
Speaker 1: The book of yours that we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: mostly will be raising an aging parent. But I want
Speaker 1: to go back to something you say because I think
Speaker 1: it's so important, and it is the brokenness and the
Speaker 1: wholeness that we tend to be. You know, I'm either
Speaker 1: this or I'm that things are either good or they're bad,
Speaker 1: you know, and very often they're good and they're bad,
Speaker 1: you know. And and that wholeness that can hold everything,
Speaker 1: and the perspective that can be broad enough to hold everything, really,
Speaker 1: to me, that's a big part of what constitutes wisdom
Speaker 1: absolutely for me. If you ask me, Ken, what's what's
Speaker 1: one of the most important lessons, What's one of the
Speaker 1: most important elements of sage wisdom that you've gathered in
Speaker 1: these years, I would tell you it's living in in
Speaker 1: a both and rather than an either or world understanding
Speaker 1: I'm both broken and whole. My daughter was both gone
Speaker 1: and right here, always with me, never gone, never separated
Speaker 1: and separated, And we can understand things in a both
Speaker 1: and world. We stop trying to trap ourselves into a
Speaker 1: certainty that is unattainable and into a limited way of
Speaker 1: seeing the world and and dealing with all the unknowingness
Speaker 1: that we get to face. My God, we're living in
Speaker 1: the world of unknowingness everything going on now. If we
Speaker 1: don't learn how to dance with our unknowingness, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be in a lot of trouble because we're gonna be
Speaker 1: looking for certainty everywhere and we're going to be horribly disappointed.
Speaker 1: But living in that boat and world helps us gain perspective.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. And it makes me think of
Speaker 1: the part sutrain zen. Emptiness is form and form is emptiness.
Speaker 1: You're like, what hang on a second, but they're both
Speaker 1: there at the same time, and learning to see both
Speaker 1: is insight absolutely, So let's start with the good parts
Speaker 1: of raising an aging parent. You say that giving our time, attention,
Speaker 1: and love do an aging parent can be among the
Speaker 1: most noble and selfless things we ever do. You know,
Speaker 1: we get to give life back to our mom and dad,
Speaker 1: or aunt and uncle for that matter, or older brother
Speaker 1: and older sister, the people who gave us life. Literally,
Speaker 1: we get to give life back to them. We're fortunate
Speaker 1: and we have a living parents. Some of us lose
Speaker 1: our parents early, but if we have an aging parent,
Speaker 1: we've been given an opportunity, and needless to say, we
Speaker 1: all have left over stuff what our parents did and
Speaker 1: didn't do, and should have done and could have done,
Speaker 1: and what didn't happen, What happened? You know, we could
Speaker 1: we could spend our lives in drama, and sometimes it's
Speaker 1: important for those issues to arise and to find and
Speaker 1: make peace. But it's also and equally, if not more, important,
Speaker 1: to find peace, to find gratitude, to find forgiveness, and
Speaker 1: to give our parents what we have in our hearts
Speaker 1: if they lack patience with us, to find the patients
Speaker 1: within ourselves for them if they had patience with us
Speaker 1: to give it right back, because they're gonna need it.
Speaker 1: They're gonna need our love and support and understanding, patience,
Speaker 1: encouragement as they face the challenges coming up in their
Speaker 1: own lives. So we have the opportunity to be that
Speaker 1: good son and good daughter. And I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: putting a cancel on our entire lives going overboard as
Speaker 1: some people do. Some people become a slave caregiver. Their
Speaker 1: entire okayness is based on and a feeling of not
Speaker 1: giving enough or being enough for their mom or dad.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about a healthy giving that has terms, limits, conditions, reciprocity, understanding, communication,
Speaker 1: That's what we get. Sometimes there are things available to
Speaker 1: us in conversation and communication and connection with an aging
Speaker 1: parent that were never there. Things we couldn't have dreamt.
