Difficult: Mothering Challenging Adult Children Through Conflict and Change (Ep. 36)

“Does anybody have a map?...” - a lyric from the show Dear Evan Hansen, sung by the parents of the show’s adolescent children.

If you are a “Mom in the Trenches” of serious mental illness in your child, you also know the feeling - all too well .

Judith R. Smith, (mother, psychotherapist, professor, researcher on women’s issues as they age) noticed that the topic of mothering challenging adult kids was a topic that had no map - at least on the bookshelves.

So she researched, and wrote one, and it’s available this month.

We ask:

• Why this book?
• What did you learn in your research and interviews with mothers of challenging adult children?
• What does shame have to do with it?
• “ Unpaid and unrecognized maternal caregiving work continues to limit women’s quality of life” - what can mothers do to help themselves?
• Did you learn any tips for helping or handling our challenging adult kids?

“Difficult brings to life the conflicts that arise for mothers who are confronted with the unexpected, burdensome, and even catastrophic dependencies of their adult children associated with mental illness, substance use, or chronic unemployment”

Links:

Amazon - get the book!

Twitter: @JudithRSmithPhd

Judith’s facebook page: Difficult Mothering

judithRSmith@difficultmothering.com

Difficult Mothering Website

JASA - for aging services in NYC 

Who Are the 3 Moms?

Want us to cover a topic? Ask us a question? Facebook page @Schizophrenia3Moms

Randye Kaye -Broadcaster, Actress, Voice Talent, Speaker, and Author (“Ben Behind his Voices”, Happier Made Simple)

Miriam Feldman – Artist, Mom, Author “He Came in With It”

Mindy Greiling – member of the Minnesota House of Representatives for twenty years. Activist, Legislator, Author (“Fix What You Can“)

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to our podcast, Schizophrenia. Three moms in the trenches. From the place where schizophrenia and real life collide. East Coast, West Coast, Middle America. With Miriam Feldman, Mindy Gryling, and Randy Kaye. Today we're going to be talking about an expert who wrote this amazing book specifically about mothering, challenging adult children. And I'm so excited to bring Judith Smith on in a few minutes. But I want to say hi, Mindy, and hi, Mimi. It's been a few weeks for us. How's everybody doing? Very well. Good, good. Mindy, I understand you've been appointed to a very prestigious board in the field. Can you tell us a bit about that?

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Yes, it's the Schizophrenia and Psychosis Action Alliance. Many people might know it as Sarda, which it used to be. They changed their name a couple of years ago, but I'm just really excited. I'm finishing up my term with a local NAMI affiliate being president. And so I have time. They asked me in a sweet spot. So I said yes. And I'm anxious to um to further the cause for serious mental illness with action. It just rings all my bells. And Dr. Laitman, by the way, is on this board, who was a previous guest. So that's an extra bonus.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Awesome. Awesome. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Yeah. And if I could say one more thing, I just had a book that I read yesterday, yesterday. And it's Randy's book that she can tell us when it's coming out and how to get it. But I actually have to say, I started reading it in the afternoon and I stayed up late to finish it. So it is a wonderful book. And my favorite parts, of course, were the parts where you shared about your vulnerable life that you've had, and including your son. But there were parts I didn't even know about you. So thank you for writing it. It will help all of us.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Thank you so much. The book's called Happier Made Simple. Choose your words, change your life. And it's the same old advice everyone's been giving for centuries, but told through my stories and my voice. And so that is pretty much every nonfiction book that is self-help out there is the same advice. But when you hear something through stories, and it came from 10 years of speaking about our family situation and people going, How do you stay so positive? And I said, Well, I there's some things I say to myself because it's not, yes, it's what happened to you, absolutely, but it's also what we tell ourselves about what happens to us. And so I try to write a lighthearted book because I haven't yet meditated. I can't get through yoga class. I just want, you know, just tell me what to do. So I wrote it. It is officially launching on February 23rd. And I will tell you, our listeners, that uh the paperback is out now. But on the 23rd, the Kindle will be available for only 99 cents. So if you're one of these that goes back and forth from the paperback to the Kindle or just want to have it with you on an airplane, even if you buy the paperback, if you buy the Kindle on February 23rd, that helps me because then it'll kind of shoot hopefully to the top of its category and more people will be aware of it. But I thank you. If you're watching on YouTube, Mindy held it up. If not, it's called Happier Made Simple. And thanks so much. I'm really excited. Isn't that a cute cover? It's all the colors and everything. So that's our news. Um, I also want to say that Facebook, we're up to 927 followers on our we're getting close to a thousand, which is cool. And in terms of our listeners, our podcast listeners, thank you. We doubled the amount of downloads per month in the last 30 days. We had over 5,000 downloads in the last 30 days. Wow. Yeah, I just like usually it's you know 2,500. And I'm like, what happened? And so we're we're approaching 25,000 downloads in all with 39 episodes. So we're really exciting that it's beginning to reach more people. And our YouTube subscribers, thank you. The comments are growing, and of course, we're getting people asking us for advice. And I want to let you know, we are not psychiatrists, we are not the expert that we're about to bring on, Judy Smith, Judith Smith. We are moms who have been through stuff, and we that's why we bring on experts. So we are happy to give support and say you're not alone, and we're gonna steer you toward our episodes for the people who have not just the family experience, but the education and the practice to help us. And so that's why we want to interview experts as well as talk about our own experiences. So thank you. We learn along with our audience.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

