Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Finding the right healthcare is always so difficult, but when you're in your later years, it just becomes a quagmire and a nightmare. Wouldn't it be great to have someone with a background in healthcare help guide you through all of it? Well, today's guest on this episode is one of those people.
Moving your mom, or your dad, or yourself, isn't just about moving things from one place to another. It is much more complicated than that, as are so many things having to do with later life. How to Move Your Mom, and Still be on Speaking Terms Afterward, provides in depth conversations with professionals, older adults, and their family members who share their stories with warmth, understanding, and humor. I'm your host, Marty Stevens-Heebner, and here you'll find answers to many of your questions, as well as different perspectives that I hope will inform and inspire you.
Mary McDonald Winners, it is so great to have you here. I'm really honored our guest today.

Mary Winners:
Absolutely. I feel privileged to be here.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Here's a little bit about Mary. Mary McDonald Winners is a certified gerontologist and the esteemed founder and owner of About Senior Solutions. After more than a decade of experience in healthcare, Mary understands the other side of healthcare, getting through it all. Whereas physicians and nurses provide medical recommendations, prescriptions, procedures, Mary uses her wealth of knowledge in acute care hospitalization, general psychiatric issues, dementia care, hospice, and all these other senior care options that are available. She uses all that knowledge to guide her clients through all the quagmires of aging, so they can live as safely and comfortably as possible throughout their later years. She has an extraordinary ability to accurately pinpoint and guide families as they deal with the emotional, life altering, events during one's golden years. They're not always golden as we know. What's your favorite memory of your grandparents?

Mary Winners:
I have so many, but they were all so different, all from the Midwest. I remember my grandfather teaching me how to box, and paint, and repair things. He was an engineer and he would show me how to do my homework. And I caught onto the fact that he was actually doing my...

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Brilliant. Thank you, grandpa.

Mary Winners:
He would say, "Right?" And I would just realize, oh, if I say right, then he just keeps doing the rest of it. He was a really bright man. My favorite story of my dad with my grandfather was my dad went out and drank too much one night, passed out on the floor, and my grandfather cut some calla lilies and put him on his chest. That was a big flower to use in funerals back then. He woke up with calla lilies on his chest and wondered if he was dead, and it made a very profound statement to my father about-

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Yeah, that sure would. What a warning.

Mary Winners:
My grandparents, they were just really great people, very influential with all of their grandchildren, and my mom's side there was almost 20 of us. They had a big part of our lives.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Let's turn to your work, as first of all a gerontologist. Because, I don't think people understand what a gerontologist does, what they've studied, et cetera.

Mary Winners:
Gerontology is the study of aging, so I have a master's degree in gerontology. Basically, we look at the socioeconomic support of, the emotional support of, the resources available to, the biological changes, all of those changes that take place in a human body and the emotion behind that and the support and services that somebody may need and create that as a focus point of managing what we take care of, which is called care management or geriatric care management.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Very impressive. Let's talk about the kind of care options you offer through your company, About Senior Solutions, what you can do to help one of your clients and their families as they're going through the later years.

Mary Winners:
There are a lot of really great resources out there. We want to look at what the plan should be specifically for that individual. Sometimes, people just feel like they need home care or sometimes they feel like they need placement, and that's great. But sometimes we need a bigger plan, so we tailor a plan based on what the wishes are of the individual, looking at what their safety is or needs to be, or their financial dynamic, so that we can put a plan together to keep them safe that they'll be happy with. Once we get that organized with the resources that they might need, we're involved as much or as little as that family needs us.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Especially with healthcare, there are times when someone's doing wonderfully, but it's just great to know you're there. I'd love to hear a story about somebody you're helping now, how you got involved, what kind of help you're offering them.

Mary Winners:
We have some really challenging situations that we work with, but we have the most phenomenal people around us, and my team is amazing. Right now we're working on a woman, her daughter stole all of her money, she was the trustee, but she still took all of her money.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Isn't it frightening how often that happens?

Mary Winners:
It is frightening. And I've obviously seen it more than once. This particular family's going to a mediation. In the past, I have worked with the family to guide them through some of the issues in court in respecting mom's wishes and so forth. Now, they're going into a mediation. We will be supporting her. We'll put pieces in place to make sure she gets to the mediation. She has enough extra food, and change of clothes, and a caregiver with her, and the family can sit and support her, but they don't have to worry about all those little extras for her. So, that's one little thing that we're working on.
We have another gentleman right now who is living in an assisted living and in skilled nursing care right now. He's a little scared to go back to his assisted living. They've not been that nice to him, so we will be supporting his best wishes for either advocating appropriate support and care at the current location, and creating some boundaries, and a care plan meeting with that individual, or through conversation, deciding that we just need to go in a completely different direction and he needs to move. So, we'll dig a little deeper and get some more information on that.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
This is what's so important about the work you specifically do. Because, you have such an understanding, especially with being a certified gerontologist and having that master's degree, a real understanding of all the different things that can happen during later years, how there could be sudden shifts, and just being there for them no matter what they need.

Mary Winners:
We can be really involved for months, and then, "You know what? I think we're where everybody's stable. Would you like us to continue visiting or we can step back?" Whatever works for the family. We create stability for them. And I love being able to enhance their life with more activity outside, or having somebody come visit them, or participating in their church activities, creating a plan where a caregiver or family caregiver is familiar with what we can do that's supportive and creates joy for them. Because, we want to see them happy. We want to see them in places during their day where they feel fulfilled. There'll become a time when sometimes I feel like our purpose on earth is just to allow ourselves to be cared for by others.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
I love what you just said. But there's so much living to be done in one's later years. And there comes a time when really the best thing to do for everybody else is to allow them to care for you to accept that care, to not say, "Oh no, you don't have to. I'm not a burden. I'm not a burden." No, you're not a burden. People want to care for you. I remember my father, when it was the last couple of months of his life, he'd say, "Oh, I'm so sorry. You've got to deal with all this." I said, "Dad, you've taken care of me for 50 some years, and it's really lovely to be able to give some back to you"

Mary Winners:
Absolutely. We don't like to ask for help period. So, just when the grocery kid says, "Would you like help to the car," maybe that's a good signal to say, "Yeah, maybe I should start asking for the help." Because, I think it's important, as we become older, to say yes to help and yes to support, and how blessed and fortunate we are to have others around us. People enjoy helping you when you ask. Whether you're a new business owner, or whether you're a student in school, people love to share their knowledge and their support.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
But this whole reticence about asking for help, I recognize that in myself, and I have to take a dose of my own medicine frequently.