Speaker 1: Conversations about who they are, who they've been, how they
Speaker 1: feel about their lives, what happened back then, or the
Speaker 1: richness and the wisdom that they have that they've never
Speaker 1: been asked to share, or the stories have never been
Speaker 1: asked to share. So there's a richness and a wealth
Speaker 1: waiting to be harvested, if we can become good listeners,
Speaker 1: quiet our own minds enough, if we can begin to
Speaker 1: be learned how to be with them and draw them
Speaker 1: out with good, open ended questions, not questions laced with
Speaker 1: judgment or messages. And here's a tricky one, if we
Speaker 1: can allow ourselves to be receivers of their love, because
Speaker 1: sometimes we don't even know we're doing it. We're disallowing
Speaker 1: our parents love. They're trying to love us in the
Speaker 1: way that they love, and no, we're waiting for love,
Speaker 1: you know, in a package with a boat, and we're
Speaker 1: not allowing ourselves to receive the love that's being offered
Speaker 1: and given. So all those things represent opportunities to harvest
Speaker 1: these years as some of our best ever. And you
Speaker 1: referenced briefly in there. And there are the challenges, right,
Speaker 1: there's the challenges of what they now call the Sandwich generation,
Speaker 1: which is a terrible phrase, but I get it, which
Speaker 1: is I guess that's what I am. Right. I've got
Speaker 1: a son who's twenty one, and I've got parents that
Speaker 1: need care. You know, my mom is is aging and
Speaker 1: not as well. My dad has Alzheimer's. My partner's mom
Speaker 1: has Alzheimer's. So we're in the thick of it, with
Speaker 1: all that stuff, and so I wanted to lead with
Speaker 1: the good parts of it, because there are good parts
Speaker 1: to it, and there are plenty of challenges. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I wanted to talk about with that is,
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned doing the right amount of caregiving,
Speaker 1: and the question, of course is what does that mean?
Speaker 1: What is enough? Because I think every child wrestles with
Speaker 1: am I doing enough? You know, every parent wrestles with it.
Speaker 1: Am I doing enough? Anything that's in our care, it's
Speaker 1: natural for us to question whether we're doing enough. And
Speaker 1: so talk to me a little bit about navigating that. Well.
Speaker 1: Some of us find out that we are pleasers and caregivers.
Speaker 1: We're accommodators, we're type E people, every thing to everybody else,
Speaker 1: and we end up giving too much and it sets
Speaker 1: a vicious cycle in motion. We give too much, we
Speaker 1: don't get back what we had wished for, and we've
Speaker 1: become resentful, angry, hurt, feel hurt and abandoned and we
Speaker 1: end up in despair. So to break that cycle, what
Speaker 1: do we need to do? We need to re calibrate
Speaker 1: are enough? We need to recalibrate what is enough? How
Speaker 1: much is too much? How much are we taking care
Speaker 1: of ourselves? And sometimes that's a good look in the mirror.
Speaker 1: Part of what's in the book is an entire chapter
Speaker 1: in Raising an aging parent about how much is enough
Speaker 1: and how to recalibrate and how to tell. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're somebody who's exhausted and singed, your neurotransmitters are singed,
Speaker 1: you're burning out. You're burning the candle at both ends.
Speaker 1: You're in that and which and you run from taking
Speaker 1: care of this side to taking care of that side,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing left for you, or your marriage, or
Speaker 1: your free time, you don't have a life. Then that's
Speaker 1: a good sign that you need to recalibrate enough in
Speaker 1: a perfect world, what ten things would you do to
Speaker 1: begin taking better care of yourself? What limits would you
Speaker 1: put on certain things? For me? One of the stories
Speaker 1: in the book, and one of the great things I did,
Speaker 1: was when my mom moved into a retirement community. But
Speaker 1: every time I would go visit her the first year,
Speaker 1: the last fifteen minutes, I'd say, Mom, I'm to be
Speaker 1: leaving in fifty what you have to leave? There's something
Speaker 1: more important? I understand. You have more important things to
Speaker 1: do or maybe next time, you know. So I got
Speaker 1: my mom's guilt and i'd believe feeling like I just
Speaker 1: spent an hour and a half and it was kind
Speaker 1: of wasted. We both left with a bad taste in
Speaker 1: her mouth. So what I decided to do in my
Speaker 1: perfect world, I thought, my mom and I will come
Speaker 1: to some agreement about my time. And so I started
Speaker 1: calling and I said, Mom, from now, I'm going to
Speaker 1: call you before I visit to tell you how much time.
