332. The grandparent transition: Managing emotions, roles and boundaries with Carol Merle-Fishman

Carol (00:00):

How do you make the most of the time when you’re with your grandchildren and not be in that scarcity mindset is really about being in the moment, really, really being in the moment. And I find now, without the distractions of all of the things that parents have to do that I challenge myself to just be there.

Dr. Sarah (00:29):

The transition into grandparenthood can bring so much joy, but it also brings change shifts in identity, family roles and relationships that can feel exciting, complicated, or both at the same time. And when we don’t talk about these changes openly, they can become a source of stress or even conflict within families. I am excited to be joined again on the securely attached podcast by Carol Merle-Fishman. Carol is a licensed mental health counselor and a creative arts therapist. She’s also a mom and a grandmother. And in this conversation she brings such clarity and compassion to the emotional experience of becoming a grandparent, what shifts in you, what can feel vulnerable, and how you can show up with attention and presence for your adult children and grandchildren. So whether you are in this phase yourself or you want to better understand and support the grandparents in your life, this episode will help you navigate the emotional terrain of this transition and foster stronger, more connected multi-generational relationships.

(01:34):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology, and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(02:04):

Before we dive into today’s episode, I want to let you know about a free resource we created for anyone navigating the transition into grandparenthood. Whether you’re becoming a grandparent yourself or you’re an expectant or new parent looking to support your own parents or in-laws in stepping into this role, this stage can bring so much joy, but it also comes with a lot of emotional complexity. Maybe there’s been a shift in your relationship with your adult child or parent uncertainty about roles and boundaries or questions about how to stay connected while respecting each other’s space.

(02:41):

At Upshur Bren Psychology Group, we work with families across generations and we understand how layered this transition can be. That’s why we created a free interactive workbook filled with reflective prompts and strategies to help grandparents process their thoughts and feelings while offering practical guidance for navigating common challenges that often arise during this time. Go to upshurbren.com/becomingagrandparent or just go right to the episode description to download this free workbook. And if you’re a parent, forward it to your own parents or in-laws. It’s a thoughtful way to help your whole family find more balance, grounding and connection during this big adjustment. Alright, now let’s get into today’s conversation with Carol Merle-Fishman.

(03:23):

Hi, Carol Merle-Fishman, welcome back to the show.

Carol (03:33):

Thanks so much.

Dr. Sarah (03:34):

It’s really good to see you again.

Carol (03:36):

It’s great to see you. Thanks for having me back.

Dr. Sarah (03:39):

Yeah, so you were on a while ago and we did an episode all about grandparents and all of the different ways becoming a parent means the birth of grandparent too. And it was just got such great response to that episode and I think now we’re about to have a new conversation building on the last one. So first of all, if you’re listening, definitely go back to the previous episode that we had with Carol and I’ll link that in the show notes. It was episode 1 0 4, but if people haven’t yet listened to that episode and aren’t following my instructions, they just want to listen now, which is totally fine. Can you introduce our listeners to the work that you do and how you kind of got into the focus you have on the mental health of grandparents?

Carol (04:40):

Sure. So I did talk about this the first time, but just as a refresher. So as I have gotten older and became a grandparent and also as many of my clients have gotten older and watching their experiences with becoming a grandparent or even not becoming a grandparent and wishing that they were, it has opened this whole new area for me to look at the parallels with postpartum adjustment, how the birth of a grandmother and even a grandfather is similar to the birth of a mother, birth of a father. And coming into that role and becoming comfortable with that role and moving beyond the assumption that grandparenting is just this wonderful new phase of people’s lives. It’s just this great thing. You get to spoil your grandchildren, you get to spend time with them. But the reality is very similar to parenting, that it comes with many bumps along the way. Family changes, changes in dynamics and confrontations to oneself about history, about the past, about one’s own postpartum experiences or child rearing experiences. So it is not smooth sailing of just sitting around and giving grandchildren ice cream and cotton candy as much as they want.

