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The Sandwich Generation - How Not To Get Smushed

Last time I wrote about my Smith College reunion.  Well, another classmate and I led a workshop together about caregiving for our elderly parents.   We talked about the challenges that face many of our generation - we love our parents and feel responsible, but have other demands on our lives (work, children, relationships).

There were a couple of themes that emerged:  How do we set boundaries?  Should we move our parents near us, or should we move near them?  How do we care for them when they are far away?  How can we use technology to aid us in a way that is not intimidating for them? How do we work things out with our siblings?  Who else can we call upon to help us?  How do we keep from feeling isolated?  How do we keep from feeling overwhelmed?

And there were a few solutions - make at least time for yourself every day - for a cup of coffee, for exercise, for journaling ... It was a very powerful and intimate session with virtual strangers.  The act of connecting was, I think, the most powerful part of it. And it became clear that it is important not to be isolated in the process.

The most important and structured suggestion was offered by my classmate, Helene Powers: to form a caregiving group.  Helene's husband, Adam, was being treated for cancer several years ago when a friend offered to make dinner for them.  This simple act blossomed into a caregiver group - which provided powerful but simple and crucial support to Helene and Adam as they went through the cancer journey, and to Helene through her grief after Adam's death 7 years ago.  Helene has written about the process, and has written about how you can create your own caregiving group in a booklet called Friends Indeed: How to Help During a Serious Illness.  Check it out!

The Next 10 - or 20 - or 30 Years

I went to my {gulp} 30th Smith College reunion last weekend (OK, I'll upload a photo separately).  Jill Ker Conway spoke to our class -- she'd been president of the college when we were there.  She said that we should not look forward to retiring at the age of 62, or 65 -- those numbers were established as retirement age when the life expectancy was about 68.  But now the life expectancy is much longer - and we should expect to be productive and active citizens until well into our 80s. 

My 85 year old Dad is trying to figure out which book he'll write next.  My Mom, just a bit younger, is at her Pilates class right about now.  I can't keep up with them because they go out so often.  (That's one of the advantages of living in New York City, I suppose.)  Not that they don't have their aches and pains.  They are both experts at taking naps.  But I admire them so. 

What will I be doing in 10 years?  20?  30?  What will you be doing then?

Estate Planning as a Family Conversation

The NY Times ran a terrific article last week about the value of talking about your estate plan with your family.  Although it may cause some friction at the time, it gives family members a chance to vent, to speak their piece, and it gives parents (or whomever is doing the planning) an opportunity to explain their thinking. 

Many parents leave their estate to be divided equally among their children.  While this is logical, and appears fair on the surface, it may not always be so.  What if Susie has a disability and will never be able to work?  Or what if she needs skilled nursing, while the other kids are fine?  Or what if the parents have been paying for Johnny's rent for the last 20 years?  Maybe they want to leave more to one child than the other in their will. 

Of course, it is natural that conflict will arise.  This brings up old "stuff."  (Remember the Smothers Brothers?  "Mom always liked you best!") 

This is a perfect opportunity for family estate mediation - a chance to sit down together and really understand things from the others' perspectives.  After all, what parents almost always want, more than anything, is to know that their children will keep lines of communication open, and will get along.  Mediation does not gloss over the surface, nor is it family therapy.  It is a facilitated, structured conversation - a chance to do problem solving together.  And it is future-oriented. 

Family members will continue their relationships long after the senior member is no longer here. By facilitating creative problem solving, estate mediation can help ensure that the elders' intentions are understood and carried out.

Compassion and Mediation

I am taking a course this weekend from Zoketsu Norman Fisher - one of the authors of the book, Getting to Yes, who is now a Zen Buddhist priest, and a teacher of meditation.  In preparation, I read an article he wrote entitled, "Developing Compassion."  He writes, "to be narrowly self-interested and self-identified is simply a very dangerous and unhappy way to live - the wider your interest and larger your sense of identity, the happier and the stronger you will be."