Speaker 1: And if that's not going to be enough time, I
Speaker 1: don't want us to both feel bad at the end
Speaker 1: of a visit. Let's wait until I have more time.
Speaker 1: We'll just wait rather than and the other thing. Mom.
Speaker 1: If we come to an agreement, then I'm going to
Speaker 1: be there for an hour and a half. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: spend great time. I don't want you giving me guilt
Speaker 1: trips at the end of the meeting. I don't want
Speaker 1: any commentary. And the first time I went after we
Speaker 1: made this agreement, she was so funny. She looked at
Speaker 1: me like a little kid, and she said, I haven't
Speaker 1: said anything, which is the equivalent of saying I'm con
Speaker 1: I'm in control. Thank you for telling me I was
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to do that anymore. And you know,
Speaker 1: she'd say, how am I doing? His mom? It's wonderful.
Speaker 1: I feel so good now. The other thing I learned
Speaker 1: from my mom was a couple of months before she passed,
Speaker 1: I had an amazing experience. And this ties back to
Speaker 1: what we were talking about before, about receiving their love.
Speaker 1: And my mom looked at me. We just had lunch,
Speaker 1: and she looked at me and leaned in and she said,
Speaker 1: do you realize how much your love has meant to
Speaker 1: me all these years since your father died? Do you
Speaker 1: realize how much it's meant to me to have you
Speaker 1: at my side, to have you caring for me in
Speaker 1: all the ways that you do. I love you, and
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful. If you're ever be grateful to you.
Speaker 1: And she said that with a tear in her eye.
Speaker 1: Of course, I had tears in my eyes. And I
Speaker 1: left about twenty thirty minutes later, and I got in
Speaker 1: my car and I turned on the radio, and I
Speaker 1: turned the radio off, and I said to myself, what
Speaker 1: did I just turn on the radio? What am I
Speaker 1: trying to tune out? What can I handle here? Your
Speaker 1: mother just gave you a lifetime memory moment of telling
Speaker 1: you that she loves you and how grateful she is
Speaker 1: to have had a son like you, and you're turning
Speaker 1: on sports radio. And I realized in that moment that
Speaker 1: my receiver was broken, the part of us that receives love,
Speaker 1: that can take in the full measure of somebody's love,
Speaker 1: who's telling you in their own way that they love
Speaker 1: and appreciate you. And it made me think, my God,
Speaker 1: how many other times in my life have people tried
Speaker 1: to tell me that they loved me and I deflected it,
Speaker 1: or I turned on sports radio. I didn't have a
Speaker 1: way to hold it inside. And I made that my
Speaker 1: mission for the next year, to learn how to hold
Speaker 1: and accept love. And I even when I would give
Speaker 1: us a talk, was back in the day when we
Speaker 1: were all giving talks in front of audiences. When I
Speaker 1: would give a speech, instead of running off the stage,
Speaker 1: I would put my hand on my heart and I
Speaker 1: would take a deep breath, and I would absorb the
Speaker 1: gratitude that my audience was showing me. And I started
Speaker 1: paying attention to other things in my relationship with with
Speaker 1: my family members and close friends. And it's become a
Speaker 1: real stretch and an aspiration for me to learn those things.
Speaker 1: And and it's one of the challenges back to you know,
Speaker 1: what are some of the challenges of aging and facing
Speaker 1: and how can we be there for our aging parents.