I learn a lot myself on these podcasts as long as I've been dealing with this. It's so exciting to be educating others, but we get educated too.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Oh, absolutely. There's always, always more to learn. And I will say that in upcoming episodes, we're many of you reacted to Carson's story, and his mom is coming on. Also, we have a follower in the UK who uh talks about having SMI, serious mental illness, and her siblings. She wants to interview us. So we thought that would be interesting. We're bringing on uh David Israelian, who has a peer support network, and a lot of people on our Facebook page are excited about our upcoming live podcast called Ask the Mom. So that's March 17th. If you want information on that, just go to Facebook and Google, you know, search us and you'll see it there. There's a lot ahead.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

It might not be um experts, but we have opinions.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

We have lots of opinions. We have lots of opinions. And you know, they say you haven't arrived until you've gotten one bad review. And so we did get one bad review on Apple that said they're not experts, they shouldn't give their opinions. And so we have arrived. And uh, if you like us on Apple, then we appreciate your positive reviews as well. So we're here, we're doing our best like everybody is. So thank you. With that in mind, I want to bring on our guest, and I'm so excited. When I saw this book, I thought, oh my God, this book should have been written 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And I think we can all agree that the parenting contract goes on a lot longer than we thought. I thought, I'll have a baby, 18 years of my life, and then goodbye, have fun, pay your own way to college and make a life. So sometimes the contract's a little longer than we thought. And as we well know, and many of our listeners know, parenting, but this book is specifically about mothering, uh a child with differences, a child that has adult challenges, has its own pathway. And we've been there, and I just want to say that the author had me at first read with the call-out quotes like, you can divorce a difficult spouse. It's much harder to give up on a difficult child. And I specifically loved the chapters on serious mental illness, but um, we're gonna bring her on to talk about it. Um this author is a mother, psychotherapist, professor, and researcher on women's issues as they age, and a professor at Fordham University in New York City. So welcome, Judith Smith. Thank you. Wonderful to be here, and thank you for the work that you all are doing. Thank you. We are so excited. Now, your book comes out in about a week, right? February 15th?

SPEAKER_01 7:52

February 2nd. It was just a week ago. Because they didn't get it soon enough.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Got it. Okay, so you're holding. So the title of the book is Difficult. And tell us tell us about the book. Tell us why you wrote it. Can you tell us a little of your story and what drew you personally, not just professionally, to write this book?

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Sure. Um well, in my earlier career, I was studying early child development. So I worked with some very famous people. I made movies about moms and their babies in the first three years of life. I did policy papers about the importance of the first three years of life. It was really my whole focus was early child development. And then happened that I got older.

unknown 8:50

I don't know how.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Funny how that happened. I don't know somehow. I got older and my son got older. I had I have one child. Um, and you know, we had some bumps, not a lot, but I, you know, as an academic, I was curious, what are people writing about, you know, parenting in later life? I knew the whole world of parenting young babies. And anybody, we all know if you walk into what used to be bookstores, there's thousands of shelves on moms and their young babies, and you'd almost think that parenting ends when kids are five. Uh, there's a few books on adolescence, um, and that's sort of about it. Um, so I knew that this was not over, and I was shocked at the lack of any attention to, you know, actually being a mom to an adult child is the longest phase in an in the child in the mother-child relationship. You can be the parent to an adult child for 50, 60, or you know, now people live into 100. My friends' mom just is having her 109th birthday this week. Um so how does that change? How does being a mother change over those 50 years? So I realized somebody had to write about mothering in later life, and um maybe that would be me. And at the same time, as a social worker, I was aware of elder abuse and that um the explanation when you look at who's the main perpetrator of elder abuse, it's an adult child living at home uh with mental illness or substance abuse problems who's financially dependent on their parents. So this really surprised me. I couldn't make sense of this. Um, you know, as a child development person, I was curious: were these kids always aggressive? You know, what happened in that family that this was going on? So that was one question over here. And then there was the other question about, you know, how do adult children's problems affect women as they get older?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Okay, and I know you said in your book specifically, you're not discounting the dads, but your research in this book was more about mothering. And can you just say a little bit about that? And then I think we want to get into your chapters on serious mental illness. So, why the focus on mothers?