And this reminds me of words of my mediation teachers, Jack Himmelstein and Gary Friedman, who say that when we mediate, we must be able to hold in our minds the full reality of what each person is saying.  That neutrality is not staying squarely in the middle, but in fully understanding each person, really understanding their perspective.  And being able to hold both realities in your mind at the same time. 

I don't try to find the truth when I mediate.  In a certain way, I don't care about it.  I am not trying to come to my own conclusion about what really happened.  I do, however, care deeply about each person's perspective and perception about what happened.  For that is what is real to them. 

When I practice this, I believe - I hope - I am practicing the development of compassion. 

Gay and Lesbian Couples - Splitting Up

What options are available to gay and lesbian couples who are splitting up?  If they've been legally married but live in a state that doesn't recognize same-sex marriage, getting divorced may not be an option.  If they are not legally married but have kids, they may have to go to civil court to divide up their property, and to family court to get an order about their children.

It is much easier to do collaborative process or mediation, where the couple themselves can make decisions.  I've done both for same-sex couples, and they both work well, because you can be very creative in making agreements, and come up with decisions that fit your real needs.

The New York Times ran two good articles about this topic last week:

'Traditional' Divorce isn't always an Option for Gay Couples

7 Tips for Dissolving gay unions 

How to Pick a Divorce Lawyer

The New York Times has been running a fantastic series about Divorce and Money.
 Tonight they asked people to comment on the best way to pick a divorce lawyer.  Here is my answer:

The best way to pick a divorce lawyer is to find someone who will try to optimize the situation for everyone involved (particularly the kids), not just for you. Think about the emotional and psychic costs as well as the financial costs.

I am an attorney who only does divorce mediation and collaborative law for this very reason. Lawyers are taught that they have to provide their clients with "zealous advocacy." That may work fine in business deals, but it doesn't work when it comes to families.

Mediation and collaborative process work for most families, even if you're furious at each other. They allow you and your spouse to make decisions specifically tailored to the needs of your family, they're usually cheaper and faster than litigation. Whose kids do you want to send to college - yours or your lawyer's?

The 6 Relationships ...

I just returned from the ACR (Association for Conflict Resolution) annual conference, which really opened my eyes in a lot of ways.

But one thing I wanted to share tonight was a concept from Stephen Reynolds, a mediator in Santa Cruz, CA with Common Ground Mediation Services. He comes from a business background, and had an interesting, analytical view of committed relationships. His view is that each committed relationship really has 6 relationships going on at once.

In no particular order ...

• Physical & Romantic (sex, affection, physical space, division of household chores)
• Emotional & Spiritual (connectedness, communication, individual development, religion, values, ethics)
• Social Activities (how the couple relates to friends, family, community)
• Parental (relationships with children, decision-making, discipline, activities)
• Financial (managing income and debt, planning for the future)
• Legal (marital status, views of the law, legal relationships with others)

Therapists tend to focus on the first two, lawyers & mediators tend to focus on the last two or three.

You can picture what things would look like if they were going well -- or not well -- in any of these areas. And then you really get an idea of how complex each relationship is, how we relate to each other on so many different levels. So you see why relationships take so much work.

And most especially, so much communication.

Where is your relationship? Which areas are your strengths? Which are your weaknesses? What is still going well that you can build upon? What needs more work?

I have spoken before about the stages of divorce. But I think this framework actually says it better, and lets us think about it within relationships that are still in progress, not just those that are reorganizing, or coming apart.

I and Thou

My favorite book is I and Thou by Martin Buber. It is the defining book of my life, I think.

It is based upon a simple, but profound, premise: that each relationship we have is either I:It or I:Thou. I:It relationships with things - I:Thou (I:You) relationships are those with beings. It is contained, inanimate, what you can experience. Thou is spirit, limitless. "If I face a human being as my Thou," Buber says, "and say the primary word I-Thou to him, he is not a thing among things, and does not consist of things."