Mary Winners:
Let them help you at the grocery store.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Yeah, exactly. Or help you up the stairs. Or if you have a walker, hold the door for them, especially if the door opens out. I learned that the other day when I was helping somebody. She said, "Yeah, I can get out. Okay, but it's opening the door that's a problem."

Mary Winners:
Yeah.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
What kinds of services do people ask for or need the most?

Mary Winners:
I think the most common questions that we get are, "How do I help my mom?" Or, "How do I help my dad? I don't know if I'm doing this right. Can you show me a better way? We want confirmation that we're doing it the right way. I think just coming in to support the decision makers, to help them with quickly finding and supporting them with resources, makes such a huge difference for people. So, that's a really common thing that we deal with.
"Mom's in the hospital, now what do we do?" "I don't know if she should be home." Or they're in skilled nursing, and we're definitely going to have to look at some kind of a change. Or, "Now that my mom's in assisted living, I'm not sure that she's happy there. What could we do that's different?" And working with the facilities, creating better strategy around their support. Everybody likes jumping in. They want to do the right thing for the most part. My dad used to say people instinctively are good. I think most people are good. Every once in a while you come across a bad apple, but people want to help others.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Just like family caregivers provide help to their loved one, caregivers have to remember that they need help too. We know the statistics, especially if it's a spouse is the caregiver, how frequently the caregiving spouse may die before the person they're taking care of. It's so important to recognize that you need help too.

Mary Winners:
I tell our caregivers that all the time, we have to replenish ourselves. And we've heard the old adage, put your oxygen mask on first. And there's truth in that. Just like young couples who are raising little children, you need a break from them too. When you're caring for an older adult, it's tiresome. It may be very physical too. So, what are you doing to relieve your own stress? There's medications, there's equipment, there's appointments. What are you doing to enjoy yourself, so that when you come back at the end of the day to take care of your loved one that you feel like, 'Okay, I got my tea in today. I was able to leave for an hour so that I could go to the grocery store without worrying and our caregiver came to watch." I remember when I was raising my own children and going to the grocery store was pretty special for me.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Right. Being able to get away. Yes, my hat is off to mothers always.

Mary Winners:
Caregiving on any level is a lot of work and we definitely need to enjoy your afternoon walking through the garden or just finding something that replenishes you.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Mary, what do you wish people knew about what you do?

Mary Winners:
Geriatric care management is becoming a better known type of occupation. We look at planning and supporting, advocating for older adults. It can be something as modest as, "I don't know what to do for this individual," to, "I'm in a very serious crisis here." We're happy to talk with anybody on any level, any question. And we will direct them to either a resource or decide, through our conversation ,that we could be a fit to help them. We've moved people to and from all over the country. They become family to us too.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
It's funny you brought up becoming part of the family. I once had a staff member say something brilliant. She says, "We're short-term family without the baggage," which is true, and also with all the knowledge. Because, I think one thing that can exhaust people, I know it exhausted me, was feeling, I've got to research this. And so, you're staying up late Googling everything imaginable. And of course, what is on the internet is not necessarily accurate. It's just so wonderful to have a professional like you who understands healthcare.

Mary Winners:
The other thing, too, is that people spend hours... And some people love digging into research. And others, they're just as confused, or maybe even more confused once they finish. I had a client, several years ago, who was in a very challenging process, and they said, "I don't know. I looked this up, and I spent eight hours on such-and-such." And I said, "All you have to do is this." And they went, "Really? That's it?"
Typically, a person only does this a couple times in their life. We've done it hundreds and hundreds of times, walking people through very unique processes, helping them get to where they want to be. I think it's all about saving your own time. Ultimately, it winds up saving money, especially if we were able to negotiate things or work things out that you didn't know were covered. I had somebody call over the weekend, they didn't realize their in-laws would be able to receive some Aid and Attendance through the VA. He was a Vietnam veteran. It just opened up a whole new world for them as far as resources, and care, and support, and options. So, when you don't know what you don't know-

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
And the point is there are resources that you can ask, like you. And me too, but we have massive lists of great resources we've used with other clients that can be relied on. And I bet that a big part of what you do is you build a team to take care of the client.

Mary Winners:
Oh, sure. Absolutely. And then, we dig deeper. Sometimes, we have to go into billing. I remember we had over $400,000 that we saved for somebody. It was a very interesting situation where this woman had been removed from her children. It was a very abusive relationship with her husband. When they divorced, she basically hid, and so she never even went on social security or on Medicare. She was living off of a small inheritance that she had very meagerly. She wound up having a few hospitalizations.
The social worker tracked the daughter down who had not seen her mother since she was six years old. Told her, "You're responsible for her." She was, "Okay." They contacted us and they said, "We've got this huge bill for her medical care." We wound up retroactively getting her into Medicare, reducing all of those bills that she had, getting her into appropriate level of care, setting the daughter up so that she had a relationship with her mom, so she could just have a relationship with her mom and not have to worry about all these other things. So, it was lovely to be able to do that. Just really great stuff.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
It was such a gift to both of them. And I just thought of another thing with caregivers, especially family caregivers, who are probably inexperienced, is that not only is their loved one probably fearful, but they're fearful too.

Mary Winners:
Sure.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Because, they feel they have this life in their hands, and so they're desperately trying to figure out what's best.

Mary Winners:
Oh, for sure.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
There's a lot of legislation in both here in California and on the national level regarding later life care. You've been on the outskirts of working on some of that. Is that correct?