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Well, first of all, from a research point of view, I was doing a qualitative study. This is not a large sample of like 5,000 people where you can control for all kinds of differences. This is a small qualitative study. And I couldn't account for the differences between men and women in such a small sample. That was one reason I started only with women. And the other side is that I think I am a feminist, and there's I really think the idea of calling both parenting or caregiving as gender neutral is it's just not true that women take on most of the burden of parenting. I mean, there are now lots of dads who are, you know, we celebrate that they're taking two weeks um parenting week, but it's still, you know, I think we still are a society that assumes that it's women's place to do the nurturing work, to take care of problems at home.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

And I'm really glad that you picked mothers, and I don't think you'll get any disagreement from us here. One thing, though, I really also uh think we should highlight here for our listeners that I think is really important with your sample, and that is that you had half of the mothers were uh poor, and half of them were people of color. We just had a recent podcast on uh people of color, black indigenous people of color. And I think research is so historically focused on white people that I applaud you picking mothers and picking um demographic and ethnic diversity.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Thank you. That you know, um, you know, I started as a I am a social worker and our mission is to serve um the most vulnerable. And I started with low-income people. Um, and I actually, the way I got people is I went into senior centers and I said, you know, because I I want to say that I didn't start out to study severe mental illness. I set out to understand what are the problems in adult children's lives that impact moms. Um so when I was recruiting, but they had first of all, everybody had to have a kid who left home for a little while.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

So I didn't want sociologists call it perpetual parents. Like if you have a kid who has um you know is blind and has cerebral palsy, you know they're gonna be there forever. And very early you adjust your mental you know, future to know this is where you're gonna be. Um, did your kids leave home at all? Yes.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

But then they came back.

unknown 14:33

Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:33

I'm left for a day. One day. Well, he went up to college and he had his first psychotic break, which is which is very traditional. Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

So several. My son had had two or three years of being gone, and we thought he would progress after that. And he's now he lives with us temporarily, but he has an apartment, but it's definitely feeling perpetual. Right. I mean, not without a break, but afterwards, now it's perpetual.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

I think that I get the differentiation because we, I would say, I don't want to speak for all three of us, but I think we were not prepared when our children were younger to think this is going to be forever. Like I have friends, and I'm not comparing apples to oranges and saying one situation is worse or better than the others, but I have friends who have children with Down syndrome, and they knew from birth that, okay, this is going to be a different parenting experience. For serious mental illness, I always say it's like a game of shoots and ladders. Like you go up a few steps and then you go down a hundred steps, and then you go up a lot of steps and you go down a little bit. And it's so, and part of that is they leave and they come back, and they go to the hospital and they come back, and they go in a group home and then they're homeless, and then they come back, and and then maybe you don't let them come back. And so it, you know, it's in and out. And even I think for all of us, we each have sons that are in a different living situation officially, and there may be financial support from us, so it is more of a surprise with serious mental illness. And so if it's certainly different than what we thought, and if we could tell us, you know, like let's just jump for a minute, because it's the what we talk about here specifically in your chapters about serious mental illness. And I know you talk about substance abuse and all kinds of other things, as many ways to have a difficult child. Um I'd love to know what you found out. And if you want, you can ask us if that has been true for us. It's a conversation, and then later we will talk a bit about well, what do we do about it? So, what would you most like us to know, or what surprised you about what you found?

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Well, I think I remembered I didn't know what I was gonna find, right? And I didn't know what problems moms were gonna tell me about. And I discovered fairly quickly that most of the mothers were talking about serious mental illness. The womans who, you know, I had to screen people a little bit, you know, that it wasn't just my daughter's nasty and she doesn't come visit enough. And, you know, so it had to be a more sustained problem. So serious mental illness and drug abuse are both, because often they go together, um, were often the problem in the child. But I think what my book is about is what it's like to be the mother. You know, it's not about how do we fix our kids, it's about what is the experience of realizing you can't fix your kids, and how does it impact your life and what are the decisions you make? Um, you know, when I when you write a book, you have to look for the publisher wants companion books that other people have written. There weren't many on my topic, but there were a couple, and most of them said, let go, you know, move on. You know, when your kids disappoint us, let them go. It wasn't about mental illness per se.