Dr. Sarah (06:18):

Which I always that when we talk about this, because you and I talk about this a lot, we are lucky enough to have lots of opportunities to put our brains together outside of this podcast. But what I love talking with you about is that you always help me think about how do I articulate this as a mom who’s very close with my own mom and appreciate, I’m lucky in that I have a mom who is both very interested in being a support for my family, but also good enough at knowing her own boundaries to know when she doesn’t want to and she needs to say no. And also being clued into my own boundaries to be able to give me permission to say it’s my no, I need a minute, which is not, we’ve done lots of work to be able to do that and I think you’ve helped me. I think I’ve just taken that for granted because that’s been my experience and I realize that that’s really challenging for a lot of family systems, even very healthy family systems. It’s not easy as a grandparent to have to navigate your own boundaries, your child’s boundaries and your grandchild’s boundaries. You have many layers that you are holding as the grandparent, and I think a lot of times it’s not acknowledged enough and then people wonder why they’re struggling with that experience. So I think it’s so valuable to just name it.

Carol (07:52):

Yeah, I think it’s really important to name it. And I think in our conversations we’ve had a lot of experience. We’ve had a lot of client experience, we’ve had a lot of our own therapy experience, and often when people have not had exposure to be able to talk about their feelings, their thoughts, their own self-awareness, it can really muddy a situation and create conflicts when people really don’t know how to communicate about things. But even with all of that awareness, the path is not always easy. And I kind of encapsulated this in some of my recent experiences with my latest grandchild of having the experience of saying to myself in my head, I’m not going to say anything. I’m not going to say anything. I’m not going to say anything. I think I have to say something. I think I have to say something. Okay, I said it should not have said that, should not have said that. And being in that cycle you’re describing of holding those boundaries. But then how do we communicate some of our expertise and our wisdom, and especially in a culture right now? I mean, we are not in a culture where elders are particularly esteemed or revered for their knowledge.

Dr. Sarah (09:27):

Which is a shame because we’re having to reinvent the wheel many times over when we could be more of an intergenerational village and sharing that wisdom more readily.

Carol (09:40):

Right? We’re in a culture where there’s so much to read and there’s so much on social media and there’s so many podcasts, and so at a moment’s notice at your fingertips, so that intergenerational tension that can come up about, well, how do I share my wisdom and where are the boundaries? I think that you said that really well because it is multilayered. There’s the boundary with yourself about how am I going to not say what I think I want to say the boundary with one’s child and then the boundary with a grandchild, especially around parenting issues, which I mean, we are watching our children now parent, and so what do we do with that and when is it okay or not to say anything? Do we always have to wait to be asked for our advice?

Dr. Sarah (10:37):

And it’s interesting because I can’t help but think about this in the context of a developmental timeline. And we all know, we’ve talked a lot on this podcast about mires essence and how mires essence is this sort of very real now named, but always been around developmental stage that’s very similar to adolescence in that it’s a time of a lot of brain growth and pruning and reorganizing. And also self-identity growth and pruning and reorganizing among other things. There’s hormonal. There really is a very core shift that happens. But what I’ve been learning about matresence is that when you go through it, one, you go through it with every child you have, but also there’s this sort of, if you can imagine this sort of coil spiraling upward, you revisit different moments of leaps in your trence development every time your child goes through a leap. And if you follow that logic, every time when your child is born, you have this trece loop. And then when your child goes through early childhood into latency, there’s a loop and then there’s an adolescence loop and you’re looping with your kid in tandem and your own development. So if you follow that logic, there’s got to be a “grand-matrescence”. When your child hits their own matrescence, you’re going to go through your own wave of it again, because we’re really all developing in synchronicity with our attachment, like our offspring and our generational offspring. And so your grandchildren’s birth and their adolescents and their, so it goes on and on forever. There’s this infinite intergenerational coil that we just all start to move up together.

Carol (12:50):

Right. And I love that you’re using that term, and I don’t know whether that is a term.