Mary Winners:
Minorly. There are lobbyists and people who are heavily involved. I have had opportunities to speak to some of our representatives. It's always very interesting to me how they're not familiar with the systems. They're not familiar with the licensing, their government body that is in charge of assisted living or skilled nursing, and they propose a bill. I spoke with someone a few years back and said, "This is not even the legislative body or the governance body that you're asking to be part of this bill." And he said, "Oh, that's okay. We just needed to pass, and then we'll revise it later." No, I think we'll make sure that this doesn't get through, because it doesn't make sense, because it's not the right government body.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
It's disturbing to hear that they don't really care if it's done correctly, not when it doesn't make sense. That's great work that you do. What's your favorite thing about your job?

Mary Winners:
I think my favorite thing is I can see, visibly see, or hear in the voice of somebody I'm speaking to on the phone, I can hear the stress just roll off their shoulder. I like phrasing it as we roll the boulder off your shoulder. That sounds like heaven to be able to have that kind of relief and support. "You can do that?" "Yes, we can do that."

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
I know that question well. When you're in a group of anywhere from six to eight people, and invariably somebody asked one of two questions, either I wish I knew about you three years ago-

Mary Winners:
Sure, yeah. When my mom needed you to move, yeah.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Or needed care, and we didn't know where to turn. Or they just get this amazed look on their face, and they say, "You do that?"

Mary Winners:
Yes.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
And I bet you get a lot of that, "You can do that?"

Mary Winners:
Yeah, we can do that.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
And if we can't do it, we know how to recommend. I frequently will tell people, if it's seniors and their stuff, call me. Because if we don't do it at Their Own Solutions, we know somebody fantastic. We don't do care. We don't do care management. We call Mary.

Mary Winners:
We don't do financials, we don't pay the bills, but we're making sure that things are happening the way they need to happen. We have some really great, loving, staff members, because if their heart's not in it to begin with, then nothing else matters. We have the benefit of having a team who we can problem solve bigger issues with. We have a lot of variety in our office, different cultures, different faiths. I think our solutions are more creative and very results driven. It's important to have great quality people. You can't create heart in someone. You can create proficiency and knowledge, but you cannot create heart in someone. And like I said, you become part of the family after you start with us.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
One of the things we have to look for too when we're hiring is extraordinary empathy, and that's what you're talking about. And they call that a soft skill. It's the hard skill.

Mary Winners:
Yeah, it is.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
I can learn how to run a machine. I can learn how to code, but when it comes to empathy, either you got it or you don't. If you don't have it-

Mary Winners:
It's not your deal. I also call it a get it factor. I have a client who, every time I see them out in public, "Oh, my gosh, when we were in the room with my dad and Mary, and he was asking, 'Is it 3:00 in the morning,'" and I said, "Almost." And he said, "Oh, okay," apparently it had been a really big bone of contention where they were trying to get him to understand that it's not 3:00 in the morning. But before, they were all just beating their head against the wall saying, "No, dad, can't you tell" it's not dark outside. You would be in bed if it's 3:00 in the morning," and da, da, da. And they said, "It was such a game changer for us when you said, 'Oh, almost.'" So, that became their catchphrase with their dad. They started getting how to communicate differently so that they didn't feel upset and anxious and argue with him, and not everybody gets that. Sometimes, people can be guided, and prompted, and God bless them, they just don't understand how to communicate with somebody who has cognitive challenges.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
It's just living in the world that they're living in right now. It's almost 3:00, cool. Or, you think I'm your sister. Okay, I'll be your sister for a sec. It's that acceptance. And I tell the story of one mother and daughter, I got asked the same question 10 times in an hour. You create the answer the first time, and they often just say, "Oh, thank you. Thank you so much." Exact same question A few minutes later, you already got the answer, just say it again sincerely. You don't even have to think of it.

Mary Winners:
Like you never heard it before. I know. Very few of my clients know my name. They just know that I'm that tall lady. So, if you're listening, I'm 5' 10." That's fairly tall for a woman, so when I walk into a room, especially if I have heels on, "Wow, you really tall." And so, "Just tell them the tall lady's coming today." "Okay." Emotionally, they can connect knowing that the tall lady's coming. They don't have to know my name. "I'm Mary. Nice to meet you. I'm the tall lady."

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Yeah. Yeah. Don't take it personally. It's the disease.

Mary Winners:
I have to say, it's very hard for families when it becomes a new thing, especially with vascular dementia. It pops in and out of reality sometimes. "Oh, we had her for a minute. Now all of a sudden, she's not remembering." That's really hard for families, and it does catch you by surprise sometimes, and people know that she's back where she's not remembering.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
That's all you can do. I really feel that, as a family member, one of the best things you can do is just accept what's happening, accept them as they are, know things are going to change, and do everything you can to take care of them and to take care of yourself.

Mary Winners:
And it's a process. It's just like grieving a death. So, you bargain, and you're angry, and you go through all those steps to where you finally do accept. But relationships are very different when you're a spouse or a long-term relationship versus a child. You're losing a very intimate part of yourself to that decline in comparison to the relationship you have with a parent.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
My father used to say, no one knows what it's like to lose a beloved spouse unless they too have lost the person they love. Because my mom died, she was only 58.

Mary Winners:
Oh, wow, yeah.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
And my dad made it to 90. Yeah, I was 26. And my dad never remarried. She was the love of his life.

Mary Winners:
That happens a lot when it's the love of your life. There's no replacing her. I remember my grandma, my grandfather was only 67 when he passed away, and she was 99, and she never remarried, or dated, or anything. She's like, "I don't need to be a nurse or a purse for anyone."

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Right? And she had all you guys to love and to be loved by.

Mary Winners:
When you're from a large family, you just think that there are others around to help you and to take care of you. I didn't realize, until I started in this industry, how many people don't have their person. We're here to communicate with that family member who is remote and wants to try to help but doesn't know the system or doesn't know how to support them. That's been a great pleasure, to support those people who don't have their people. We're their people.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
That's so important.