unknown 18:07

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

But as I started talking to moms, none of these women, you can't, you know, I was not, you know, none of the women I spoke to could just let it go, that they were mothers, and that was their essential um identity. And the idea of having to face whether you you evict your child or not, you know, it's uh I can't I don't know if any mother can begin to put herself in that position. And um I think people who've reviewed the book say that I'm empathic to the mothers, and I think I really felt, you know, that this is a terrible burden that mothers are having to bear. And I think you asked me to think about some of the surprises that I came to out of this. And um, you know, my background is also social policy, and I was surprised that I ended up, you know, I'm glad you're on a board helping to deal with this, that mothers are being asked to put their finger in a dike that's just not working. I mean, we do not have the services to really, you know, we I think you I had in the chapter on mental illness, I explained the whole progression of deinstitutionalization and how in 1960s, out of human rights violations, all the huge hospitals were closed. And the assumption was we would create community mental health. And it was a wonderful plan that every community would have centers, they'd have vocational training, um, and parents would be the last, the last bastion of you know, help if everything, you know, but that's not what we have now. You know, we really have families being the main uh caregivers, and it's just not fair. Um and it can't work. I mean, it's not like you're getting getting, I mean, perhaps if you got a stipend for being the caregiver, if you got psychoeducation for how to do all of this, this is and you know when we talk about moms who are not educated, who don't have a sense of what mental illness is about. And if you're poor and you're black and you go to moms told me that the doctors just wouldn't talk to them. That they didn't have a sense, they were not certainly not included in the treatment plan. And I think if you've been part of NAMI, you know that's why Joyce Sperland started NAMI, is because she was a psychologist, they weren't allowing her being part of the plan.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

So right, we have definitely um, you know, there has been some improvement and some awareness that educating the family is very important. And you know, you're talking about family to family. We, and if you're listening and you don't know what that is, we did some episodes on that earlier. So just check our episodes. But what you're talking about, for instance, on in one of the comments on our page, uh actually one review of our podcast said, I'm someone who has lived in fear in my own home, right? Afraid of my own adult son. This book brings to light the unfair and unsafe burden that has been placed on families. And uh, so I will thought Mimi wants to talk, so her hand is up. Well, it's since you can't see me.

SPEAKER_03 21:46

I wanted to ask you about something that I think is also a pivotal component in this formula that's different for us mothers of adults with SMI, and that is. The concept of tough love has no place in treating serious mental illness. And initially, the learning curve is, you know, in the first few years, you hear so much about this as you're raising your kids, and you you have to re-educate yourself in terms of how you deal with them because you can't turn your back on somebody with mental illness the way you can to let, or it is it is advised to let people with certain kinds of drug issues and behavioral issues hit what they call rock bottom and then figure it out. And so there's no end, you know. And we all three of us here, I know, have had that moment of oh my god, this is it now for the rest of my life. You know, there's there's no end to the hands-on parenting. So I think that that that's what differentiates serious mental illness from most of the other circumstances, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

