Getting Your Edge: How to Rightsize your Home and Life.
Life Happens to Everyone! These events can force changes in how and where you live. How you react and manage those events is what matters. Join Judy Gratton and Dennis Day, two agents with over 22 years combined experience in real estate, as they provide you insights into managing the twists and turns life throws at you, so you can land on your feet and in the right place. Whether you need to downsize from the forever home, upsize to handle a growing family, or moving an aging parent into a safer setting, the “Rightsizing” Podcast will share the information you need to “rightsize” your home and life. Using their personal experiences and interviews with experts in a variety of fields, like: financial planning, estate sales, or living abroad, our hosts will dish out the information and advice that will help you take on life’s challenges informed and prepared. For more information about the Edge Group Real Estate Team and the Freebies click here: https://edgegrouprealestateservices.com/
Getting Your Edge: How to Rightsize your Home and Life.
Conquering the Fear of the Unkown: A Therapists Guide to Downsizing with Confidence
As the heart wrestles with the head, we explore the balance of emotional attachments and pragmatic decisions. Elizabeth underscores the need for empathetic listeners who validate pain rather than fix it, while we explore how couples therapy can bridge communication gaps. Practical concerns like home maintenance and financial security become central themes, reminding us of the importance of facing realities. A simple pros and cons list emerges as a tool to discern emotional truths from practical necessities, guiding us through the maze of life transitions.
Shifting identities and evolving family dynamics are laid bare as we draw insights from Richard Rohr's "Falling Upward," contemplating how our attachments to material achievements may be challenged during downsizing. The dialogue extends to family tensions, where children and parents may find themselves at odds. Yet, amidst the upheaval, we discover unexpected joy—renewed connections and community bonds that alleviate loneliness. Through stories of senior communities and outreach programs, we celebrate the invigorating power of connection in life's later stages.
Good day everyone. Welcome to Getting your Edge how to Right-Size your Home and Life podcast. I am Dennis Day and I'm here with my co-host and newly published author, judy Gratton. Good morning, judy.
Judy Gratton:Good morning Dennis. How are you?
Dennis Day:I'm doing great. You have some exciting news.
Judy Gratton:I do.
Dennis Day:We're gonna share a little something about this here. Just let me share, there we go. Share, there we go.
Judy Gratton:Oh my goodness, I wrote a children's book and it only took me five years to get it done. I wrote it for a couple of reasons. I wanted to write something for, at the time, my granddaughter. Now I have two, so the other ended up in the book. As someone else, in Bothell, where I live, there are crows that come every night thousands of crows. If you look them up the crows of Bothell you'll see lots of YouTube videos on them. I decided they needed a matriarch, and Clarice Crowan kind of a pun on Crone old lady, which I happen to be one of is the matriarch of the Bothell Crow clan. They don't like being called a murder, so it's a Crow clan. I'm very excited because I'm thrilled at how many people have actually bought the book and I get to go to the Crow Festival today and read the book. This is my new book. You'll find it on Amazon, thanks, Congratulations, thank you.
Dennis Day:As a former librarian, I was thinking I should have written a book first, but no, didn't do it. So, anyways, today we're really excited because we have a special guest. Her name is Elizabeth Clark-Stearns. She is a counselor and therapist and author from the North Seattle area. She's here to discuss a part of downsizing, which is our main subject, that is really difficult to comprehend. This podcast is not just for those who are thinking about downsizing, have family who are downsizing, and how difficult downsizing can be from that family home that you've been in years and years and years. So let's get started, elizabeth Clark-Stearns. Just introduce yourself and tell us who in years and years and years. So let's get started, elizabeth Clark-Stern. Just introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what you do.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, hello, I am attempting to retire as a psychotherapist. I've been in private practice for 25 years. Prior to that, I did social work with children and families through the foster care system. You really learn a lot about how important place being with is when you have to remove a child from a home. If a child has been the parenting child to the parent and the parent is drug addicted or mentally ill, and then the child is taken out, they need a transition object. So we say get them a kitten, get them a dog, get them something to love.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:If any of what I say today makes sense to you, the big banner in it is love transition, because that's what happens when you're moving from one space to another space. When someone dies, I mean it's really the same process. The loss and the transition to a new way of life takes us all through the same corridors. In my private practice I've worked with individuals, couples, families, children. I'm getting a kitten today. So I recently took all of the little figures in my sand tray box, which I used to use for children to act out the story of their lives, and I put it on the floor to use it as a cat. I'm almost 76. I'll be 76 on Thanksgiving. I'm healthy so far, but have recently lost a dear brother. I understand how fragile and precious life is. I've written a book called the Language of Water, which is feminist science fiction published by Aqueduct Press on Amazon, and it's about the future and how we don't have enough water. But the power of women and the power of love transcends that.
Judy Gratton:I'll be reading. I am so thrilled that you are here today. I've been talking to Dennis about the need to bring someone on to talk about the emotional aspects of downsizing and making that move for a long time. I'm really grateful that you're here today. Thank you so much.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:You're very welcome.