Mary Winners:
Those have been really wonderful families that we work with. The daughters who have the nuisance family members, the other sister or brother who thinks they know everything, but they have no idea how they really behave during the day. "Well, mom doesn't really do that." "Yeah, she really does." And they need the backing with care management. Or the daughter who places her parents and the brother doesn't think that they should be there and doesn't even think they have any cognitive issues. We're having some really bad judgment issues now and decision making problems, which are resulting in some very serious issues at home and dangerous for them. But the guilt that goes along with that, and the need for support... Or can they go home? Are they okay? If we had some extra technology or help, can we do that? Can they afford to do that? All of those things play into how somebody rolls into a specific plan.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
You're going to save them so much time and agony. Because, if you wind up thinking you made the wrong choice for your loved one, you're going to beat yourself up the rest of your life.

Mary Winners:
Right.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
What's the toughest part of your job?

Mary Winners:
I think the toughest part is watching people sit in their grief or sit in the anxiety, sit in the dilemma that they're dealing with and not make a decision to move forward. It's not easy for someone to go through the emotional steps of losing a loved one. Especially with cognitive issues, it's like you're being constantly robbed of that individual. Just like you said earlier, doctors don't do surgery on their own children, and you don't represent yourself in court as an attorney, because you have that emotional component that changes your perspective. By having a professional's perspective, you can put the emotion behind you a bit and look at a better result

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
For all involved.

Mary Winners:
Right.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Not just for the one who's dealing with the medical issues.

Mary Winners:
If you don't have a whole picture, if you don't have the whole vision of where you need to go, you're just ripping a little bandaid off when you're bleeding out. We need you to perform the right kind of surgery, we need you to have the right kind of plan to move forward.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
And sometimes it's plan C, D, and F, because that's how life rolls.

Mary Winners:
You think that they're going to go to one location, then all of a sudden, especially with COVID, nope, that one's closed. Or nope, he walked too far down the hallway, so he is just going home. Okay. It's all about pivoting and rolling with the punches, and making changes as needed, and putting the right resources, the right plan together, based on the specific situation is just really important. You have to look at the whole person. If you're not walking correctly, it's going to do something in regards to your hip or reduce your muscle mass, and you'll become less able to ambulate. Our whole body is connected. We need a whole plan.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
What kinds of questions should people be asking professionals like you when they're considering working with them?

Mary Winners:
I think they should ask how many years of experience they have. I think they should be asking if they have a referral base for the area that they're looking to get service for their loved one.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
Can you explain what referral base means? I'm thinking not everybody might understand.

Mary Winners:
We know how to work in a system. Medicare is federal. There are lots of things across the board that are the same everywhere, but there are things that are very unique to a region or a territory. Maybe somebody needs to move somebody, or they need a new roof. Are we acquainted with really good resources to make sure that they get what they need? I think you want somebody who can do an initial consultation. Can we walk through what they need in regards to assessing their personal welfare and their body?
What kind of background in training do you have? Some people help their moms, so they thought this is a really great business to get into. And I'm sure they have the heart to want to do it. They just may not have the expertise. Are they part of different associations? Are they part of an organization that offers home care? Is that going to be a conflict of interest, because they may recommend more home care than they need? I've seen some care managers who have facilities. Maybe they never place them as a conflict, but I think disclosures are important. Those are things to consider.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
They certainly are. Care managers like you are just so valuable and so helpful. How are you drawn to working with older adults? What made you want to go into gerontology?

Mary Winners:
I think it found me like a cat finds its owner, just shows up in the back, asks to be fed, and you start feeding it. Actually, when I was a kid, I grew up over in Pasadena and my parents bought a home that had been severely neglected, that was in a probate sale, and needed a ton of work. It was the early seventies. When we moved in, there were bars all over the doors. And all the neighbor kids came up on their skateboards, and their bicycles, and were like, "Hey, you guys are the ones who moved in this creepy house. And there was a lady who lived here and she was crazy. She used to go down to the end of the stop over here and wait for the bus, and she's saying that she wanted to go home, and she already was home."
It always stuck with me. Why would somebody want to leave their home? Why did she think that she needed to go somewhere else? It was something that sat in the back of my head forever. Interestingly enough, I wound up meeting some of those family members through a client situation and helping them too. Very interesting how life comes full circle. When I started working in hospitals, specifically on gero units, that's where I became really intrigued and realized that this was an area that I could study further, work with dementia, and training, and putting programs together, and thought, this is it. This is good stuff. I love this.

Marty Stevens-Heebner:
You've just given us so many insights and a lot of great information to move forward with. And you do great work, Mary. Thank you so much for being here with me. I really appreciate it.

Mary Winners:
Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 2:
Thank you so much for listening to How to Move Your Mom and Still be on Speaking Terms Afterward. Please visit howtomoveyourmom.com for more information about this episode and for additional podcast episodes featuring other extraordinary guests and conversations. Until next time, this is your very grateful host, Marty Stevens-Heebner.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
You may have heard of doulas, those who support mothers through childbirth, at the beginning of life. But I bet you didn't know, there are also doulas for those experiencing the end of their lives. My guest is a death doula, who shepherds your clients and their families to their final days.
Moving your mom, or your dad, or yourself, isn't just about moving things from one place to another. It is much more complicated than that, as are so many things having to do with later life. How To Move Your Mom and Still Be On Speaking Terms Afterward, provides in depth conversations with professionals, older adults and their family members, who share their stories with warmth, understanding and humor.
I'm your host, Marty Stevens-Heebner and here you'll find answers to many of your questions, as well as different perspectives that I hope will inform and inspire you.
Stephanie Elkins, it is so good to see you and thank you very much for being here.

Stephanie Elkins:
My pleasure.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
I've known you for a long time. Let me tell you a little bit about Stephanie.
Stephanie Elkins of Be Present Care, is an Aging Life Care Manager, supporting those facing the challenges of caregiving, the end of life, and bereavement. She offers guidance, resources, and a whole lot of wisdom to individuals and their families, when this inevitable turn happens in later life. Can't get around that.
Stephanie fosters the intimate and difficult conversations we all need to have. How many times have I said that in these episodes? She also worked on the California End of Life Option Act Campaign Team, serving as their California Medical Outreach and Organizing Manager for Compassion and Choices, advocating to improve care and expand choices at the end of life, in a very compassionate and informative way. Such important work and we're going to talk about how you got inspired to do this. But first I want to ask you, what's your favorite memory of your grandparents?