Speaker 1: That's one of the ways is to get our receiver
Speaker 1: fixed so that we're receiving the full measure and our
Speaker 1: parents can see. It's almost like giving somebody a beautiful
Speaker 1: necklace and you look and you see them feeling so
Speaker 1: adorned by that necklace wearing it. That's the way it
Speaker 1: is when somebody receives our love. We see them feeling adorned, receiving, absorbing,
Speaker 1: feeling so treasured. That's the gift that we can give
Speaker 1: our parents by receiving their love. So tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about how you learned to fix that receiver,
Speaker 1: because I think that's a really important point and one
Speaker 1: that I certainly could could learn. You know, you made
Speaker 1: a year's mission. I know we're not going to cover
Speaker 1: that in a three minute sound bite, but but give
Speaker 1: me the high points of fixing that broken receiver. Well, sometimes,
Speaker 1: like anything we bring into the shop, sometimes we find out,
Speaker 1: oh it's just a minor thing. How many of us
Speaker 1: have gone in and we brought our car in and
Speaker 1: we thought, oh my god, there's gonna be an eight
Speaker 1: d bill. And no, it was just something somebody they
Speaker 1: turned on. That was it. It was fixed, and they said, nam,
Speaker 1: I don't need to charge you. We left. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: it's a minor adjustment. Sometimes we go in and it's
Speaker 1: a major adjustment. It's parts and service, and it's to
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars we didn't plan on spending. And it's
Speaker 1: the same with the broken receiver. When our heart is
Speaker 1: not open. Sometimes we have these self care self love saboteurs.
Speaker 1: We have deeply embedded feelings that were not worth it,
Speaker 1: or taking somebody's love would be taking food out of
Speaker 1: somebody else's mouth, Or we're not deserved enough of love
Speaker 1: and affection unless we're perfect. I wrote a book called
Speaker 1: the Handbook of Self Care, and I list all these
Speaker 1: self care saboteurs. Things that we do or say to ourselves,
Speaker 1: sometimes without even knowing we're doing it, that disallow any
Speaker 1: chance of self care. You know you're gonna say yes
Speaker 1: to all the wrong things, and and you're not going
Speaker 1: to ever use the word no when you should. So
Speaker 1: sometimes we have to really work on becoming aware of
Speaker 1: what it is that's standing in the way and inhibiting
Speaker 1: us from allowing love, allowing ourselves to receive appreciation, other
Speaker 1: people's gratitude, other people's generosity, and doing that. When we
Speaker 1: have a chance of practice and somebody else says God,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, it's like we go, WHOA. This
Speaker 1: is a chance to practice. Is trying to learn how
Speaker 1: to feel loved or appreciated, And what are my lines?
Speaker 1: What are my lines? Oh? I put my hand in
Speaker 1: my heart and I say you're very welcome, You're welcome,
Speaker 1: or we tell ourselves. I'm taking that in. It went
Speaker 1: all the way in, and I'm allowing myself to feel it.
Speaker 1: I'm allowing it to enter into my heart and to
Speaker 1: mean something. And instead of playing the same old tune
Speaker 1: in my head or allowing that unconscious blocking to take place,
Speaker 1: I'm teaching myself. I'm learning how to receive love. And
Speaker 1: sometimes I do it by training myself to take a
Speaker 1: deep breath. Because when you take a deep breath, you're
Speaker 1: taking nutrients out of the air. Well, that's what this is.
Speaker 1: It's taking the nutrients of other people's love, affection, their care,
Speaker 1: and it's it's breathing it in, so sometimes breathing, sometimes
Speaker 1: putting our hands on our hearts. My slogan this year
Speaker 1: has been take your foot off your throat and put
Speaker 1: your hand on your heart. Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1: We're so damned self critical was so good at finding
Speaker 1: fault and harshly criticizing ourselves. It's like we set up
Speaker 1: courtroom in our heads where there's only a prosecuting attorney
Speaker 1: producing evidence while you're not you haven't done enough for
Speaker 1: you're not good enough, or you could have done more,
Speaker 1: and you should have done more, you did too much,
Speaker 1: or you know, Rather than setting up a courtroom with
Speaker 1: only a prosecutor, if we're going to set up a courtroom,
Speaker 1: we have a defense attorney and a judge and a
Speaker 1: jury and a compassionate one to begin with. And we
Speaker 1: start changing the conversation so that we are learning how
Speaker 1: to receive, and we also coach the people that we love,
Speaker 1: and we say, you know, my goal this year is
Speaker 1: to become better when you tell me you love me,
Speaker 1: when you show me affection and you're trying to show
Speaker 1: me your appreciation or take care of me, and I'm
Speaker 1: not noticing it, or I am too busy or I'm
Speaker 1: deflecting attention. Would you please tell me I'm trying to
Speaker 1: become more aware of how and when I do that
Speaker 1: and to change that so that I can be a
Speaker 1: more gracious receiver. Yeah, so I can receive and get
Speaker 1: the nourishment that comes with receiving love and care and
Speaker 1: gratitude from other people. Yeah. I love that. There's so
Speaker 1: much that you said in there that I think is important.