Dr. Sarah (12:55):

I have no idea if there’s a “grand-matrescence” term, but I feel like…

Carol (12:57):

It’s a wonderful term and I think that it really describes it, and also the way you just described that it’s different also with each grandchild. And I am certainly from my experience feeling that and observing clients feeling that every grandchild is different. It changes the relationship, it changes the dynamics in the family and that different things come up with each grandchild. So I’m now on my third grandchild and with a different daughter, so one daughter has two, and then my younger daughter has one. And even though there were things that I thought, oh, I resolved that with the first two, how many similar themes came back up for me around my own postpartum experiences and my own childhood awarenesses and all of that, and that it is so ongoing, it’s just being in the spiral. But I think, and hopefully an upward spiral, not a downward spiral, but just this amazing unfolding of memories and ideas and thoughts. And so I hope that we can reach people for them to understand that and to also give themselves some grace about really how multilayered and how complicated this process is. It’s as complicated as parenting.

Dr. Sarah (14:36):

I think, because obviously we have a lot of moms listening, parents listening that are entering their own mires and petre or are in it as their child moves through their own development. But we also have grandparents that listen because I know because a lot of them reach out to me from time to time. And I also know that parents share these episodes with their parents or their in-laws and kind of thinking about the fact that we have probably two different generations listening to this episode and one, helping both of them understand the beauty and the messiness of being in these sort of developmental spirals with one another and how sometimes we want to be, and we’re longing for more connection around that. And sometimes we feel it too much and we want space from it. And there’s this dance of I want in, I want out, I want in and I want out. So one, I just think just helping people orient to, okay, maybe this is just knowing there’s a way of thinking about this and organizing your thoughts and feelings and experience around this metaphor maybe could be helpful and validating. But then also I have thoughts on what might make those spiraling evolution through development feel interrupted or get severed or feel enmeshed. How do we create that healthy movement through those cycles?

Carol (16:14):

And I love the connection that you made with adolescents because that is a lot, the push pull of adolescence, of wanting to find your way and still needing to be attached at home and wanting to find your way or wanting to do it your way, but still needing advice and guidance. And so that comparison is just beautiful around adolescence. And so I think again, the key is to be able to develop channels of communication, which we know as therapists, it’s not always the easiest thing to do when there’s conflict, when there’s anger, when there’s resentment, it’s very difficult to talk about what one is feeling. And so I think that people really need to gauge how much conflict am I having with my mother or my mother-in-law, or how much do I feel like my mother or my mother-in-law is interfering with my children and what my children want to do? How much are they saying things out loud that I don’t really want them to say? And being able to have resources to bring those conflicts to and to be able to work them through in some kind of a positive way.

Dr. Sarah (17:37):

Well, and I think it starts in some part with being able to make sense of it and then also being able to have some personal distance from it. If I can make sense of something, which in a way that allows me to have more compassion for the person who I’m feeling in conflict with, the way that I approach that is to try to one depersonalize it. They’re not trying to make me feel like a bad parent when they’re throwing these suggestions at me, but perhaps maybe they’re grappling with their own challenge in moving through this transition. They’re also experiencing just like there’s a push pull in adolescence of trying, I want to do it, but I also really want to know you’re here, but don’t help me, but oh God, fix it for me. And then the same thing with the mother. I just had a baby. I want my mom and I don’t want my mom. I want to do this on my own. Please someone rescue me and also get away so I could do it then. But if I can hold space as the mother that the grandmother might also be having that same push pull.

(18:52):

And I don’t need to fix it. I don’t need to solve it. I don’t need to hold that as my responsibility, but I can also contextualize their, whatever they might be going through in that sort of package. And then I can say, oh, they might not be doing this on purpose. They might just be going through their own transition.

Carol (19:16):

Right.

Dr. Sarah (19:16):

And trying and find their footing. And it might be new to them to not be the mother, to be the, I don’t have as much I would imagine, and I’m not a grandparent, but I would imagine being a grandparent and watching your child have a baby, the being once removed is probably very destabilizing in terms of I’m used to having the control and I’m used to having the say and I don’t have it. And so where do I go with all of this kinetic energy that wants to come out? If I’m with it enough, I know I need to separate it and divert it. I can’t just dump it on my kid, but sometimes it might flood out of me.