Stephanie Elkins:
I'm going to start with my maternal grandmother. My sister and I, we called her Sopta. It's actually softa in Hebrew, but we couldn't pronounce it. So my memories of Sopta was sleeping over at her house and she was in one twin bed and I was in another. We were pushed together and she smelled like Lubriderm. Such fond memory. I feel like, okay, I need to start wearing the milky cream, the Lubriderm. So it's still around. My sister and I, we would cut up matzah. This is all year round. It wasn't just around Passover and we would crack open the matzah and we would put milk and sugar on it, so it was really sweet, like a cereal. That was like a special treat because then I got coffee.
And driving with her was always interesting because she was the slowest driver. I didn't get that trade from her. And both my grandfathers died before both my sister and I were born, but we were named after them. So we were named after Steven and Lewis and so I'm Stephanie Lynn and my sister is Lauren Sarah.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
How lovely. That's a great way to do it, to carry on the names.
So now let's talk about how you got inspired to do the work we're talking about today, becoming a death doula.

Stephanie Elkins:
My journey was really always in the place of doing service. My inspiration started joining my mom when she was an activity specialist at an assisted living facility. I would do the bingo thing with her. I would call out bingo, before and after, and bringing smiles to individuals' faces and having those connections in that moment was real and felt good.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Especially the older adults.

Stephanie Elkins:
Yeah, I was comfortable and through my years of working with teens and seeing when people are uncomfortable, going to even the nicest of residential homes or skilled nursing facilities, all you remember is the smell. I would come in and go, "Okay, what can I do in this moment to bring a little cheer?" I saw that modeled in my mom.
So, I continued getting my master's in nonprofit management and Jewish communal service. I always knew about social work and I thought I wanted to work in health and human services, but on the business side of things.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
That is such important work because a lot of nonprofits don't realize that it's a business that does have to be run and they don't necessarily surround themselves with the people who can do that, so that's wonderful that you were focusing on that.

Stephanie Elkins:
That was from really, how could I make a difference, understanding all the different areas of running a business or a nonprofit. I've always been the service of not making any money, if you will.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
You don't really make even nonprofits, unfortunately.

Stephanie Elkins:
Yeah, I did fundraising. It's all about raising money for others, for causes, for some passions. A lot of the passion was the vulnerable populations.
I had an amazing opportunity to come on board with the Leeza Gibbons Memory Foundation. Leeza created the centers because of her own experiences with her mother and grandmother with Alzheimer's. The heartache and the feeling isolated and alone can be huge. And for eight and a half years, I had the pleasure of running these centers that inspired education, empowerment and energy for family caregivers dealing with Alzheimer's and other memory impairments.
I saw the journey of all the different stages of Alzheimer's and dementias and the caregiver journey as well, through education, empowerment and energy. So, that's where I really got to see the different various roles that caregivers put on and how to be of support for those caring for others.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
I remember speaking to a group.

Stephanie Elkins:
Yes.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
At Leeza Gibbons Center out here and it's was such a comfortable environment.

Stephanie Elkins:
Everybody that walks in the door is a guest. You're not a client. You're a guest. It was a living room like environment where everybody was welcomed in. I worked on one. Of course, the connection to community and to other family caregivers is important.
What I noticed that I gravitated to was the stories, especially around end of life. We would have talks on hospice and nobody would show up.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
No one wanted to deal with it and hospice, as you and I know, is such a gift.

Stephanie Elkins:
Yeah. It's something we're all going to need and the idea of having the conversations, or knowing it's a value added service, a lot of times there's a lot of grief of families having to make decisions for their loved ones.
And let's talk about what provides quality of life for individuals, so that's when I did the shift into working for a national nonprofit organization, championing these conversations for people's autonomy and agency at end of life, that there are options and lead with empowerment instead of fear.
I ended up getting another amazing opportunity to work with Compassionate Choices as part of a political campaign, to pass the California End Of Life Option Act. It passed in a year because there were so many legislators and volunteers and medical associations going neutral and Brittany Maynard, 29 year old with brain cancer who had to move out of state and said, "Nobody else should have to do this."

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Because she really wanted to have the choice to end her own life on her terms.

Stephanie Elkins:
Yes, but the idea is you didn't have to move to Oregon to do it. Leave your family and friends and support system to have this option. A lot of times people don't say an option is stopping treatment, not continuing with chemo, or be in the hospital. So, there's many places to change that conversation and have some autonomy and agency on the kind of death you want.
I want to acknowledge when people bring up end of life option or medical aid and dying, that especially when people are already terminally ill, it's an opportunity for a conversation, to discover a little bit more about why they're asking, because there is good care out there in terms of palliative care and hospice care. So when people ask, it's an opportunity to be more curious.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Provide them with a moment to really talk about what they're feeling about.

Stephanie Elkins:
What it is. Whether if it's pain. If it's quality of life. I know that when I can't go to the bathroom by myself that this isn't quality of life for me.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
I know something like this, some people consider it controversial. I'm sure there are very specific requirements for this and I'd love to have you discuss those.

Stephanie Elkins:
Medical aid and dying is a medical practice, in which an adult 18 or older that has a terminal illness, with a prognosis of six months or less, that has the capacity to make an informed healthcare decision for themselves, get a prescription from their doctor to bring on a peaceful death.
They need to be able to self-administer. They also have to have two doctors to agree on their prognosis. It needs to be in writing and orally communicated.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Those limitations should settle the questions of whether they're just going to kill certain kinds of people. Like you say, you have these parameters. No one can trick you into doing it.