Dennis Day:Let's get into our subjects, Elizabeth. How does downsizing trigger feelings of loss and grief, especially when they've lived in a single home, raised a family for decades in that home?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:One of the basic cornerstones of human behavior and our orientation to the world is attachment. There are tons of books written about attachment theory. That applies not only to holding your baby when the baby is born and the baby becomes attached to you. It also applies to everything in your surroundings, to physically being able to walk through that same door and seeing your children and grandchildren. I'm choking up because I'm remembering, in the other room, right outside the kitchen of our house, in pencil on the door, is all of the stages of growth of our granddaughter, Going all the way from the time she could barely toddle through the door. Going all the way from the time she could barely toddle through the door, and now she's five, eight towers above us all. She says I'm the tallest woman in the family, Nana, and so she is.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:And when I think of leaving this home, the first thing I want to do is grab a hammer and take that off the door and take it with me, because it's so sacred and so precious. So there are little corners of every place in a home that represent life lived and hopefully life lived joyously, the idea of pulling up stakes, literally, of donating, giving away, of donating, giving away or sending away possessions and cornerstones of your life really is a deep loss. People experience it the same way they experience a death of a loved one. Some people are more sensitive than others. Some people are more pragmatic than others. The ones who really are in touch with their feelings get it. They know how profound this is. So that's what I would say. First of all is that pulling up stakes like that is a deeply emotional experience for almost everyone.
Judy Gratton:And I can speak from experience of having worked with multiple people who've gone through this. The most difficult thing about working with them is helping them through that transition. In some cases it is just incredibly stressful. I've had one client tell me she said I am part of the dirt.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Oh, beautiful.
Judy Gratton:Well, it is beautiful, except that it's very difficult.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:You can't take the dirt with you.
Judy Gratton:You can't take the dirt with you, but they built that home back in the 70s and they've been there ever since. The transition is just very, very difficult.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Yes.
Judy Gratton:What are some of the difficult? Yes, what are some of the common emotional hurdles?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:that people should be prepared to face. I think one of the main ones is resistance. That comes up again and again oh, do I really need to do this? We've got a three-story house and now I'm in a wheelchair. Do I really need to do this? We can put it in an elevator. People go through.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:If you're familiar with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of grief, the first one is denial, resistance, and very often, of course, if it's an aging couple, then one of them is in one place, the other one's in another and somehow they have convinced themselves to get to your office to talk about selling their home, right. But I think they can expect a lot of tension around that, a lot of magical thinking, things like, oh, we'll put in an elevator or, you know, we'll put in a fire escape and that has a ramp on it All kinds of crazy things that people think of in a desperate effort not to have to leave their home. Resistance, denial, and then maybe anger is another big one. Why do I have to do this So-and-so down the road? They don't have to do it, and they're the same age I am and their kids have come in and now they live with their kids. The kids have come back to home because they don't want to sell the house. I think you can rationalize it almost any possible way. Anger I always say anger and grief.
Judy Gratton:Who are they directing this anger at? Well, often at each other.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:unfortunately, this anger at Well, often at each other, unfortunately. Okay, or it may be at you. You may get some of this. Oh, why do I really need to do this? Have you experienced that?
Judy Gratton:Yes, I have. I've had people be angry with me and it's not anything I can control.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:No, it has nothing to do with you. And so that's what I mean about the irrationality of the anger. It can be addressed at their kids, maybe, for not stepping up and buying the home so that they could always go back to it. Look at the housing prices in Seattle, for example. My kids couldn't afford to buy my house, right? I mean, it's just not rational. But we'll do anything not to have to give up that door jam. That has all the stages. You guys can move in here and then we'll come visit you from wherever we live in our small condo, right?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:So anger and then the point about anger and grief are two sides of the same. They're so close. The anger often defends against this deep grief to leave the home, to leave the memories. But it's something that must be faced and often, especially men, sometimes it's a matter of pride oh, I don't feel grief about leaving the home. It's very practical. And they'll say to their wife we have to do this, you know we have to do this, but they're just afraid of their own grief. They don't want to have to say this breaks my heart. So you have to be able to face the fact that it breaks your heart, and that's a very hard thing for many people to do.
Judy Gratton:Dennis, your father. How did he react when they left their home? Did you see any of that in him?
Dennis Day:my dad didn't like feelings as much as I would have preferred him as a father at times. My mother, he was the doer, the goer, and we're just going to plow through. This is the practical, that sort of mentality.
Judy Gratton:Yeah, yeah.
Dennis Day:So my mom was a little more attached particularly when they had lived 10 years in a really small, tight knit community and done the potlucks and all this that she was going to really miss out on this social life when they moved. But my dad was more like no, this has to be done.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Let's get busy. You know Well that's another very important point, dennis is community. I mean often it's not just the house, especially if the kids grew up there and you all went to school functions together and got to know the neighbors. Everybody got together, raised their kids together. We're in and out of each other's houses. It's the neighborhood that is such a loss. Oh my goodness, that's another very big one.
Judy Gratton:Where's the local pharmacy, the grocery store?
Judy Gratton:the cars that you know there, the shortcuts you know how to take if you're driving those sorts of things All of those come into play. It's funny because when I left the first house we owned, we were in for about five years. We moved in when my daughter was two and she's now 39. We were only in it for like four or five years, but when I left I cried. We were still leaving behind and I was much younger than I am now. I think it's definitely more difficult as you get older, but it happens for a lot of people who have a home and a community that they enjoyed. Even if it's a good thing like moving into a bigger house, a better school district still there's a loss leaving behind, absolutely Bringing up the idea of any age in terms of this transition.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:If you're an older couple and you're moving because it's just too hard to manage in two or three level house it's too much space and it's harder to get around Maybe you've taken a couple of falls. The real reason for moving is safety. Downsizing brings you close not only to the loss of the home but your own mortality. That may be the elephant in the room that nobody really wants to talk about If we're 80-something and we move into an apartment independent living.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:I have a girlfriend whom I've known for 65 years. We grew up as little kids on the same block and of course both live in very different cities. Now she lives in Austin and I live here. But she recently gave up her home of 35 years that where she'd raised her daughter to move into this studio apartment. She couldn't afford more than a studio. If you look at the cost now of independent living places, it is outrageous. She had to get rid of almost everything. She was a professor, she had books and books, a whole room of books. Those all had to go, except for a little bookshelf in where she lives now. She's kind of in shock. She can't drive anymore. She's losing her memory. Her kids were frantic about it. It's absolutely what had to be done, but it was a big transition.