This is what we do when we get married. We vow to always see the spirit in the other person, to understand and to relate to that person with your whole self.

And by the time couples get divorced they are relating to each other as Its - as things, as obstacles.

But when we treat someone else as an It we dehumanize ourselves.

In mediation, we ask parties to consider the whole person again, to treat that person as I:Thou, if only for the small time they are in the room. And it is by seeing that person's spirit, by treating them at their highest, that you honor your own spirit. For only the whole can relate to the whole.

Good for Your Health!

The New York Times published an article in the Well Column of the Science Section last week, entitled, "Divorce, It Seems, Can Make You Ill." Similar news stories came out as well, based upon a study done by sociologists at the University of Chicago and at Johns Hopkins, that followed over 8,600 people, about 40% of whom had gotten divorced. The researchers found that divorce and widowhood are extremely stressful, physically as well as mentally, and that even getting remarried does not help one fully recover.

The study found that divorced or widowed people had a 20% greater incidence of chronic health conditions like diabetes or cancer, and 23% more difficulty getting around.

Another study they cited in the Times article found that wounds took up to two or three times as long to heal after marital conflict with high levels of hostility.

There is no question that divorce and widowhood is stressful, and that stress is related to health. So now I'd like to see a study that compares people who had mediated or collaborative divorces with those that underwent litigation. I imagine that there is much less stress in the former processes, and that therefore, people who use mediation or collaborative process end up with healthier outcomes.

The Elders

I'm so excited!

This week I learned about a whole new way to use mediation - to help families make decisions together when an elderly parent can no longer take care of herself, or drive, or live alone. Or when the siblings are trying to decide what to do with the summer house, or how to divide up the stuff Dad left ...

The training was taught by Arline Kardasis and Blair Tripp from Elder Decisions/Agreement Resources in Massachusetts. They are very compassionate - particularly towards the needs of the elder. (In this way, it is not a completely neutral process.)

How do you manage to keep your independence and your dignity when you can't do what you used to? You depend on your daughter, but she is always arguing with your son....

How often do adult siblings argue when Mom needs more care, or Dad needs to go into a nursing home? And yet, this is when they need each other the most.

There is so much to do! Not only take care of Mom or Dad's day to day needs, but to find out what resources are available, how much it all costs, whether insurance will pay, where s/he'll get the best care ... And then, how do you deal with the emotions of it all - to see that your own parent can't do it all as s/he used to, that you have kind of a role reversal, having to take care of him/her more, or, attending to your own grief which may come all at once or in the little details of having someone slowly slip away for you.

And this is when all of the old sibling stuff from your childhood may come up! (Remember the Smothers Brothers? Mom always loved you best!)

Mediation is a great way to start the dialog, to do problem solving together, to build back those important family relationships, to begin to work together as a team ...

We are all made of Sound

Mediating a few weeks ago, a client said, "We are all made of sound."  

She meant that we are all influenced by others, shaped by others.  What a poetic way of putting it.  I have commented before on the "ghosts in the room," in mediation - the parents, girlfriends, best friends, etc. who influence our thinking.  These people, who are not actually sitting around the table, can have a deep effect on mediation.  How do we address their thoughts -- their voices in our conscience, giving their opinions?  

One thing we can do is acknowledge their existence.  Simply admit that they exist and allow them to be there. they serve a purpose.  Most often, they have good intentions.  Listen to those voices and decide how much you will listen to them - how loud they will be to your ears.  But then realize that what those well-intentioned people want for you might not be exactly what you want for yourself.  Do those voices harmonize with your own?  Do they augment it?   Or is there discord?

And then we must listen to our own inner voices, too.  For we are writing the story of our life - we are each writing our own personal symphony.  

  

secrecy in collaborative law

Two people, a man and a woman, came to me separately in the past week to explore the possibility of doing collaborative law.  Both were people in short term marriages with no kids.   The real estate wasn't really the issue.   And so it seemed that their situations were relatively simple, and that the collaborative process would be relatively simple.  But scratching the surface made me see nuances that would not make the case appropriate.  