Stephanie Elkins:
People call it assisted suicide because they don't have another language for it. It's medical aid and dying, or physician assisted death, or death with dignity. The reason why it's not considered suicide is because if you talk to individuals that are eligible for this and they're going through it, they're already dying. They don't consider themselves suicidal. I'm already dying. I'm just trying to have a little control, a little dignity, and this is a legal option in many states and jurisdictions now.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
And also to end their pain because I've seen it with my own parents. The pain that exists often at the end. As you said, they already feel like their quality of life is completely gone, so you're just existing until finally the end happens rather than having some agency in it.

Stephanie Elkins:
We have these myths around death and dying, which is not helpful. The idea is comfort versus curative. If somebody wants to die in pain, that's fine. Whatever kind of dignified death that you want. And for some, this is an additional option.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Because you can simply wait until you pass naturally.

Stephanie Elkins:
I think that's sometimes what some of the work of death doulas, or end of life doulas, provide for individuals that are terminally ill and their families, to take pause and view this time differently. It's a different approach because life and death are labors of love and not medical events.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
There's a whole gestational process at the beginning of life. It's crazy. It's really painful and uncomfortable.

Stephanie Elkins:
It's messy.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
And it's messy and unpredictable. The same thing goes at the end of life.

Stephanie Elkins:
You got it and that's what this death positivity movement is taking back. Now a death doula does the physical, emotional, and spiritual support, in addition, alongside the medical team and give permission to families to show up in a way where there might be fear.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
So much of this is really about expressing your fears. If someone starts to have this conversation about, "I think I want to end my life my way." And it's one thing if they're comfortable with it. It's another, if you get them talking and you discover that there's just a lot of fear and they need to discuss the unknown that's coming ahead.

Stephanie Elkins:
Medical aid and dying. You can't do it in a vacuum. You can't do it on your own. You need a care team, so it encourages better conversations. Even if somebody's not eligible, if you have dementia and aren't able to make an informed healthcare decision for yourself, you're not eligible. And then you have to deal with the grief that you're not eligible for this and what are other options. There's also voluntary stopping eating and drinking.
Whoa, what is that? What does that look like for me?

Marty Stevens Heebner:
What does that look like?

Stephanie Elkins:
So voluntary stopping eating and drinking is also, along with medical aid and dying, being looked at and spoken about more. Most of the time it has to come from the patients or clients first, more than the doctors or healthcare team.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
What if they don't have a healthcare directive in place, as everybody should. I say that every episode.

Stephanie Elkins:
Yes.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
If they don't have that in place and they're suddenly, because of a car accident or what have you, in a coma?

Stephanie Elkins:
Well, every situation's unique and so with advanced care planning, which is one of my specialties as an elder care manager and end of life doula is where do those coincide and that's around advanced care planning.
One of the first questions I ask is, "Why are you here? What's your story? Or what good or bad death experience has impacted how you view death? What's a story that comes to mind when looking at a good or bad death experience." And some people have had no experience. I try to meet people where they're at and so that's why the conversations are just as important as the directives. I call it advanced care planning because it's conversations and directives.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
It's so important for those things to go together.

Stephanie Elkins:
I've done talks on advanced care planning and one of the questions is, who's going to speak for you if you can't speak for yourself? They might have a distant sister, that's five years older than them that's in their mid seventies and I'm like, I don't know if that's the person I would want. And there's also family of choice, so the question is, what is important to you? What do you need to get this started?

Marty Stevens Heebner:
In a previous episode, we featured Ken Kosoff, who's an amazing estate playing attorney, but who also has his company Solo Aging Solutions.

Stephanie Elkins:
Seriously, Marty, just through your guests, I could fill in everything, all the amazing resources on this journey from aging and end of life. There's a team people that are part of the Marty's Team.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Thank you. They've been incredible guests and you really do need a team at the end.

Stephanie Elkins:
And who is the team? So, that's part of the questions. I first ask people, where is your advanced healthcare directive? Some people are like, "What's an advanced healthcare directive?" Other people like, "It's sitting on the side of my desk. It's signed and it's with my agent." And then others are like, "My dog ate it."

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Or, "I have it somewhere."

Stephanie Elkins:
I have it somewhere. It sounds familiar. Even colleagues in elder care and end of life, it's so much easier to do for others than yourself.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Oh yeah. It's the cobblers whose kids have no shoes. It's the doctor who smokes.

Stephanie Elkins:
I try to meet people where they're at. I work either one-on-one with individuals or in group sessions, to provide some education of the different components of an advanced healthcare directive.
One of the more important ones is who's your agent or your decision maker. I don't want to assume it's going to be your partner. The other important component of a advanced healthcare directive is, what treatments you want or don't want at a certain phase and that changes.
So the five Ds of when to reevaluate it. First, is a decade. If you haven't done in a decade. If there's been a divorce. If there is a diagnosis. Some people get a diagnosis, goes straight to treatment and there's really no discussion of plan. So, decade, divorce, diagnosis, decline, and death.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
The five Ds and that's when you really need to reevaluate your healthcare directive and also just have those conversations.

Stephanie Elkins:
This is a process that different times in our lives. And so 18, you should have one when you're going off to college, but it's going to change as you get older, as your relationships, as your diagnosis changes. As COVID happens and we learn a little bit more about care we want, or don't want. Some directives are very basic and then there's others, where you can get a little bit deeper and more specific about what quality of life means to you.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
And what kind of treatments you want to have and not want to have.

Stephanie Elkins:
Interview your doctor because not all doctors in healthcare systems are comfortable. These are all things to consider and how doulas ask the right questions, so you can get the care you want or don't want. You need to have doctors that are going to give it to you straight, if that's what you want. What's really going on? What are your options? What do those all look like, including no treatment. Options can be challenging, especially when it comes to medical aid and dying because not everybody's still comfortable with it.
So, you really can't assume anything as people haven't had those experiences and maybe once they have had an experience of being with somebody and seeing how peaceful it is for the family and the individual, in terms of the dying process.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Especially if they've seen some really horrible situations, where there's so much pain and confusion and everything. It is so wonderful to give people these choices. A lot of people would want to go naturally but there's a percentage of people, who given their circumstances, would opt to take care of it themselves.