Speaker 1: That idea of the self compassion is so important. The
Speaker 1: more I work with people, the more I do coaching,
Speaker 1: the more I do group work, and the more I
Speaker 1: just see how how important that is and and how
Speaker 1: in short supply it. It often is the other art
Speaker 1: I think that you talked about that things really important.
Speaker 1: It's like to get in the car and turn on
Speaker 1: the sports radio. We're always just next, next, next, next, next,
Speaker 1: and even just the intention to sort of say stop,
Speaker 1: all right, let me take that in. You know, the
Speaker 1: Dr Rick Hanson, who's who's written a bunch of books,
Speaker 1: talks about taking in the good. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: to stop and take in the good. And it's it's
Speaker 1: not a huge process, but it is a process of
Speaker 1: lingering a little bit longer. I love all those things
Speaker 1: you said that. I think that's really great. It could
Speaker 1: be as simple as what we do with our coworkers.
Speaker 1: It could be as simple as what we do and
Speaker 1: how we make love to our partner, to our companion.
Speaker 1: It could be as simple as listening to a child
Speaker 1: rather than rehearsing what we're going to say in response,
Speaker 1: and really being with them, not being distracted those of us.
Speaker 1: If you're like me and you're very distractable, it's like squirrel,
Speaker 1: you know, and something happened and your attentions off here
Speaker 1: and off there. To learn how to just calm, relax,
Speaker 1: be still, and be with. My daughter used to say, Daddy,
Speaker 1: be with and what she meant was put down the newspaper,
Speaker 1: turn off the music, just hang out with me, Because
Speaker 1: in those moments of undistracted attention with one another, that's
Speaker 1: where the quality, that's where the gold is, that's where
Speaker 1: the richness is. That's where the wealth of what we
Speaker 1: have to give and share with each other is given
Speaker 1: and received. Beautiful. Let's circle back to this idea of
Speaker 1: what is enough. You go on to say, and I
Speaker 1: think this is really important. You say, the question of
Speaker 1: how to balance care for ourselves with care for our
Speaker 1: parents is not an easy one and there is no
Speaker 1: perfect answer. The unpleasant truth is that some decisions in
Speaker 1: this life will be uncomfortable no matter what we do,
Speaker 1: no matter what alternative we choose. It's so true, you know,
Speaker 1: we can do our best, and we can try to
Speaker 1: figure out everything and and make everybody happy and take
Speaker 1: care of ourselves, and sometimes it doesn't work. So how
Speaker 1: do we in those moments of lostness, of feeling like
Speaker 1: we failed, or we could have or should have done
Speaker 1: more and we weren't enough. How do we hold ourselves?
Speaker 1: This is a moment where self compassion is right up
Speaker 1: against harsh self criticism. And if we've internalized a lot
Speaker 1: of self critical messages, whether we heard them in our childhood,
Speaker 1: and we've now taken over the full time job of
Speaker 1: repeating them to ourselves and holding ourselves to standards that
Speaker 1: aren't always real and realistic, were reasonable, how do we
Speaker 1: at that moment take our foot off our throat and
Speaker 1: put our hand on our heart? How do we breathe?