Carol (20:01):

And that push pull or that’s all really interesting and very real because around the control, because actually in the best of all scenarios, there are grandparents, and so everybody is sharing this child in some way or wants to share this child in some way. And that can also raise all kinds of conflict or emotions. I remember the first time having this awareness actually with my first grandchild of coming into a Passover Seder that was taking place at my, and all of these people who knew my granddaughter, all of these other relatives who knew her, this whole other family. And I remember actually having this physical reaction to that and a physical reaction when we left at the end of the evening. And she was staying there and staying overnight with my son-in-law’s family, which is a wonderful safe place for her. But this feeling of like she is this whole other life that I am not part of and having to grapple with eventually coming to terms with what a blessing that she has. All of these people that love her and this other family that loves her and all of that. But the truth of the matter is I am sharing her with three other people and on it goes of, oh, where are they now? Or where are they on vacation now with this one? And that’s wonderful. It’s a blessing. It’s wonderful, but it’s also emotional because we are expected to create a strong, solid, robust attachment to our grandchildren.

(22:02):

But the attachment is not just with us. The attachment is with three other people or four people altogether. And so that really can change things and really change the dynamic, especially if there are inter-family conflicts. So what if the grandparents don’t get along or they don’t see each other or they don’t approve or then that’s also a whole other dynamic that can create difficulties.

Dr. Sarah (22:32):

And let’s talk about that for a second. I think there’s so many, because it’s like cell division, the more generations we get up from the child, the more we have to sort of divide the whole, right.

Carol (22:51):

And actually I just want to add to that also, Sarah, because if in situations where there are also stepparents or other people involved, then the cell division is even greater. I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine not too long ago where there was the first grandchild in this multidimensional family, and she had to grapple with who’s going to be the first to see the baby or who’s allowed to see the baby, where there were multiple remarriages on the grandparent, on the grandparent level and how difficult that was for her of It’s my son, where are my rights here in all of this.

Dr. Sarah (23:40):

Where do I fit in.

Carol (23:40):

And also a very strong feeling that it was her son, not daughter, and that somehow because it was her son, her access was even more diluted.

Dr. Sarah (23:52):

Which is a very real phenomenon, not in every family, but yes, there is petits and the father child bond is critical when it’s available. And the mother to the father often I think feels as though there can be this, what’s the word I’m looking for? Not asynchronous, but not equal balance to just access is I keep having a trouble with the word access because I feel like it creates a bit of a scarcity mindset versus an abundance mindset, which is actually something I work on a lot with parents who are navigating these situations with grandparents.

Carol (24:42):

But that’s true is that very often with grandparents, there is a scarcity mindset that they don’t feel that they’re having enough time with their grandchildren as much time as they would like to have or that they are competing with other relatives.

Dr. Sarah (24:57):

And so that’s something that I’m curious what you do with people who are experiencing that in your practice, either from the grandparent view or the parent view, because I think there’s the subjective and the objective reality is there are X number of hours in a day and X number of hours in a year, and I’m going to probably have to navigate a lot of competition for those hours. The I might not get as much as I want or feel I need. And I think that if we get stuck there and then the subjective experience is one of scarcity, I’m never going to have enough.

(25:53):

This child isn’t going to get an opportunity to connect with me. I’m not going to have a chance to connect with this child. And then that fear and that panic, it seeps into the hours that we do get. And so it’s like how if we take the subjective experience of almost working backwards from how we want it to feel, I want a connection with this child. I want to build a secure attachment with this child, and I want to build a relationship with this child. In reality that can be done even if it’s in fewer hours than I would prefer if and only if those hours are used fully. Right? How do I show up with the time I have with my grandchild, with presence, with openness, with abundance, with looking for the quality and not let that scarcity erode or bring things into that time that interferes with that connecting?