Dennis Day:So if someone is feeling these depression, anxiety, anger, grief what are some techniques or methods to help people overcome these and get the job done or move on?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:I think it's the same as with any kind of grief counseling. Talking about it helps enormously. Talking with your pastor, a therapist or close friends who really understand it, who can just listen, without trying to problem solve, without trying to say maybe you can stay there just two or three more years. You need to find a listener who really gets the depth of the pain and doesn't try to smooth it over, doesn't try to make you feel better, but says okay, this is the stage you're in at this point in your life. If there's a couple involved and there's conflict around that, couples therapy or marital counseling with your pastor can be essential. You can talk it through together.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:In my experience very often people say things in couples counseling to each other that they've never said before at home A shock to both of them. You know I didn't know you felt that way or what. You're really angry with me about that. You know that comes up a lot and to acknowledge that this kind of transition requires that kind of sometimes professional help fully as much as, say, the death of your parents or the death of a child or something that we think of is, oh, of course you'd go into a support group. I don't know that there exists support groups for people going into downsizing housing.
Judy Gratton:It would be an excellent thing to have, wouldn't?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:it? Yeah, that would be absolutely we should start that.
Dennis Day:Yeah, we should.
Judy Gratton:Because when you talk about the listeners Dennis can attest to this we spend a lot of time doing that. Oh, you people are like therapists. From the standpoint of being similar in age, I can relate. I tell them I'm going through the same thing because we have a two-story house on a lot that's way too big and I just don't want to do all the things that are required. One of the things that is so difficult is that you watch homes where people cannot take care of them, refuse to leave and the homes begin to deteriorate and then, when they don't have a choice anymore or they're gone, you're left with something that is not as much value as it could have been had it been maintained. The paint's peeling off the house, the yard is so overgrown you can't see the front door. It just goes on and on, and it's really not their fault, other than the fact that they could have maybe moved earlier and avoided that.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:So you know that's another very critical point because in a way that has a life of its own, mm-hmm. Very critical point because in a way that has a life of its own, you could appeal to the person by saying, if this is a living organism, your home and the paint on the walls and the roof that you put in five years ago, you know that doorstop that has all the stages of growth of your grandchild, don't you want to maintain it and care for it so that it can be passed on to another generation?
Judy Gratton:And a lot of times, when the decision is finally made to make the move and they've seen what their neighbor's homes have sold for, they have this expectation that their home is going to be the same thing, and the problem is that they need a new roof and the furnace is 25 years old and the electrical box is maybe not up to code anymore, and it just goes on and on, and every one of those subtracts value from what the home could sell for, and that's really another thing that's hard for people to wrap their heads around, because that money is what they're going to live on, most likely in the future.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Absolutely so.
Dennis Day:Yeah, that's our American way is that you at least for since post-World War II you buy the home, live in it, you sell, take the equity and then that's what you live on in retirement. And this has been pretty effective for a lot of people because the home values have skyrocketed so they can leave with a significant amount of money that they could be in a retirement community, they could go to a smaller place, and without that equity they're really limited on what they can do, and in my case, my mother's 93. Well, she's run out of that money. I mean, it can only last so long, right? So? And now we're trying to get her on Medicaid so that she has continues to be able to stay in the same place. But if you let your home go, you're reducing the amount of money you have in that end-of-life cycle.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, and it brings up the whole practical aspect of all of this, because there's the emotional attachment and then there's the pragmatics of it. And you know, years ago, when I was trying to make a difficult decision, someone said, well, just take a, a legal pad and draw a line down the middle and put pro and con. Well, in this case you might put practical and on one side and, uh, attachment or emotional or love on the other idea, you know, so you can list all these things you're talking about. You know we need that.
Judy Gratton:Yeah, that was the. My next question is how? How do you help people differentiate between their emotional attachments to things and and what's practical, what you know, what to be done? No matter what you, you can't keep all those books that you have.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, exactly what you just said that you know on the on the on the reality side would be, for example, in my friend's case she's too distracted to drive, it's dangerous to drive, she keeps falling. She's she wouldn't say this, but she is. But her short-term memory is horrible. So you know she forgets things. When I visit her I end up saying, well, you know, you put that in the freezer. It really belongs in the stove. She just can't manage the day-to-day.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:And those would actually be on the practical side. Yeah, they would be on, let's face, reality side. And and the cost? And, uh, she lives in austin, so she just sold this huge home for four hundred thousand dollars. That home in almost any neighborhood in seattle would go for over a million. Yeah, so you know there's. You have across the country, you have different realities of pricing and all of that. And how long is that money going to last? And then on the other side, you have all those books, all those cherished memories, the canopy bed that is still in the little child's room even though her daughter's in her thirties. You have all the attachment things.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:And to be able not to demonize your feelings, I think that's so important, to be able to say it matters. It matters to me and it's about love. It's about the great love that I had for my daughter that I still have the canopy bed in there, because I love going in there, just look at it and to remember it. And at the same time, it's a both. And you know, which I think is actually really a marker of aging is to be able to face the paradox of life.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Almost everything as we get older. It's not either or it's not. I'll stay in my home until I drop dead, or I just, you know, leave everything and I go, and I, you know, give it all away and I grieve for the rest of my life. Neither one of those are good alternatives. The alternative is to face both end and to say, yes, it's going to hurt like heck, but I'm going to leave it. And you know, oh, one idea I had was to take pictures of things in the house, and you could actually even old school make an album. All of our pictures are on our tiny little phones, but even if they're saved on the iCloud, it's still not the same, I think, as having an actual photograph album that would have a picture of the canopy bed. This is where she grew up. This is what I love about this house.