Stephanie Elkins:
Right. Every situation is unique. We're providing the information now just to have a conversation about it because you never know what you're going to do in that situation.
I have some colleagues that are end of life doulas that just focus on one specialty. So when it comes to end of life doulas or death doulas, or end of life midwives, people have different specialties or different areas of working within it. I have some colleagues that only work with terminally ill individuals. I do a lot of the pre-planning, these conversations about advanced healthcare directives, goals and wishes, and being a liaison with adult children and parents to ensure individual safety.
When I talk about safety, I look at it in a few different ways.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
You're so right. There's so many different kinds of safety.

Stephanie Elkins:
So, I look at it as physical, medical, financial, legal, emotional, spiritual, and mental safety, for both the individual you're caring for and yourself, if you're the caregiver. What can we agree on right now? What's going to be the safest thing for everybody involved? And what are the priorities at this stage in this individual's life?

Marty Stevens Heebner:
It's really a gift to your family, to plan for them, how you'd like to be celebrated after you're gone. Because, as we know, someone passes, there's all this grief and then this 20 page list of things you're supposed to take care of immediately, including important decisions, like what's the service going to be like? How do they want to be buried? And if you don't know...

Stephanie Elkins:
It could be a fight in the family. Look, family dynamics, grief and expectations show up everywhere. I've heard so many individuals say it was a gift what my mom gave to my sister and I of getting things in order.
We've learned during COVID the idea of having closure or some sort of ritual. It can be on Zoom. It can be very powerful. Who do you want present or not present? What music do you want or not? What is or isn't important to you? Some people can say, "Oh, I don't care. Do whatever you think is right." That's not helpful.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
You take the burden off of them as they're grieving, picking out your plots even. I knew exactly where my dad wanted to be, next to my mother, in this one cemetery.

Stephanie Elkins:
I think that's part two of the advanced care planning. First is a healthcare directive and then it's getting more of these details of, what does this look like for me? Start thinking and talking about it. It is such a gift.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
So here's a question with death doulas. If they're choosing to take their own way out, obviously there's a set time and place for that. Do death doulas also work with people who choose to die naturally?

Stephanie Elkins:
Yeah. A lot of the work of doulas is about being versus doing.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Yes.

Stephanie Elkins:
It's a huge distinction in our work because we're used to fixing and doing and you know what? This process is messy and things are going to come up and feelings are going to come up. But how do you hold space for families that are in different places.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
With what's going on.

Stephanie Elkins:
With what's going on. And having somebody take that energy and kind of move it around and have tools of active listening or reframing or what's left to be done.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
And keeping as much peace as possible and having the real conversations about grief and the fear of living without them. Let's talk about that and feel it.

Stephanie Elkins:
Some people could feel relief. The beauty of this work is just showing up for people, at the most vulnerable, and it can be a gift to show up for people at that time.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
It's such important work. I remember when my father passed and he was 90 and he'd been sick for a long time and I was grieving, but I had this strange blend with feeling a bit relieved and freed up. I think that's just not having to worry about the illness now, but there was also so much grief because of course I missed him.

Stephanie Elkins:
You missed him, but you also knew, I don't know if he was ready or not.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
He was. He'd lived till 90 and at the end he had so many things going on.

Stephanie Elkins:
So was it a peaceful passing? How was your dad's death experience for you?

Marty Stevens Heebner:
I had been going back and forth to Buffalo. I live in Los Angeles, to check in on him and be with him for long weekends, about once a month. And then it came the time when we got the call from the doctor, who very kindly and compassionately said, "We do something for his heart, the lungs react. We do something for the lungs, the heart reacts." And I said, "It's time for him to go home and be comfortable and pass naturally."
Being able to be there, bring the hospice in, give him the morphine so he was not in pain. He had shown me where everything was. The safe deposit box key. The will. The trust. He'd already bought the plot next to my mom. I knew he wanted to be buried in the casket. All this and where the service should be. Oh, and he said, too, "I don't want an estate sale. Just donate everything."

Stephanie Elkins:
Wow. As a professional organizer, you're like, "Dad."

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Thank you, dad. That's where I get that gene from it. But it was perfect timing because a dear friend of mine, I've known her since she was five, so my parents were like surrogate parents and vice versa. She was getting a divorce and moving into an interim apartment and she didn't really have much furniture. And I said, "Hey, guess what? Come pick out stuff. Come pick out the items that you'd like." I got permission with my sisters and stuff and she was so happy. I think she still has most of it.

Stephanie Elkins:
Your dad was happy. Ugh. So good.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
And so my mom died when she was only 58. I was only 26.

Stephanie Elkins:
Wow.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
They both died at home. She died of cancer. I knew both my parents would be thrilled that my friend Dawn was getting the furniture. I knew that. So yeah, it was the best kind of passing one can have. Both for him, he was surrounded by his family and his friends had been to visit and all of that. And he had left us fewer problems to have to deal with after he was gone. So, it's an honor to get to work with people who don't have that experience with their loved one who passes away.
Dad had even tidied up the home in Buffalo, so that helped too, although he did keep his tax returns back to 1957, just saying, and he died in 2013.

Stephanie Elkins:
Thank you for sharing that. This is where we learn from our own experiences. Working with family caregivers and end of life, it's following the leads of them. I'm holding space for others and maybe giving some tools and resources and some guidance.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Are death doulas, the ones who focus on those moments that are the end of life?

Stephanie Elkins:
There is a time where the natural dying process begins. The doula can be on-hand or on-call. Sometimes families are like, "You know what? We got this we're okay." We have hospice a phone number away and you can physically be there. Some are but some aren't because that's just what's important for the family.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
What they choose. So if the family is together with their loved one, and afterward though, they can have a conversation with the death doula, like you, to process all that they saw and what they're feeling.

Stephanie Elkins:
Oh yeah. You can keep the body at home for up to three days afterwards to do a viewing. Now, that's not for everybody, but that is an option and there's doulas that specialize in home funerals.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
It's extraordinary. You and I both live in Los Angeles. What if somebody lives in Michigan and would like to contact a death doula?