And I think I have so many things I'd like to say, but um one thing that was common across uh the women I talked to is that all moms, when their kids were in trouble, opened their doors to have the kids move back. Um and living together really depends how stressful that is, gets really intensified when you're poor and you're talking about having a one-bedroom at most apartment, and you have your daughter who's 55 and her son who's 18, and you're all living together for three years. Um so a big difference between the affluent moms who had uh kids with SMI and the poor moms was the more affluent women could afford to get a separate apartment for their daughter. However, this did not buy the mom freedom. She moved her daughter 21 times in 20 years. So her life was about trying to keep this girl safe, but she and her husband did have, you know, six hours on their own without their daughter. Um, so that is a big difference. That's one thing that money buys is the ability to have some separate space, to go on vacations, to be able to take care of yourself and address the needs of your child. But I think the strain of having an adult child who has serious problems move into your home is difficult. And that's the name of my book is difficult. And some people have criticized me, you know, as if I'm calling you know people's kids difficult, and that's pejorative. Um, but I just want to just say right in the very beginning of the book, I needed to explain, you know, why I chose that name. It's because, you know, the dictionary defines difficult is something that's hard to do, hard to carry out, difficult is hard to deal with or manage or overcome, and difficult is hard to understand. So mothering adult children is really hard to do, and this is for healthy kids too. People don't know how much they should say, how much money to give, what they should do. But tolering the tensions in a relationship with a struggling, angry, depressed, volatile kid is very hard to manage. And understanding the problems that might have caused your child's situation are really hard, and knowing how to intervene can feel impossible. And again, knowing your options depends a lot on your education and the access you have to services. So I use the word difficult in terms of what the mother is experiencing. And my hope is that people will start using this name and say, I have a difficult adult child, instead of saying, you know, my son is schizophrenic, or my son is this, or my son is an addict. That somewhere, because if you have a difficult adult child, there may be some options to make it a little less difficult.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Yeah. And actually, looking looking at your title and the way you just described it, you can also say it's difficult to parent my challenging child. Right. And I think you meant it in that way as well. Mindy, you had something you wanted to say.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Yes, I just I um think it's very appropriate. You know, anything any of us do is always criticized. You know, all of us have had our parts of our book, you know, slammed in our faces and things like that. It's just whenever you're dealing with this topic, you can't please everybody. So I think your title is very fine. Um, what I wanted to ask you about though is I wondered how many parents are in this cohort. I just um was delighted that you interviewed Leslie Carpenter, who told us about your book and suggested that we have you on. And I'm in Minnesota, she's in Iowa, but she's very active in the Iowa legislature. She's puts a lot of wise things on Facebook. We should have her for a guest at some point. Um, but she has a really hard road. And I wondered you described that in your book. So maybe you want to talk about that a little bit, but I also wondered how many in your cohort had as difficult of a situation as she does with her son. You know, she can't bring him home. There, you know, he's elsewhere, and it seems like there's always somebody worse off than than I feel like I am, as much as I complain and complain because I'm like a complainer. But um, but I just feel my heart goes out to people like her. How many mothers like that in your study?

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Well, I I'd say half the moms had been attacked by their kids. Um, I only had, I had actually one woman I was interviewing as we're talking, she said to me, you know, I love my son too much. We really shouldn't be living together, but I don't have the heart to put him out, and I know he will kill me. Wow. And um, I stopped, I said, wait, you know, um, we need to talk. If you are really in danger, we have to think about this. And um, but she had been in touch with social workers, and the person who referred her to me, unless you uh the mother herself has a psychotic illness and is not making right decisions, people, if you are cognitively okay, you have the right to make a decision, even if it's dangerous for you. Um, but I I didn't look so much at comparing how the severity of the kids' problems. I think like how how Leslie stands out for me is it's what actions did mothers take when facing a difficult situation. And Leslie was able to take her despair and and turn it into action and turn it into activism. And um I would say she is doing really well at really um having a full life. And the question is, how do we my book is the my book, Difficult Mothering, Challenging Adult Children through conflict and change. The first part is presenting the problem. You know, what is a difficult adult child? What is difficult mothering? What are the conflicts mothers feel? Uh, the second part is considering are there any can is there any room to make any changes here?

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Yeah, so let's let's go there because believe it or not, we're more than halfway through. And I unless there's, I mean, obviously we there's so much to the problem, and we know it, and our listeners, and as the comments come in on our pages, it's like I let my son move back in, and I don't know why I did, because now I'm I have to stay in my room all the time, and he's you know, it's it's like tough love doesn't work and letting go doesn't work, and it is so we all feel it, and I think most of our listeners do too. So I mean it resonated with so much of that part of the book. And I don't want you to want you not to get a chance to say anything about that that you wanted to say, but I would like to jump soon or now to so what do we do? What you know that you there's three parts to the book. You've set up the problem, and then you know you can talk about recommendations and things. So what what now?

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Well, I think you have to become aware of what you can change and what you can't change. And I love the story. I interviewed Pat Deegan, who was one of the uh women who started the recovery movement and mental illness. I don't know if you're familiar with her work.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

I am not. Mimi, are you?

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Um, she's a psychologist on the East Coast, and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was 16. And she's now 65 or something. So this is a ways back. And she was a star athlete, and the psychiatrist basically told her family and her, you know, you should drop out of high school, you shouldn't have stress, and uh, you're schizophrenic, and this is going to be your life. Avoid stress. So here's a 16-year-old girl, and she just went into her room and sat there smoking all day and thought this was going to be her future. But she had a grandmother who would come every day and knock on the door and say, Patricia, want to go shopping? She said, No. And then the grandmother would leave. And this went on for a number, who knows how long. But one day the grandmother knocked on the door and Patricia said, Okay, but I'm not going to push the cart. So they went food shopping. And you know, Pat Deegan said that was her grandmother who helped her, kept knocking and saying, There's a world out here. And but she didn't yell at her, you know, you idiot, why don't you get out of your room? She just kept knocking and saying, and eventually she came out, and then, you know, Pat at some point was so furious at her own doctor that she said to herself, I'm going to become, you know, a psychiatrist. And she did. She became a psychologist and whatever. Um, but I think that sense of one. I have a section, there's four types of help that I say women can do. This is the third part. You know, one is helping your adult child. But the only way you can help your adult child, I think, is like Pat Deegan's grandmother did. So you have to be ready with the resources and present them when the child is ready. I mean, you have to fit them where they are.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