Judy Gratton:I actually have suggested getting index cards and putting the photo on the card and writing your story why it's important to you, like taking a picture of that piece of the door jamb with all the and then writing your story on the back. Because, although your family members don't want the things I'm sure the daughter doesn't want the canopy bed but they would appreciate what your thoughts were about that canopy bed. So, whether you put it in a Dropbox file or in an index box, in the box you can pick it up and look at it and read your story and remember the importance of it, which I've suggested that to clients. I've even given clients boxes. It's easier said than done. I think it's a good I've been doing that with things that I've given away. I've taken photos of them.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:That's brilliant. Are you sure you don't want to become a therapist?
Judy Gratton:I think we might be a little bit here.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:You know, once years ago I had a client who was a hairstylist and she would talk about when I get people in my chair, and then they would tell her their whole life stories. Well, how is that so different? Oh, in fact I have a friend who was a psychologist for a while and he said no, I think I can do better help for people by selling them houses, and became a real estate agent and loved his work because I think they're so similar.
Judy Gratton:It's such an emotion. It doesn't matter how old they are, it's every day in real estate's a new day. You don't know what you're going to be coming up against, but the emotions that can evolve. Commercial real estate is a different beast. I don't do it. It's all analytical, and at least that's been my experience. So residential is very emotional.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Yeah, of course. No, that's a wonderful idea, anything that you know. They talk about how a teddy bear for a child is a transitional object. Right that a child a transitional object, right that a child, say, who's in a divorced home, goes back and forth. My daughter had a Big Bird doll that she grabbed onto the neck of that thing and the neck got so thin you could barely the threads, you know. But she would take Big Bird with her back and forth. Well, this is the same concept. They're back and forth. Well, this is the same concept. Whatever Like, for example, if you had a big yard and you had beautiful plants in the yard, well, you know, even if you move into a condominium that has not, doesn't even have a deck, you can have a windowsill where you can plant something that reminds you of home.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Bring the rose with you, even if it's miniature roses that you get at the QFC, you know, but they're the same color and when you water them and smell them, you can go.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:This is I'm still home, you know and on a profound level, one of the things that this can can inspire in people going through this kind of a loss.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:It's the same as going through any death.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:It kind of brings you to the dark night of the soul in yourself, yes, but it can help you if you, if you use it in the right way and you can journal about it, as you say, write stories about it, write your feelings, do art about it.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:It can bring you to a place where you realize that home is deep inside of you and that, in a way, everything in the environment around you was a projection of that love, that attention, but that even in death, you take it with you, that home is a part of you, so that the transition into a smaller space is not really that significant. If you can get to the place where you say, okay, it's there within me and will always be within me, and whether you want to call it divine love or Carl Jung would call it the self with a capital S, it's who you are deep inside and helping to transition like this and to let go. Anytime you let go of things in your external life, whether it's a loved one who died or a beautiful home that you tended and cared for all those years, the act of letting go brings you to what you will never let go of which is your own deep self.
Judy Gratton:I like that, I really like that idea.
Dennis Day:Well, we're getting deep into emotions here. How can the downsizing impact a person's identity, especially if they associate the home to family stability, history and a sense of self?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, that's a great question and a good follow through to what I just said, because that's about the death of the ego, and we all have one and we all need one to survive in the world, to thrive, to say here I am, I'm Elizabeth Clark Stern and I've done all this stuff and I've made all this money and I've published this book. But in the end, again, it's a part of saying what is my identity? Who am I really? Am I the person who has created all these things and done all these things? Yes, that's good, that's good and I can be proud of that. Can I move to a new place in my life where I can let go of the need to identify with who I am, what I look like, what I've done, and instead identify with the great, deep love that I have to connect, to attach, to give, to be with?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:And this is a very, very difficult transition and one of the books that I think would be marvelous for people to read. It's not specifically about transitioning from one home to another. It called falling upward by richard roar and it's about I think the subtitle is something like uh, finding a new dimension to yourself in the second stage of life. I like that. Yeah, yeah, and he's one. He's on youtube. If you want to go on youtube and just search richard roar, he's all over the place, he's how do you?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:spell roar r-H-R. Okay, richard, and he's a Franciscan friar, but he's the most unorthodox Franciscan friar I've ever run into. He talks about sex and he talks about all the dimensions of life, the grittiness of life, with great humor, and he looks like Santa Claus. I mean, he's just this marvelous guy.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:But Falling Upward is about. You know, when you begin to fall from the identity that you have forged all your life, the success, the living in the fancy neighborhood, the nice car, all of these monikers of identity that late in life, just don't, it doesn't hold. It doesn't hold psychologically, because either you have to move or you just begin to intuitively look around you and say is this really me? Do I need all this? And it doesn't mean that making money is bad, it doesn't mean that living in a beautiful home or a rich home is bad at all. You take all that with you, but you begin to transition into a place where identity is based on connection, relationship, the moment, the moment of your life, now. Now, precisely because you don't have that many years left you know, if you're looking at 76, I certainly. I mean, maybe I have another decade, who knows, another year, who knows. But it brings into focus the very preciousness of your experience of life and your own journey away from an identity that's based on anything exterior that's very.