The man asked me for my legal opinion of doing something that appeared to be somewhat morally questionable.  Assuming that it was legal, it was not, as I told him, collaborative, and would not be a good way to start off the collaborative process.

The woman told me that both her husband had recently taken money from their joint bank account, which she assumed he had invested in his own name in a foreign stock market.  Again, not illegal, but it wasn't clear that he would be transparent, either.

While couples obviously do not need to agree, I do believe that there is a certain level of trust that each must have for the other, perhaps not when it comes to emotional issues, but certainly when it comes to the financial. 

The collaborative process is, unfortunately, not for everyone.  Sometimes the best thing you can do is do an honest assessment of you and your spouse, and find a lawyer who is a good negotiator, and work to get as fair a result all around as possible.  There is no reason why the tenets of collaborative process - a commitment to fairness, to self-determination, to resolving conflict with dignity - cannot be applied to negotiation.

You can't change your circumstances.  All you can do is work toward the best possible result.

  

Where are We?

President-elect Obama.

Was the election really only 9 days ago?

Doesn't it seem as though the whole world has changed since then?  It's as though we have a whole new outlook, a new range of possibilities that didn't exist before.  You knew the moment was coming, but didn't realize how profound a shift it would be until it really got here.

How could it be?  Many of my friends are strangely quiet, introspective, trying to get used to this new way of thinking and being.  Who knew that one man could enlist the hope and support of millions from all over the world?  Who knew that we could turn the race conversation on its head in one day?

We are used to thinking about crisis in terms of disaster.  

9/11.  Katrina.  Tsunami.  

Is there a word for an equally dynamic and sudden shift that is positive??

The 60's were about rebellion against the establishment.  About tearing down old structures.  

This is a different kind of revolution.  It is positive - constructive.  It's about hope.    Working together. 

Building something new.  

Fueled, in large part, by people too young to remember the sixties.  

And by those old enough to remember segregation.

I've seen huge shifts in personal thinking during mediation sessions and in the collaborative process - that aha! moment when people realize a new way of thinking.  One of those moments when everything changes for you and nothing will ever be the same.

And now it is as though the whole world has had that aha! moment.

Isn't it wonderful!?

 

Obama (the Mediator) for President

"The change we need isn't just about new programs and policies.  It's about a new politics - a politics that calls upon our better angels instead of encouraging our worst instincts; one that reminds us of the obligations we have to ourselves and one another." 

 -- Barack Obama, Canton, Ohio, October 27, 2008.

Mediation calls upon our "better angels."  And in mediation we learn to see a problem through another person's eyes.  In the family mediation that I practice, we all work together to figure out solutions that are good for ourselves and one another - for the whole family.  

Mediation is built upon a notion that people in conflict can work to solve a problem together.  But in order to do that, we must allow ourselves to see "that of God" in the other person.  We must disengage, if only for a few moments, from sparring with each other -- just long enough to hear what the other person is saying.  It is at that moment that they will also hear us.  Light and air come into the room.

Barack Obama is fundamentally inclusive. He understands, perhaps intuitively, the very core of mediation.  What would it mean if we had, as president, someone who was a mediator at his center?

I truly believe that the reason his campaign has come as far as it has is because it IS built on hope - on optimism, it calls on that which is truly good in us.  He calls us to be our highest selves.  And we, in turn, are rising to the task.  We are allowing ourselves to believe that love is possible, no matter what happens in war, with the economy.  We are allowing ourselves to believe that the best way to bring ourselves up from under is with each other.   We are all interconnected.  We need each other. 

Bankrupt?

Is bankruptcy a possibility for you? For your ex? Are you worried about how it will affect the financial terms of your divorce or separation?

Bankruptcy cannot discharge court-ordered obligations of child support, alimony or equitable distribution.  That means that even if you declare bankruptcy, you must pay support to your family.  It also means that if there is any money that will be divided among creditors, the family comes first.  