With no expectations, Mimi. Right. Um, but maybe when you're finished with that point, Mimi.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

Well, I'm um apropos of what you just said, I'm thinking about the fathers. Now I know that you didn't um, you know, that you focus on women, and probably rightly so, because certainly our experience with SMI is that that's who ends up dealing with it. And um, but I'm wondering, you know, mothers don't give up. And um we also sometimes have a problem drawing the line of what we will accept, and we tend to let our love for our filial love um let us put ourselves in danger sometimes. Right. And through your research of talking to different women, what is what is the general thought about the father and their involvement and the way so many men just can't deal with it and kind of step back from the whole thing? Was there any discussion of that and marriages and things like that?

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Yes, certainly. I mean, everybody in my book was married when they had their child, um, but most were no longer married. I mean, first of all, I was interviewing women, they had to be at least 57 to be in the sample. So it had been many years already. So if your kid had their first break when they were 20, I'm interviewing them at 60, it's been 40 years. And particularly if you're talking about poor women, you know, people get killed. A couple of the men were, you know, shot in the street. Um, so I think also when you're living with this kind of stress, marriages are hard to hold on to. And one marriage, the people who had the money to get the separate apartment, she described the difference that she described herself as bleeding inside. But she thought her husband did not bleed inside, that he could hold a sense of humor, and it didn't eat him up. I mean, speaking to your point, Mimi, I have a whole chapter on um shame, blame, and self-blame, and how mothering is very much part of how we take on that we should be able to do everything. And it's so much a part of what a good woman is and what a good mother is. And nearly everyone I talk to explained their decision, like this woman who said, My son's gonna kill me in that apartment. She said, But I'm his mother. And sort of how does this mandate that as women we should be able to do everything and that love should over you know, take precedence over safety is a terrible, terrible burden to put on anyone. And I sort of house that part of this problem is women's expectation of ourselves that we should be perfect and we should be able to do this. And we need help. I mean, nobody can do this alone.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

You know, I think it through my history, through my experience, of the only time I was able to really firmly draw a line in the sand was when my other children were in peril. So then it became me again operating as a mother because we did ban my son from coming to the house for a couple of years because I still had young kids at home. And that was not hard to do. But when it comes to me alone, there's so many times where I thought, you know, if I didn't have my husband to at least temper things, you know, I would just I would just I'd have nothing left at this point.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Yeah. So in your, I won't call it solutions, in your what the heck do we do section, you had so you certainly have one on just exploring your uh our inner attitudes. And we've done episodes on that, on finding joy and so on. I I love that you explore shame and blame and all of that when it comes to our own attitude. I would love if you could also share a few more tips about helping your adult child. Now we know you we can't fix them. We know we're not we all would love the magic wand. We know it doesn't exist right now. We're all doing the best I can. And I love your tip of, you know, leave the invitation open with love. That's the way I heard it. Leave the invitation open with love and leave the expectation out of it. And maybe one day they'll come down to dinner. You know, just and I know in my son's worst phases that I've made my love as clear as I can, but it wasn't always accepted at that time. But later on, he has sometimes said, I knew you loved me. I knew you were there. I just couldn't respond to it at that point. And so so that's a really um helpful tip, I think. What else is in that chapter that you could share? We have about eight minutes left. So what else would you are you dying to say about what you found that you think could help our listeners? And you know, well, I think so.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

The MB, the second chapter of the book is stages of change. And that if you want, it's for a mother who has a child who's very vulnerable, it's very hard to move away from what we're talking about, to feel so pulled and feel so responsible. And that stages of change model was developed by two psychologists who were helping to think about smoking cessation or getting off of drugs. And realizing that you can't do this, it's not a straight path. You can't say, oh, I'm gonna get cleaned from alcohol and choop.