Judy Gratton:I had never thought of that before like that.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:That is incredibly um deep I gotta tell you guys, it's also so freeing.
Judy Gratton:Well, I don't think people, you know, it's been my experience that it's like if I don't have this thing, this cup, this, whatever it is, you know I'm going to be lost. They're not. Most people don't spend their lifetime looking inside and they're looking outside, and so that transition from one to the other I think has got to be, um, if you haven't done it, it's got to be kind of difficult.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:So it's very difficult, but if you can and uh, it's like. It's like people who have nightmares, for example. I do a lot of work with dreams because dreams are an incredible landscape for understanding where you are in life and sometimes the most horrible nightmares are about psyche, your spirit, your dream maker shaking you and saying wake up. Wake up, you know. If there's a wolf coming in the door, what is it in your life? You need to turn and face and confront and in my experience, people dream about houses a lot.
Judy Gratton:They do.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:I do.
Judy Gratton:But I always tack that one up because that's what I do for a living.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, maybe I mean dreams you know exist on so many levels. But I dream of my grandmother's house I dream of in dreams, dreams. The house symbolizes yourself. That is you, your house. So if you dream of your grandmother's house, I think it's that that's where my sense of myself was born when I was a little girl. Somehow I attach it to grandma's house even more than the house I grew up in with my family, just because she was so loving and it was so different and it was so strange and wonderful.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:But dreaming about houses, especially if you have to leave one, can be another way that you can say wow, what love lived here. How do I take this love that was in every corner of this house and put it inside of me so that I take it not only to the new house, the downsized house, but take it out in the world, take it to my children, my grandchildren. The plants that I plant and put on the windowsill, those are the questions. I think that could be. That I plant and put on the windowsill, those are the questions.
Judy Gratton:I think that could be transformative for people. Now, speaking of children, one of the major conflicts that we run into when people are downsizing is many of their children. Either they want to be totally involved and tell their parents how they're going to do things, or they don't want to be involved at all, or they're frustrated with their parents because they won't let things go and it comes across. It causes tension and anxiety and, oftentimes, conflict. What would you say to the children? What would you say to the brother or the sister or anyone who's trying to assist someone in this transition, because I know they don't think about it.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, that's a tough one, that is very tough, and I'm just dealing with this the other day with someone. I think part of it is to start with the parents actually, because often all this tension gets escalated because the parents give the kids too much power over their emotional lives. And if one child says, mom, you've got to move right away and I've got to take over your finances, and the other one says, well, I don't want anything to do with it, I think you should just stay where you are, blah, blah, blah, and they're fighting In a way. It's kind of back to your identity question, dennis.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:It's as an aging person. Do you own your own value? And say, okay, this is very hard for me, I'm very attached to the house, I don't want, I don't think you need to take over the finances. If I need somebody to help me with finances, charles Schwab, thank you very much. You know, it's the parent being able to not be railroaded by their kids and to not put up with that kind of conflict. And if the kids are going to be in conflict, you'd say to the kids well, go away. You guys figure this out and I see that more often than you'd think that there's a oh no, you see it all the time.
Judy Gratton:I had a very dear friend and her and she. She had been raised during World War II. She was a hoarder and my first experience with her is she had asked me to help her clean out a room. At the end of cleaning out the room she was so mad at me because I would pick up like a piece of ribbon this big and go to throw it away and she would say I can use that. When I left. I'm like I will never do that again. You know it's she. I have no idea, I didn't. I know when she passed her kids just went in and threw everything into dumpsters Rightfully so.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Yeah.
Judy Gratton:Oh how sad. The house was bad but but that they had a lot of anger at her because they wanted to come in and clean it up and she did not want them to come in and clean it up. I don't know what she thought would happen if I came in and helped her with one room, but it was. Ooh, the tension around that is terrible.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, and hoarding is a mental illness. Yes, that is terrible. Well, and hoarding is a mental illness. I mean, it's something that, as you say, goes back to the anxiety and the loss in World War II. So I need to hold on to everything. And when I worked in the foster care system, kids would put old pizza crust under their bed, they would hoard food in fear of starvation if they had been locked in a room or something you know. So there's no way that children or, you know, god forbid, a real estate agent can intervene with that kind of incredible anxiety and acting out of anxiety. If you're talking just to the children because that was your question again, I would stress that you need to say to them well, in the end this is your folks' decision and I understand your anxiety, but your conflict is making it worse.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:You two have got to either work together or just let one of them take over and the other one go to Madagascar or whatever, get out of the picture.
Judy Gratton:And I think that I would love to make them aware, because they're in a period of their life where they're not doing this and they don't see how this changed. Like you said, it's about mortality too. You're getting to a place where the things to look forward to are a little bit spooky. They're not. You know, I'm going off to college, I'm getting my first house, I'm getting married, I'm having children, and then suddenly it's like, oh, now what? And they don't see that, and I think I would love to. If anyone is listening to this because of their family downsizing. Please take it into consideration that it's really important to be supportive, and I had someone tell me a long time ago that when someone, if they're picking up the cup, they'll start telling you the story around the cup. Let them tell you the story.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Oh yes.