Speaker 1: How do we show ourselves a moment of kindness, a
Speaker 1: moment of disappointment, allowing disappointment, allowing sadness, allowing ourselves the
Speaker 1: despair that we something fell short, something we'd hoped for,
Speaker 1: something we'd wished for didn't come true. How can we
Speaker 1: show ourselves compassion in that moment? And that is one
Speaker 1: of the greatest and most important capacities we can build
Speaker 1: in ourselves, the ability for self compassion at a moment
Speaker 1: where harsh self criticism wants to charge in and lay
Speaker 1: blame him and dissect and pull things apart and render
Speaker 1: us never enough, not enough unless than I think that's
Speaker 1: so important. My partner and I reflect often on the
Speaker 1: fact that in our lives it is impossible that everybody
Speaker 1: is going to be happy, because we have a mother
Speaker 1: in one city and a mother in another city. So
Speaker 1: by its very definition, one of them wishes we were
Speaker 1: in the other place. So you can't win. And so
Speaker 1: accepting that, recognizing that, you know what, can't make everybody happy.
Speaker 1: And we're also going through it with her mom, who
Speaker 1: is in you know, increasing late stages of Alzheimer's, and
Speaker 1: part of that condition is a real agitation, and so
Speaker 1: you can't make her happy. And if that's the standard
Speaker 1: that we're judging ourselves on, we fail all the time.
Speaker 1: And so it's been a learning process in all aspects
Speaker 1: of this out learning, as you say, to recognize what
Speaker 1: is enough, and to recognize also that we don't know
Speaker 1: like that that question of am I doing enough? It
Speaker 1: just sort of lives out there. It's an unresolved question,
Speaker 1: and that's okay. You know, it's kind of back to
Speaker 1: our earlier conversation about brokenness and wholeness. You know, we
Speaker 1: can give ourselves self compassion, we can talk about we're
Speaker 1: doing everything we can, and we can go I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if it's enough. I just think that's part of
Speaker 1: being human, is this doubting and not knowing and things
Speaker 1: not being resolved and tied up in nice little knots. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: what are our resources for finding and making peace, especially
Speaker 1: in those moments where inescapable sorrow and those moments where
Speaker 1: there's no way to win. There's no way everybody's going
Speaker 1: to be happy. You know, some of us spend our
Speaker 1: lives being conflict avoidant. We will avoid conflict at any
Speaker 1: measure because we know that there's just no way to win,
Speaker 1: so we try to sweep it under the rug and
Speaker 1: hope that we don't trip over it. And yet there
Speaker 1: are those times as you're saying so beautifully where we
Speaker 1: just need to reconcile this is not going to work
Speaker 1: out the way I had wished. I hand out, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna lighten my language for purposes of your audience. But
Speaker 1: those damn it coupons, damn you know, and I call
Speaker 1: them the blank moments where we absolutely need to vent.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely with it's healthy for us to say, damn,
Speaker 1: this sucks. You know, this sucks. The way this worked
Speaker 1: out really sucks, and to give ourselves that moment of
Speaker 1: and I think it's of humility, of surrender. You know.
Speaker 1: The arrogant part of us believes, and I should figure
Speaker 1: everything out. There should be an answer to everything. I'm
Speaker 1: entitled to it. I just have to get smart enough,
Speaker 1: or street smart enough, or spiritual smart enough, or some
Speaker 1: smart enough. And we don't realize that the greatest thing
Speaker 1: that we could do in some moments is to surrender,
Speaker 1: is to realize that not everything can be figured out,
Speaker 1: not everything will work out the way we wish. Life
Speaker 1: isn't going to be fair, and that sometimes we need
Speaker 1: to summon the courage to stand in that moment where
Speaker 1: things didn't work out and to say, you know, here
Speaker 1: I am this really sucks. I'm standing in the ashes
Speaker 1: a plan a. I'm watching my mom get older, or
Speaker 1: watching my dad get older, or my brother or my sister,
Speaker 1: or I'm watching myself get older or deal with with
Speaker 1: age related challenges, and it just sucks. It's the part
Speaker 1: that sucks. And how do I deal with it? You it?
Speaker 1: I take a deep breath and I say, this is
Speaker 1: the part that sucks. Life is a package deal. There
Speaker 1: are parts to it that you know, My god, you
Speaker 1: mean I'm being asked to deal with in permanence. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna be here forever. Oh my god. I get
Speaker 1: to tackle and challenge that one. And the people I
Speaker 1: love aren't going to be here. Oh my God? Who
Speaker 1: made up that role? You know? Get the casting director.