Carol (26:59):

Yeah, well, okay, I’m going to respond to this in a number of different directions. Maybe my approach in working with somebody around that is always to begin to work backwards around their own childhood experiences or their own parenting experiences, but also in a developmental context. So along with that, I really believe that there is a grieving process, an undiscussed grieving process that happens for women, many women, not all women, but happens for women when they know that they are no longer going to have any more children, they have to make that decision that that’s it. I’m not having any more children and even women who feel like, oh my God, I have three children. I have four children. That’s it. I’m done. It’s enough. But in that process, we are always letting go. We are always letting go, and we are always letting go, and they’re onto the next stage and they’re onto the next stage, and now they’re going away to college and oh, look, now they’re having their own babies. And so I think embedded in that is a coming to terms with some poignant grief, not bad grief, but some poignant grief about the passage of time, about what life was like with your own babies and watching your own children grow up. And that may often come into play with this, I want as much time as possible with my grandchild. I need to be with them. I need to be with them. I need to spend so much time with them.

(28:48):

That it’s in some ways a recapturing, which we can never really recapture, but that it can be a recapturing and sometimes so poignant. My third grandchild looks so much like my daughter that there were times now that she’s getting older, that’s kind of changing a little bit, but that there were times where I almost had to step back and say, where am I? What year is this? It was so poignant because…

Dr. Sarah (29:26):

You were transported.

Carol (29:27):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (29:28):

Back into a previous state of memory.

Carol (29:33):

Yes, exactly. And so I think that there’s so much activation that can happen with women when they’re with their grandchildren and that sense of neediness, and I’m using that descriptively, not in a negative way, but I need to be with them. And I get that feeling too, like, okay, it’s been two weeks since I’ve seen my local grandchildren. I need to see them. I have to be with ’em. Okay, it’s been a month since I’ve been with my grandchild. That’s a plane right away. I need to be with her. I need to smell her. I need to be with her.

(30:13):

But we also, we want that healthy connection. That healthy connection also means that we have to disconnect. So back to your question about how do you make the most of the time when you’re with your grandchildren and not be in that scarcity mindset is really about being in the moment, really, really being in the moment. And I find now, without the distractions of all of the things that parents have to do that I challenge myself to just be there. I mean, in my generation, when you don’t have cell phones or all of these other, so I challenge myself too. I think I need to just put my phone someplace else because I’m here for this amount of time and I really just want to be here no matter how boring it may be after 15 minutes of building another sandcastle and smashing it and another sandcastle and smashing it. But it really is being in the moment and even letting those memories come and letting the sensations come and letting the awareness of this incredible passage of time that we’re on and just be in it.

Dr. Sarah (31:38):

So one thing I hear you saying, of course, is the presence so that you can actually soak up and be with your grandchild in that time. But there’s also this other piece that I feel like you’re describing, which is not just presence, but doing the work outside of these moments to be able to have an integrated state while present. That means, yes, I am present with my grandchild, and I’m also, at the same time, I’m aware of the grief that comes in this moment. I’m aware of a moment of fear. I’m aware of a moment of memory. I’m aware of a moment of delight. I’m integrating many different threads all at once, and I’m not defending against them or fighting against them because I’m also, that would fragment me a bit and then I’m not going to, even if I’m paying attention to my grandchild, only a fragmented part of me is now. So it’s like it’s not just enough to be present in the perfect scenario. We’re fully integrated and present, which I understand is a tall order not always going to happen. That might be the North Star.

Carol (32:55):

Yeah. But those awarenesses is what leads to integration, the awarenesses and being able to talk about them, think about them, understand them, helps us. And so I used to say that our babies are our little Buddha because they bring us all of this information that we need about slowing down or about being in the present moment or all kinds of things. And I feel that way about grandchildren also. They are this next level of these little Buddha that come to us with information. And I had this very, I can talk about my clients, but I can also talk about my, maybe more freely, talk about my own experiences. I had this experience about a year ago with the baby, the baby granddaughter, and I was visiting, and I got up in the morning and my daughter was there, and I said, where’s the baby? And she said, oh, they went out, did her husband took the baby out. They went out and I was what? He took the baby out. Where did they go? They went to MOD’s to buy some baseball. They wanted a new baseball mint. And I was like, he took the baby. And my daughter was like, yeah. I mean, I think the baby was six months old at that point and hardly a newborn or anything. And I had such a reaction to this, and I felt very disturbed, and I couldn’t figure out why this was disturbing me so much.