But what if you are not legally married?  Or if you are and you and your ex  just want a legal separation, not a divorce? Many couples who mediate or go through the collaborative process want a separation agreement, without planning to file it in court.  They are legal contracts, but the child support or "palimony" are not court-ordered.  Would those be discharged from bankruptcy?  Well, it seems that public policy would dictate that whatever money there is should still go to the family first.  But why risk it? 

You and your ex can agree to let the other know if you are thinking of declaring bankruptcy, to give the other a chance to go to family court to get a court order for child or "spousal" support.    That would keep your priorities straight - and make sure your kids get fed before the credit card companies.

If only the federal government thought that way!  

Are You Being Heard?

A visitor to Jerusalem goes to the Wailing Wall.  He sees a rabbi there, praying.  He asks the rabbi what he is praying for.  

  "Peace in the middle east," the rabbi says.  

  "How long have you been praying?" our visitor asks.

  "Every day for 25 years!"

  "And how is it going?  Do you think we are making progress?" our friend asks.

  "It's like talking to a wall!"  The rabbi exclaims.

I've noticed that one of the most powerful aspects of mediation is simply to be listened to.  

Often when a couple has been fighting, they each simply feel that they are misunderstood.  So it can be very validating - and perhaps healing - when I listen deeply to that point of view.  And it sends a message to the other person that that point of view is worth taking the time to understand.  

The quality of the mediation has a lot to do with the quality of the listening.  It's hard to explain that, but I really believe it is true.

   

Learn from the Dogs!

New York City parks have many wonderful places for dogs to play during off-leash hours.  Dogs create their own social relationships (as do their owners!), creating a complex subculture.

My golden retriever and I frequent a huge, hilly open meadow a in Prospect Park called "the Nethermead."  It's a wonderful part in the center of the park where no buildings are visible, and it is quite easy to forget you are in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world.  

There are two dogs often there who can only be called best friends. One is a doberman, the other is a pit bull mix.  They are about the same size and weight, I'd guess, although they have very different shapes.  They share a toy that is a big rubber ring, about 10 or 12 inches wide.  Each dog grabs one end and pulls. And so they tug, face to face.  For hours.  It's like watching an eight-legged dance across the grass.  

"Who needs TV?" I asked, the first time I saw them.  They can keep each other entertained for hours!  They are perfectly matched, fully engrossed, focused only on each other, working hard and going nowhere.

This reminds me of couples who are deeply engaged in fighting with each other.  It can be very engrossing, taking all of your attention, and require constant adjusting and maneuvering -- but look where it gets you ... nowhere!

Different Time Zones

I've been doing a few mediations lately where the timing of the partners is way out of sync.  It often happens in divorce that one person can't wait and the other is dragging his/her feet.  So what do you do?  Well, as my friend Rachel Green says, "A train can only go as fast as its slowest wheel."  

Mediation is a voluntary process. and it must be done in tandem, so the rabbit has no choice but wait for the hare to catch up.  This can be frustrating for the hare, but the best decisions are those that are made from a place of being relatively centered.  The key here is to think long-term!

A New Mindset!

"We are living in a society in which victims are compensated with money." - Rod Wells

Rod is one of my colleagues on the Board of Directors of the Family and Divorce Mediation Council of Greater New York, and he is also a Financial neutral in mediation and collaborative cases. He stated this at a meeting of the NYS Council on Divorce Mediation a few weeks ago.

If we come to a separation with that mentality, we must show how badly we've been wronged, for the worse off we are emotionally, the more we stand to gain financially. It focuses on punishing bad behavior for what has happened in the past.

Is that the collaborative process? No! In the collaborative or mediation process, we are looking to see how we can use the existing resources to get the best outcomes for every member of the family. Or to use the existing resources to increase what is available. (In other words, instead of dividing the pie up, make a bigger pie!) This keeps us focused more in the present, asking the question - what is the best outcome given where we are now?

It's a whole different mindset!