SPEAKER_04 39:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

That an addiction is very hard to change and it serves some purpose. And there's an expectation in the stages of change model that you will go back, but then you go forward, but you have to figure out where you are and what's most uncomfortable for you at this point in your life that you really need to change. And there are many mothers who are living in unsafe situations with their kids, and their own lives are at risk, and that I think is where elder abuse services are really important and coming. Um, there's a wonderful group that I talk about in the book, uh JASA in New York City. Um can you spell that out and we'll put it in the show links? J-A-S-A, it's I'll send you the link. Um they run a group for family members who are feel like they're being abused by another family member. It turns out it's primarily women who come and it's primarily the adult child. And one thing that really helps is being with other mothers and seeing that sitting in the room with a mom who said, I have to get a court order, you can't be here, and that that mother survives, she doesn't die from having done that. And so that I mean, this I don't think there's my book is really about how do mothers help themselves and not so much solving how do we help our adult kids. And I think at some point, but I think what is so difficult about having an adult child with serious mental illness or having an adult child with a substance abuse disorder is you cannot fix it. I mean, with an addiction, the adult child can with serious mental illness. Maybe they'll find a way to accept medication, you know. But the book, and I'm sure all of you talk about agnosia.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Anasygnosia, anasygnosia.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Anasygnosia, right? Um, that this is part of the illness, not being aware that you're ill.

unknown 42:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:06

Mindy?

SPEAKER_00 42:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:08

Right. I was uh, thank you. I wondered one thing that wasn't in your book, and I wondered if this came up with any of the mothers you talked about, and that is when you mentioned anasygnosia, assisted outpatient treatment. Um there's, you know, you have to really fight for that sort of thing. And when we had on our guest um Sabah Muhammad from the Treatment Advocacy Center, she was saying that as a Black person, often you're already dealing with discrimination in the smog of life. It's hard to add another thing, advocating on behalf of someone with a mental, a serious mental illness. So um did that come up? Was that was there a difference in who got to access that between the more well-off white people like me or or not?

SPEAKER_01 43:03

Did did the lesser um people I think that people who had financial resources had less access to what their options were and knowing how to navigate the system? But if they did get to a place like JASA, I mean connecting with a trained social worker or a trained lawyer, then you can begin to, everyone can begin to have access to resources as limited as they are in our society.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

Did you find any good models where the mothers who were doing who had more resources and more avenues where they is there any way to help the other half of the sort of people that you interviewed? Or does it have to be more specific focused? Or their needs. Does the twain ever meet in terms of help? For the kids or for the moms?

SPEAKER_01 44:07

For the moms. Well, I guess the moms that I met who were poor were lucky enough to get to JASA Leap. So they had the resources. So I think one of the takeaways is social support for the mothers. And certainly that's how I got to NAMI. But JASA runs groups for mothers. You have to move away from the thinking that this is your fault, this is your family's fault. You know, I think some, you know, whoever has the biological link to the mental illness can get blamed by their spouse for, you know, bringing in this mental illness to the family. You know, people need support. And hopefully, where you're getting support also helps you realize this is a structural problem. And I think that's really where I end the book. You know, that this is, I think, the Leslie Carpenter's situation of taking your rage and focusing it outside and using your energy to help change the larger world, you know, can bring hope. And that's what I think we all need, that we need to live with some hope that our kids will remain safe, that we're doing everything we can to keep our kids safe, but we have to do it in a way that also keeps us safe. Because, you know, if as a mother you get completely burnt out and get so angry that you can't be there later on, then everybody is hurt.

unknown 45:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

And so I'm really trying to say we have to shift. So much is about how do we help our kids? And I'm really saying, moms, you gotta help yourself. But I'm not saying cut off from your kids, but you know, like one intervention done for women who are depressed is like a lot of people will take a walk or go to the gym. But the research shows if you go with a friend on that walk, the depression is minimized. So even though self-care is sort of promoted every minute, you know, bubble baths, but we're not talking about that kind of self-care. We're talking about connecting with other people, breaking the isolation, that the most dangerous thing for a family who has a difficult adult child is to be isolated, to be feel like it's a secret, um, because then it makes the family unit just imploding on itself. So organizations like NAMI, Al Anon, places where you move out and it's less, if things are secretive, then they're shameful, then there's something you have to be hiding. And breaking the stigma of mental illness is really important. I don't know what you people say. Um like I talk about how one of the most common things people our age when they meet each other somewhere, the first question is how are the kids? So what do you what do you each of you say when somebody Well, we each have more than we each have more than one.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

So and uh we do speak to a lot of moms who have all four children with serious mental illness. So I will just say when when they ask how my daughter is, that's an easy answer. You know, her three little preschoolers are driving her crazy, but otherwise she's very happy. And when they ask about my son, if he's doing well, I say we're having a really good day.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

That's my say about I often say about Jim, um, he's a work in progress. He has a new psychiatrist since August, and he's gradually changing his meds. He gets better every day, but he's a work in progress.