Speaker 1: When my daughter died, I was spitting in the face
Speaker 1: of the universe. Get me the casting director on who's
Speaker 1: watch did my daughter die? Get me customer service? This
Speaker 1: is not fair? Who contrived this? Who let this happen?
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until I was able to see a
Speaker 1: tear in the eye of God. And I say that
Speaker 1: metaphorically and literally, until I could imagine that that I
Speaker 1: could feel the universe crying with me rather than making
Speaker 1: an attribution that you know, God is a puppeteer and
Speaker 1: should be watching over everything, and rather than the force
Speaker 1: of love and goodness in the world, And and that
Speaker 1: sometimes things happen that just don't work out for the best,
Speaker 1: that are really tough, and we need to find the
Speaker 1: courage to do our best in getting through them. The
Speaker 1: poet Mark Nepo talks about the terrible knowledge that anything
Speaker 1: can happen to any of us anytime. I mean, and
Speaker 1: it is. It's that's the way life goes. And I
Speaker 1: think it's part of why reflecting on things like impermanent
Speaker 1: is actually useful, because we are less caught off guard,
Speaker 1: or we are less as you said, spitting in the
Speaker 1: face of the universe. I I have two people that
Speaker 1: I do work with who are both at the same
Speaker 1: time right now. One just did in another in the
Speaker 1: next few days gonna lose their dog, you know, And
Speaker 1: and I've been through that. I went through that a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago to them in one year I
Speaker 1: had to put to sleep. And I bring this story
Speaker 1: up a lot because I think that for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I was able to just say, you know what, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was younger than he should have been you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I lost another one six months ago. But that's life.
Speaker 1: That's what happens. Living beings get cancer, they get sick,
Speaker 1: they die. That happened to me, and so I was deeply,
Speaker 1: deeply heartbroken and sad, but I wasn't in an argue
Speaker 1: with the universe over it. I often joke that that
Speaker 1: the you know, it's the slogan and the show could
Speaker 1: be just don't make things worse, which is not a
Speaker 1: very good motivational poster, but pretty good human advice. If
Speaker 1: we cannot make the sufferings, the normal pain that life
Speaker 1: brings us, if we can just leave it at that
Speaker 1: and not make it worse, we have the capacity to
Speaker 1: bear that pain, sometimes just barely, but we can. But
Speaker 1: it's the suffering we layer on top of it that
Speaker 1: often I think breaks us. And my code, my six
Speaker 1: honorings are exactly about that. They're about standing in that moment,
Speaker 1: surviving that moment, that inconsolable moment, you know, where spin
Speaker 1: is useless, As a matter of fact, it's harmful. Where
Speaker 1: we just need people to be with us and have
Speaker 1: the faith that out of this brokenness will grow an
Speaker 1: organic desire to go on and live out the ust
Speaker 1: of my days in a way that would honor my
Speaker 1: my daughter, myself, both of my daughters, and and to
Speaker 1: do that and to and to go on and to
Speaker 1: write new chapters of life. This is what we get
Speaker 1: to do and we all get to think about in
Speaker 1: the time that we're ready to consider it. So the
Speaker 1: other thing is, you know, part of part of whether
Speaker 1: it's aging, the losses we deal with, or the challenges
Speaker 1: of an aging parent, or our own lives and our
Speaker 1: own aging, you know, part of it is is really
Speaker 1: and part of the self compassion is taking our foot
Speaker 1: off our throat, no pressure, you know, just kindness, understanding.
Speaker 1: Of course, how could I not be feeling this way?
Speaker 1: How could I not be feeling scared? Right? You know,
Speaker 1: how could I be expecting myself to know exactly what
Speaker 1: to do? You know, let's talk about it. And this
Speaker 1: is where one of the wealth and the richness of
Speaker 1: a good aging parent and adult child conversation is that
Speaker 1: you could talk about this stuff. The conversations I've had
Speaker 1: with my daughter are are treasured where we talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, Dad, what's it like now? Dad? You just
Speaker 1: turned seventy, the big seventy. You know, you look great.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I wouldn't I would never have guessed, honestly.