Judy Gratton:And then it's easier for them to pack it or give it away. Transition it's much more important to I think, give the people the grace to work through those items, absolutely Whatever it is yeah.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Yeah, that's back to the attachment. You know how significant and how strong that attachment is to the cup. Yes, to whatever it is tools. I've done this a lot dad's hammer and I'm not giving up dad's hammer, not giving it up, yeah so it is just that, that simple so it's that simple and it's that deep and it's that complex and it's that hard, but the kids are.
Dennis Day:the kids are coming from a different place. They don't know what the this feeling is, because they've never experienced that feeling of their 80 year old mother. They have their own agenda. I've got to get her into a safe place. I got to get her into a place she can afford, and I'm this house is crumbling, we got and.
Dennis Day:I'm busy and I got to get her into a place she can afford. This house is crumbling and I'm busy and I got to get this done fast and I was guilty of that. I just did not understand the feelings of attachment my mom had, the certain things like where's this coming from? Well, now we know. And if you're 40 and you have a busy life with kids, et cetera, you can't understand somebody who is feeling the grief and loss of that move.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Right.
Dennis Day:Because you haven't experienced it.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Absolutely, and there's no real way to open their eyes to that either. I mean, I think it's important to parents at some point to just set limits on it and say look guys, don't do this. And I'm not going to explain it to you one more time.
Judy Gratton:And that takes communication and I think when you hit that conflict and anger, the communication goes out the window. Absolutely each other and and it and sometimes it takes strength on the part of the parent to step and say that from people who didn't have that strength to begin with, it's, it's difficult, it's really. This is such an emotional issue. I am that's why I said I'm so grateful that you're here. Dennis has a story I don't know if he ever told you it's one of my favorites. This story I don't know if he ever told you it's one of my favorites about his mom's pie plate. Oh no, no, can you go with that again? For us.
Dennis Day:Sure, we were moving her from independent living to assisted living. You can't have a stove in assisted living. You can have a microwave but you can't have a stove or oven for safety. Apparently it's a rule. She was holding onto these pie pans. They were $12 pie pans, glass that you could get at. Fred Meyer, who said it was so hard, Didn't understand it. I do now I totally, totally get it that this was not just giving up a couple of glass pie pans. It was giving up the lemon meringue pie she made for my father at his birthday. Or the pie, the strawberry rhubarb pie that came after picking strawberries out in the field, or the Christmas pumpkin pie. She was giving all that up and she hadn't done any pie for years and years and years. But it didn't matter. It was tough and it was hard to understand because I was not in her place and I think that is a perfect example of what we're talking about here.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Did you let her take the pie pans with her? I didn't.
Judy Gratton:Such a bad son? No, you're not a bad son.
Dennis Day:She did give them up. Yeah, it was, I made things like well, okay, mom, you can come over to my house and make pie or something. But you know, I'm sorry, I don't know if I was just mean or ultimate, but I just think you can't take them. You can't. You don't have room. She's going from. You know, 600 square feet, two bedroom place to under 300. And they're just she won't be able to use them. So I feel bad about that time.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:I'm impressed with how much you've grown and that you now say now I get it, now I understand. And here's an example. I was talking about my friend who recently moved, who had the daughter with the canopy bed. Well, she took a baby dish that was you know what her daughter ate out of, and she brought it to the new place but she put dirt in it and planted nasturtiums and put it in the windowsill sill. So if there's a way that the pie pans, for example, could have been repurposed, and you know dirt from the old house put into it, you sprinkle it with little seeds or something. That's a way that can have a magical, you know almost alchemical, transitional aspect to what you're doing.
Dennis Day:Well, is there a way to help adult children who have an agenda or busy, who don't have the emotional feelings to help them understand what their parent is going through?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, I would recommend family counseling. Okay, I would say, look, you guys don't get it and you know I'm a real estate agent and you need professional guidance.
Judy Gratton:I'm not sure I'd say that I don't know, elizabeth, we'll get that job if we tell them they need professional help.
Dennis Day:Find somebody else.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, seriously, you know, because I mean you can try to give them the pie pan story I think that's a great example of trying to help them understand how profound this is for their parents and how their resistance and their practicality I mean show them the two. Okay, here's all the practical stuff and here's what mom is going through. Here's all the practical stuff and here's what mom is going through. She's going through grief and loss and anger and bargaining and you know all of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. That's where mom is. I mean you can really help by or a family counselor, someone who can help you really see it from your parents' point of view and how understanding that will make it easier for everybody, because nobody needs all this conflict.
Judy Gratton:I think the kids begin to look at the parents as fragile as children and that they have to take care of.
Dennis Day:And.
Judy Gratton:I mean I. At one point my daughter started referring to my husband and I as her little parents. I can show you how little I am here and just any. Don't do that, you know, and it and so I. I see that a lot between parents and children, especially as parents get older.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:And they're not wrong. I mean, that's the thing. The kids are not wrong to look at the parents. And we are getting more fragile as we get older and we do have falls and we do have lapses of memory and we do screw up on the technology because we've never understood it in the first place. But I think again, just encouraging empathy and I don't know, that it would help to say you're going to be there one day. God willing, you'll live to be 80 and you'll experience what this is like, that probably wouldn't help. No, because they won't get it until they're rich. What you guys have to deal with is the reality of how hard all this is. It all falls to you to try to enlighten people.