(34:47):

And I thought about it and I thought about it, and I thought about it, and the day went on, and then we ended up at a swimming pool with the baby and everything, and I got this bolt of awareness and I just started sobbing. Now, my son-in-law and my daughter are also therapists, so I’m in very safe company with them. But I started sobbing because I had this awareness that my father had not been a particularly safe person in my life. My son-in-law is incredibly safe. I mean, I would not have a moment doubt about the safety of the baby. And then I had this awareness of how I had actually limited my husband’s alone time raising my children because I was carrying that sense with me of an unsafe father. And this just came spilling out of me of my own history, my own childhood history, my own parenting history, and now even what could be my own grandparenting history, but the ability…

Dr. Sarah (36:09):

But you interrupted a cycle.

Carol (36:11):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (36:11):

By actually bringing it into awareness and processing it rather than having it stay in this invisible loop.

Carol (36:20):

Yes. And then being able to articulate it and talk about it and be validated and heard, and then to be able to move on. And with both of my son-in-laws, they are so safe and so solid and so wonderful. I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment, but being able to hear myself and hold that experience and then understand it was very important. It was important for me. And that’s what I mean by grandchildren being the next little Buddhas of what are we going to see? What are we going to learn about ourselves? My concern then comes for women and grandparents who don’t have permission to really think deeply about themselves or don’t have access to people around them who are going to help them think deeply about themselves. Because to me, it’s like a gift. It was at the end of all of that. I said, thank you for the therapy session. This was great.

Dr. Sarah (37:31):

But that’s a good point you bring up. As you were talking, I was like, I was sharing earlier how I have this, I feel lucky because I have this safe space in intergenerationally within my family to work these things out aloud and sounds like you do too. And I also know sometimes that’s just not available inside of the family system.

Carol (38:02):

Right.

Dr. Sarah (38:02):

And so if someone’s listening and they’re like, wow, that’d be really nice, but I don’t have that relationship with my mother or my daughter intergenerationally. That’s just never been available to us. I think a lot of the reasons why people come to work with you or work with a therapist that understands intergenerational trauma, family systems, maternal mental health, all of these things, if they can’t do this work inside of their family system, but they want to know something’s happening and they want to process it, where do you often encourage people to start?

Carol (38:54):

Well, they can certainly start by looking at whatever local resources they have around them. I mean, I think that there is a lot more about grandparenting that is in social media. I think even if people Google, Google Grandparenting, they’re going to come up with these different websites. There’s one website, I’ve spoken with this woman, her website I think is called More Than Grand. There’s another website that focuses on grandparents who are live a distance from their grandchildren. And so I think this is one of the gifts of social media. I don’t think it’s the be all and end all, because again, these are websites reading. They’re not connective groups. And I think that just like with parenting groups, it’s really important for people to find connection. I’m working on starting a support group with grandparents, with somebody who also does other parenting support groups. So I think outreach in your local community to talk to people, but certainly begin with what resources you can find online, what books there are to read, so on and so forth.

Dr. Sarah (40:13):

Yeah.

Carol (40:13):

Well, does that answer your question enough?

Dr. Sarah (40:16):

It does. It’s helpful. I mean, I think we have to start with feeling like, oh, there’s a name for this. There’s a thing that this experience is shared. I’m not alone. And then that’s great that there’s ways to get resources to make it more understood, shine a light on it, organize our experience. And then to your point, that’s not usually enough to satiate. We need actual community because I think that’s where we can also have a true outlet and also feel seen and connected so that that need, and again, I’m going to use the word neediness, but not in a bad way, but in an acknowledgement that I have needs that might not be met by my child or my grandchild. Because there’s this tricky thing about the parent child relationship, and I would also then the grandparent child relationship is that it’s an asymmetrical relationship. The parent is responsible for taking care of and holding in mind the needs of the child. The child isn’t responsible for holding in mind needs of the parent in the same way. And obviously as you grow up into adults, that can change and there can become more symmetry in that relationship. But there still is that asymmetrical quality.