SPEAKER_00 48:09

Mimi, what do you say?

SPEAKER_03 48:10

Yeah, you know, I I get a I have four kids. I have three girls and a boy, and it's my boy who has schizophrenia. And it does. It starts quite often with, how's Nick? You know, and you know, most often I will just say, fine, he's doing well. Um, and sometimes I'll say I don't want to talk about it, but I I know what you're saying. It is sort of what the way that that becomes the determining factor for them asking how you are. They don't ask who you are, they ask how the kids are. Right. That's that's something to look at and think about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

And actually, you know, the phrase you're only as happy as your least happy child has been proven by uh Karen Figgerman and her research team true, that moms who have you know a challenging adult child and other kids who are doing really well.

SPEAKER_02 49:03

This is with a big sandball where you can control the positive feelings about the successes do not offset, you know, the sorrow of you know, that I'm really glad to hear there's research to back that up because I have occasionally had people argue about that because I say that all the time. You know, a lot of us, I think we all have really successful other kids, you know, and it doesn't balance it off. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 49:30

Right, Karen Finkerman, I can send you the article. I would love to see it.

SPEAKER_00 49:35

Yeah, we'll put that all in in the show description if you're you're listening and you can get to that. And um, this has been so interesting. I will say that I try not to believe that. That you're all I think a big turning point for me, and this is the last thing I will mention in terms of self-care, is that I held on to the myth that my being a successful person meant I had to be a successful mother. And to be a successful mother meant I had to have successful children defined the way I would have defined it before schizophrenia, and that's what I had to change. My vision is very hard.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

I mean, every is very hard.

SPEAKER_00 50:14

It's everything very hard.

SPEAKER_01 50:16

But I work at one feels the narcissistic injury when our kids are not doing as well as we had hoped.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

Yes. You know, it's it's but when I found it was an illness, that took the shame away from me. Yes, I think when I found it was an illness, I was like, you know what, it's not his fault. It was devastating and a relief at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 50:35

Um also say that I think that I think I'm it adds points to being a successful and a good mother that we're still standing and we're doing this. I mean, we were given a really tough hand when it came to parenting, and we've all got other kids too, and we have to deal with the balance and all of that. And it's like, okay, yeah, Nick's sick and it's an ugly disease, and I wish he didn't have it, but I feel like it freed me up from that burden of his success determining my success. I feel like it I got me out of that because Nick's not going to be the CEO of you know some big corporation, that's not gonna happen, no matter how good of a mother I am. And so, in a way, there's a freedom in it, too.

SPEAKER_01 51:26

Right. I mean, I agree with that. That's a gift that NAMI and has given to families to really focus on it being an illness. And I think if the substance abuse world, I mean, we now have the data that addiction is also an illness, but there's much more resistance to really having that be internalized. And there's a lot of shame among parents whose kids are addicted. You know, there's some sense that you should be able to get out over it and that it's really a personality fault. Um but it's the the wish to have a successful child is something that parents have.

SPEAKER_00 52:12

Absolutely. Well, it is a fascinating book. I'm so glad you wrote it. Tell us again the title, where people can get it, and where they can get in touch with you, if that is something you're offering.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

I would love to hear from everyone. Um, the book is difficult mothering challenging adult children through conflict and change. I have a Facebook page, Difficult Mothering. And you can also reach me, Judith R. Smith, at difficultmothering.com. And I'm also on Twitter, Judith Rsmith PhD. And I would love to hear from people and continue this dialogue. I'd love to come back and talk to you guys more. This is not enough time.

SPEAKER_00 52:56

Awesome, I know. Thank you. And the book's on Amazon now. I'm sure it'll be in bigger.

SPEAKER_01 52:59

You can get it on on all of you, it's on Barnes and Noble's, it's on every independent bookshop. You can order it wherever you like to order books. And I would love to know what you think. And there's a whole section on resources for uh for parents and for getting help for your adult children. I mean, how to get apply for financial aid, how to look for supportive housing. Um, so even though our society is not doing enough, we do have resources and helping to point people to point, you know, how you get from A to B is a big part of what I hope the book offers as well.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

That sounds awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's been cute. Thank you. Hey, thanks for joining us for this episode of Schizophrenia Three Moms in the Trenches with Randy K, Mindy Gryling, and Miriam Feldman. To get in touch with us or to learn more about our books, please visit our websites at Miriamfeldman.com, mindygryling.com, or randyk.com.