Dennis Day:Well, we've talked a lot about this in previous shows that that planning ahead, having the if you're a senior, talking with your family about what you want before it has to happen. In my case, and so many cases, all this happens at a crisis point, when mom falls and has to move or the house is so bad they can't get around Instead of reacting that you have a plan and then the person who has to move has some sense of control. Tough to do, I mean, because I don't know, maybe it's American, maybe it's just human nature. We don't plan ahead as much. We're not proactive, we're reactive.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, I think that's very critical, very important point. My husband's brother, who's only three years older than him, died a few months ago just suddenly, just had a heart attack and went, and my kids were so jolted by it. They both texted and said you guys have to give us a real. I mean, we have a big folder of all of the legal stuff and we've done all that. They said no, no, no. You've got to tell us exactly what you want, where you want the ashes. Do you want us to? You know, compost you or do you want real specific? Because it frightened them the fact that he could go so quickly. One of us could go so quickly, so we did. We said look, we want a park bench and above the bluff at richmond beach and at night secretly mix our ashes together and put them in the bushes there.
Dennis Day:Good for them, though. I mean, that's really a healthy way to live your life.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Yeah, to look ahead Absolutely.
Dennis Day:Are there any therapeutic approaches and techniques that you can help clients process their feelings of loss while preparing them emotionally for a new home?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Oh boy, oh, it's so wonderful that you ended that sentence with new home, because I think part of it is understanding that this new home is something you can imbue with new vision, new dreams, color the more detail that they take in. Okay, that was that way in the old house, but you know, I didn't really like the way the window shades were in the back bedroom, so the details of how I will make this so special for myself and my husband say it's the couple. You know, really almost like you're decorating a doll's house and a child. You know, uh, opening up your imagination, seeing the positive aspects of the fact that you won't have to climb the stairs to do the laundry or whatever it is, emphasizing those kinds of positive aspects and, at the same time, talking about writing a journal, maybe what you're talking about with the stories, writing stories, taking pictures, thinking about what do I want to remember about the house and how can I preserve that in a way that is small and fits in the new house and is all about.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:You see the Richard Rohr book that I was talking about. The most wonderful thing about it is that he says in the second half of life you really are free of the things you talked about, dennis, about when you're in your 40s and you're working two jobs and you're raising kids, and often women are working two jobs and raising kids. You know, gone are the days of the 1950s, they're all. Life is so stressful now. Well, what if you can let that go, and even let go the idea of having to maintain the lawn where your house you know, your beautiful house was. Focus on the fact that this is going to be a transition into a free and enjoyable time of my life. And how do I consciously invite that and create that? And take that art class that I never had the time to take? And, you know, if you miss your neighborhood friends, you know, invite them to join a yoga class with you. So you see them once a week, you know. But just be very intentional about how you can bring value and love and joy into your life.
Dennis Day:Have you ever dealt with clients that have kind of resisted or felt the loss and grief of downsizing and then suddenly found out that the next place was really positive?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Yes, yes, yeah. Even my friend that I talked about, who downsized from her big house, is kind of in shock. The upside of it is, I hear her saying, oh, but then I went to this, this event that they had, and now they have exercise classes every morning and I don't have to cook ever because they have meals. I mean, in spite of the fact that she's still kind of going through the transition I've seen, I finally said to her you seem more alive to me than I have seen you in a long time, when you were back in your house, your big house, alone with your dog, miserable and not having the energy to get out and go to the senior center. Well, now you live in a senior center. You can't avoid it. You have all this wonderful opportunity for interaction. So, yes, that's one example.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:She's a friend, not a client, but I've seen it, especially with the death of a spouse. If a spouse dies and then say the wife has now got to downsize, needs the resources financially. There's also a joy in that, a joy in joining with a community. I knew someone who moved to a place called Sungaya. I know Sungaya, you know Sungaya.
Judy Gratton:I have a friend who lives in Sungaya.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Oh well, talk about it and listen to people about it.
Judy Gratton:Yeah, it's a great place. I mean, they have very limited housing there, so it's hard to get in.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well it is, but the person I know who moved into Sungaya is an what do they call it? A not intentional community. There's a word co-housing. Is that it?
Judy Gratton:Yeah, but I believe it is an intentional community too. Yeah, I've watched that place develop for decades. Now they do. That's a very interesting place. It's in Bothell.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, and the person I know again is in a studio apartment. Her bed is in her quote living room. Person I know again is in a studio apartment. Her bed is in her quote living room. She has a little kitchen.
Judy Gratton:I might know the same person.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:That's very possible. But in Sangai they have a fabulous garden, they grow a lot of their own food, they have a pizza oven oh yes, they've got a kiln for yeah, they've got all kinds of things.
Judy Gratton:Oh yeah, they've got all kinds of things.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Oh yeah, and they have. As I understand it, they host local political candidates, have all kinds of fundraisers and join and bring the community in, and again that person is not lonely anymore, ever.
Dennis Day:So yes, dennis, I've seen many positive outcomes so, so yes, dennis, I've seen many positive outcomes. So is living as a widow, or even as a couple you know, not not speaking to each other, because you've said everything it is loneliness a real severe problem right now. Oh, it's an epidemic.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:I think it's absolutely an epidemic, um, and I think there are all these articles, new York Times and all these other places and statistics and a terrible problem.
Judy Gratton:COVID did not help that.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Oh, the pandemic, oh my goodness, that was, yeah, that made it all much more obvious and much worse. And technology has not helped at all, absolutely, absolutely, even though I think one of the good things about the pandemic was Zoom.
Dennis Day:We are.
Judy Gratton:And I do a group.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Another thing I would highly recommend I facilitate a group at St Mark's, which is an Episcopal cathedral downtown in Capitol Hill in Seattle, and we have a group called the Third Actors, meaning we're in the third act of our lives and we have in-person potlucks, but we also meet on Zoom every month and I think there's 60 members on the on the zoom call and third act. We all talk about aging and it's it's a support group. It's uh ways for people to bring up all their fears and anxieties. All of them are talking about this, and the widows especially, or the widowers. There's some men who are just extraordinarily lonely, but they meet at the potlucks, they talk. I'm hoping secretly that there'll be some romances that bloom out of this.