Speaker 1: So I've got my COVID beard on is that? Is that?
Speaker 1: What's doing it? But some of the conversations we've had
Speaker 1: about Dad, what do you want, what do you see?
Speaker 1: What if? What if? What if this happened? What if
Speaker 1: that happened? You know? And doing things now, all those
Speaker 1: conversations have sparked things that we do together, things that
Speaker 1: we plan together, putting our house in order, and I
Speaker 1: want to make sure my estate plan by legal and
Speaker 1: financial things. I don't want to even legacy of chaos
Speaker 1: and a mess. I want to leave the legacy of love.
Speaker 1: It's going to be difficult enough when I go for
Speaker 1: my daughter and my grandkids and her husband and and
Speaker 1: we said everybody will be grieving, that would be enough.
Speaker 1: I want to leave things in order. I don't want
Speaker 1: to leave a mess, fail cabinets and things that were
Speaker 1: undecided and everybody guessing what would he have wanted. I've
Speaker 1: spelled all that out. That's my That's the work of
Speaker 1: an aging parent. It's a responsibility, and it's the opportunity
Speaker 1: to leave that legacy of love and to put our
Speaker 1: house in order, our spiritual house, so that we are
Speaker 1: finding peace rather than you know, being dragged kicking and
Speaker 1: screaming into our eighties and nineties, if we can make
Speaker 1: it that long. Put our our emotional house in order,
Speaker 1: so we're not full of resentment and grudges and remorse
Speaker 1: and oh my God, and we've forgiven ourselves, we've found
Speaker 1: and made peace. And to also put our house in order,
Speaker 1: you know, in every possible way, legal, financial, relationship wise,
Speaker 1: and once you put your house in orders, like buying insurance.
Speaker 1: You don't buy life insurance to die. You buy it
Speaker 1: because you want people you love to have enough and
Speaker 1: to be at peace when you do. But it's like
Speaker 1: if you put your house in order as an aging parent,
Speaker 1: it clears the path forward. Now you go have fun,
Speaker 1: kick up some dust. What do you want to do, Hey,
Speaker 1: let's go hang out. Let's you know, all the business
Speaker 1: has been handled, business is taken care of. What do
Speaker 1: we want to do. Let's fly, let's soar, let's talk,
Speaker 1: Let's go out, Let's go on an adventure, Let's go
Speaker 1: hang out. Let's go sit under a tree, Let's go
Speaker 1: sit on the beach, Let's go for a walk in
Speaker 1: the park. Let's do a jigsaw puzzle together. Let's watch
Speaker 1: a stupid funny movie or something on net Flix to
Speaker 1: get the menu of possibilities for joyfulness and deep connection.
Speaker 1: Those are the riches of this life that are available
Speaker 1: to us when we put our house in order, when
Speaker 1: we slow ourselves down to giving and learning how to
Speaker 1: give and receive the full measure of love, and we say,
Speaker 1: you know what this is. This is what I want
Speaker 1: my life to be, or this is what I want
Speaker 1: my life with my with my mom or dad to
Speaker 1: be in the time, whatever time we have, Well, that
Speaker 1: is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Ken,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. You and I are going to
Speaker 1: go on and talk in the post show conversation a
Speaker 1: little bit. We're gonna get a little bit more tactical
Speaker 1: about Okay, I've got an aging parent and you know
Speaker 1: I'm getting resistance in in managing things or or helping them,
Speaker 1: and so we're gonna get tactical about some of that
Speaker 1: stuff in the post show conversation. Listeners you can get
Speaker 1: access to that as well as a special episode I
Speaker 1: do each week call the Teaching Song and a poem,
Speaker 1: and the joy of supporting the show by going to
Speaker 1: one you Feed dot net slash join Ken. Thank you
Speaker 1: again so much. It has been such a such a
Speaker 1: real pleasure. Eric, It's a joy to be with you.
Speaker 1: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
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