(41:43):

The grandparent is still the parent’s mom, right? Or parent. Right. And there is this, I know I’m so guilty of this, of I don’t always think about my mom’s needs. I try to be better about that because I’m a grownup now and I have way more awareness of her as a whole human being. And I do want to hold her in mind. And especially when I’m in my more primitive states, I go back to this more childlike dynamic I have with her where I don’t think about her needs and I expect her to think about mine. And I could see that playing out a lot. And also as a result, having grandparents feeling, well, I don’t have anyone to take care of me, but I’m expected to take care of you. And that just, it’s hard. Which is why I think having a place for grandparents to be taken care of is all the more important.

Carol (42:37):

Yes. And for the importance of naming it. And the website, the woman who does the website more than grand, she does that around the holiday time. She’ll talk about, what if your grandchildren are being raised in an interfaith marriage? How do we handle the holidays? What do you do when you’re being called upon and the babies are sick? Do you want to go? She names all kinds of things like that, which I think is important. But again, it doesn’t provide the actual dialogue in real time and with real authenticity because a lot of times people will talk with their friends or whatever, but they don’t have the freedom of that deep authenticity. And that reminds me that I was interviewed a number of months ago on the topic of reluctant grandparenting, which may sound counterintuitive, but the point of the article was there are people that really, they don’t want to be called upon all the time.

(43:47):

They are reluctant. They don’t want to have to use their now retired time or free time to watch the kids. They are onto the next phase of their life. And that was the term that was used reluctant grandparenting or also people who are not women who are not grandmothers yet, or people who are not grandparents and they long to be, and where can they talk about that? And that reminds me of in the old days, the way that women would mostly connect was around breastfeeding support groups. And my concern was always, what are you doing for the women who aren’t breastfeeding? They feel so marginalized and isolated. And I think that’s true of people who long to be grandparents and they’re not, and their friends are, and how that even changes the dynamic of those relationships. Because I’m often busy with my grandchildren and I have friends who are not grandparents, and that really changes how we can get together. Or when we get together, are they feeling marginalized? Are they in this time later in their life now with their longings? So again, naming things and having spaces to really be able to authentically talk about all of this is really so important. So I hope that the culture will expand for that, just like it did with the explosion in parenting resources or postpartum resources. There was an explosion. So I hope for the same explosion in this way for people.

Dr. Sarah (45:27):

Like a trickle up.

Carol (45:29):

Yeah, a trickle up. Exactly. Exactly.

Dr. Sarah (45:32):

Me too. I think the work you’re doing is a really good start. It’s putting it out there and building the momentum around that for people to say, oh, yeah, that’s right. This is a thing and we’re allowed to talk about this.

Carol (45:46):

Mhmm.

Dr. Sarah (45:46):

Yeah, thank you.

Carol (45:48):

Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Sarah (45:50):

If people want to learn more about the group you’re putting together or connect with you, how can they connect with you?

Carol (45:59):

The best way is through my website, carolmerlefishman.com, or they can also email me directly at cfishwoman@aol.com.

Dr. Sarah (46:14):

I love that. We’ll put that both links to that in the show notes, and it’s always good talking with you.

(46:21):

Thanks so much for listening to the Securely Attached podcast. If you haven’t already, make sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode. They’ll always be right there on your phone or wherever you like to stream your podcasts. With over 300 episodes in our library, chances are we’ve covered some of the very parenting challenges you’re facing right now. And if we haven’t, I’d love to hear from you. Just head to drsarahbren.com/questions to send me a topic or question you’d like us to explore on a future episode. See you back here on Thursday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.