Dennis Day:Is this a new?
Judy Gratton:group, or do they have to be members of St Mark's?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, I think I don't think they have to be members, and I know one person who's a member of a different church.
Judy Gratton:How would they find information on this?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Just go on the St Mark's website, okay, or they could email me at ecstern at yahoocom, because I'm a facilitator.
Judy Gratton:Okay.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:And I'll put them on the email list and invite them in.
Judy Gratton:Okay, very good.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:But I would hope there are groups like this in community centers, in local churches. I haven't done an extensive search of it, but community, community, community, I think, is so much about what's important and giving back in the way that you can. I mean one of the things I recently did that I stumbled onto that I thought I would never do something like this, but in retirement, having only a few clients left, um, I joined a group through saint marks although it's not directly attached to St Mark's called Operation Night Watch, and a priest and a strapping young man and I the three of us go out in the evenings up and down the street on Broadway and we have bags of water and we talk to the homeless, the people who have chosen to leave their lights on the street. Most of them are drug addicted or mentally ill or both. And I was so nervous I thought, oh, this is not something I should be doing and my kids would be freaked out if they knew it. And I said but I got to tell you, the first gentleman that I walked up to was sitting on a bench and he was kind of twitching.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:And then he looked in my eyes and he said oh, who are you. You're new out here and I said, hi, my name is Elizabeth, what's your name? And we shook hands and it was so moving and I may never see him again. But I gave him water and socks and treats and uh, and he so grateful and any way that you can connect to the world like that. I mean a lot of people like to work with children. They go to children's hospital and hold babies these are all things that counteract loneliness. And you meet other people. I mean, I've met a lot of marvelous people who go out on the streets with me and we all really love it and it's strange, I guess, to really love doing something like that.
Judy Gratton:But uh, but there are many opportunities out there it's connection, it's it's communication, it's all of those things that you're lacking right now.
Dennis Day:So what's in your future, Elizabeth, your book author? Are there more books or retirement to, or something like that?
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:I'm in what I call divine flow, if you will. I have been blessed with from my life as a Jungian therapist and most recently from the work I've done at St Mark's. I just feel a presence of divine love and I feel it flowing through me and through all the people around me, whether it's the schizophrenic on the streets or singing in the choir. I'm singing in the choir and I just want to follow that flow and trust that it will lead me to give and to receive and to be a part. And yes, I've got another book that I've finished and I don't know if the publisher is going to like it or not. It's about artificial intelligence and humanity, but we'll see and wrote another play and a group of us we call ourselves the Shrink Raptors because we're all therapists who had a life in the arts before we became therapists. So we really enjoy doing plays together. So whatever comes in this afternoon, I'm adopting a kitty.
Judy Gratton:Oh, good for you. That's wonderful. Well, I thank you so much. This, I think, is probably my very favorite podcast we've done in two years.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, thank you, it was so great to meet you and, dennis, so good to see you again.
Dennis Day:Yeah.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Very well. Oh well, there's some of my books I forgot there have a few there yeah, the uh.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:The play out of the shadows is about the? Uh, the mistress and the wife of carl jung and their relationship. And recently I just got uh contacted by a woman in London, a filmmaker, who wants to make a film of it, and I gave her my blessing. I said, okay, great, write the screenplay. And I guess one of my favorites down at the bottom is Timeless Night, which is a play about Edith Stein and Viktor Frankl, who were both in Auschwitz together. And Viktor Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning. He's an incredible psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust and went on to create a whole school of psychiatry based on how you can survive in a place like Auschwitz by saying my soul is my own, the Nazis can take everything from me, but not my soul. And Edith Stein was an incredibly brilliant philosopher who had a conversion and became a Carmelite nun.
Judy Gratton:Oh my.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:And she wrote an open letter criticizing the Pope for his collusion in deporting Jews from Italy, and for that the Gestapo came and took her from the convent and put her in Auschwitz. So this play is an imagined night when the two of them were thrown into this old shed together for various misbehaviors and met each other and talked and knew each other and kind of fell in love toward the. So anyway, thank you, Thank you for showing those books.
Dennis Day:You've been busy.
Judy Gratton:I've got my little children's book.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Well, thank you both. This was just delightful.
Judy Gratton:Oh, thank you, Thank you.
Dennis Day:Thank you, elizabeth, it's been awesome. This is a topic that we've really wanted to dive deep into, and you know it's really hard to find a therapist. I'm so grateful that you took the time to be with us, and I really hope all your journeys are positive, filled with joy. I'm so excited that your life just sounds full of abundance, and I appreciate that all the help that you gave me in the past. So I'm going to say goodbye. See you next time.
Elizabeth Clark-Sterns:Thank you so much, dennis. Thank you so much, judy, so good to meet you.
Judy Gratton:It's a pleasure to meet you.
Dennis Day:For watching or listening to Getting your Edge Out how to Right Size your Home and Life podcast. We have many episodes audio and on our YouTube channel, getting your Edge. We would love to hear from you Comment, like, subscribe, all those things Plus, if you really want help with your housing situation. We always, always communicate and help people for free. Okay, we consultations are free, so we'd love to hear from you at edgegroupteamcom. Just drop us a line. Thank you so much. See you next time, bye-bye.
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