Stephanie Elkins:
It's a growing movement. It's not an accredited movement. I got a professional certification at the University of Vermont, End of Life Doula Professional Certificate, so there's various programs. There is a national membership organization called NEDA, National End of Life Doula Alliance, which is a membership based organization. But depending on where the individual's at and what they want, they need somebody dealing with family dynamics, grief and expectations in the beginning. Or, if they're looking to put together a ceremony, a pre-event celebration and legacy planning. Or, if it's really focusing on after death, what are the options? And then there's some that specialize in Reiki and I do Reiki and there's different personalities, just like anything.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
And different ways of comforting.

Stephanie Elkins:
I think the whole idea of being versus doing is a lot of it. But then there's the coordinator aspect of a lot of this, so I think finding the balance of that. Some are more spiritual and religious. Some have a clinical nurse background. It's really knowing what's important for you, for your family member, based on their illness, what their needs are.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
And like you say, the personality fit. Some people click more than others.

Stephanie Elkins:
Trust that. I think that is definitely part of it.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Trust that connection that you feel. So someone is considering working with the death doula. What question should they be asking the people they're talking to and considering?

Stephanie Elkins:
It really depends on what kind of services that they're looking for. Are you looking for getting your plan in order? Maybe reviewing advanced care directive? What kind of support?
But by the time people come to a doula, they might already be aware of what their needs are. I had a colleague who had a mother living in Northern California and she wanted to use medical aid and die, but she wasn't eligible. And so then I had a conversation with him and his brother about voluntary stopping eating and drinking. Then he ended up talking to his mom. I ended up finding a doula in Northern California to work through that and then she ended up getting the care that she needed there.
He was so appreciative of the information, with mom being unhappy for so long, there can be a palliative effect. People are able to say goodbye, and then there's this kind of letting go.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Sometimes it can take you a bit deeper into the grief, but by covering that up, it's going to explode some other time. Really acknowledge what's going on, be there for it, and just let it knit itself into the fabric of your life.

Stephanie Elkins:
The idea is that there's always going to be, should haves, but the idea of not having regrets and really showing up for yourself and for others, if you can.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
It's not unusual to have an estranged adult child suddenly show up at the end and need to spend time with that parent and keep them alive for as long as possible, even if they haven't seen or spoken in five or 10 years.

Stephanie Elkins:
Right. That's why the protection is around advanced care directives and why directives and the conversations are so important because people do show up that maybe doesn't really know that person that well.
When I was working in hospice and this young man, it was really good friends with his neighbor that was dying. By the time we got over there, his friend had already died and because the directive wasn't there, they had to call the coroners and wait for his estranged family to find him to decide what to do with the body.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Oh my goodness. How painful.

Stephanie Elkins:
That's why the importance of who's going to speak for you.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
And we don't want to talk about it in our culture, because we're such deniers of death and deniers of old age, but hopefully we're really trying to get people to not be afraid to talk about this and to take action and to plan. We get such a short lease on this planet. Even if you live to 110, it's only 110 years on the planet.

Stephanie Elkins:
I think a lot of healthcare professionals feel like that they've done something wrong if you die and that's not the truth. It's honoring that individual and what's important to them. So, there is a growing movement of various websites and startups and resources, really wanting to encourage conversations.
One of the things I've started hosting are called Death Overdraft Happy Hours, combining my passions of beer tasting and holding conversations around end of life. My colleague friend, Jill Shock and I, started it and now I continue to facilitate conversations at craft beer locations across greater Los Angeles. Let me know if anybody wants to bring this to a brewery near them.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Stephanie, you're the shoulder to lean on and the shoulder that's got your back. You have such compassion and such a love for working with older adults and their families. We're going to have all your contact information on our website with your episode and also some great resources that Stephanie's shared, so definitely check out the website and use those links. Thank you so much, Stephanie, really great talking with you.
Marty Stevens-Heebner: Thank you so much for listening to How to Move Your Mom (and still be on speaking terms afterward). Please visit www.howtomoveyourmom.com for more information about this episode and for additional podcast episodes, featuring more extraordinary guests and conversations. Until next time, this is your very grateful host Marty Stevens-Heebner.

Marty Stevens Heebner:
Universal design. If you haven't heard that term before, you need to know about it now, because it's coming to buildings and homes near you, if it already hasn't. Fortunately, we have a true expert on this episode who will fully explain universal design and accessibility and why it's needed from the start. Moving your mom or your dad or yourself isn't just about moving things from one place to another. It is much more complicated than that, as are so many things having to do with later life.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
How To Move Your Mom (and Still be on Speaking Terms Afterward) provides in-depth conversations with professionals, older adults and their family members who share their stories with warmth, understanding and humor. I'm your host, Marty Stevens Heebner, and here you'll find answers to many of your questions as well as different perspectives that I hope will inform and inspire you. Rosemarie Rossetti, thank you so much for being here with me today.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Oh, it's a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
Oh, I had to. After hearing you speak, I'm so glad you're here to talk about all the wonderful work you do. Let me tell you a little bit about Rosemarie. Dr. Rosemarie Rosetti is an internationally renowned speaker, consultant, writer, so many books, and publisher who walks her talk. In 1998, Rosemarie's life was transformed suddenly by an accident.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
Paralyzed now from the waist down with a spinal cord injury, Rosemarie looked deep within herself and found new strength and new resolve. Rosemarie and her husband, Mark Leader, are on a mission to create a future with homes that are accessible and wonderfully livable for all. They've built a national demonstration home in Columbus, Ohio called the Universal Design Living Laboratory.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
Their elegant home has earned three national certifications and it is the highest-rated universal design home in North America. You need to go to www.udll.com, UDLL for Universal Design Living Laboratory, because it is so beautiful. That was quite an undertaking for you and your husband.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Yes, monumental. Herculean. We had no idea going into it how hard it was going to be. It was really a 10-year project.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
We're going to have to talk more about that, because I was wondering how long that took. But first I want to ask you, since your grandparents had passed before you were born, tell me about your favorite memory growing up with your parents.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
I oftentimes look at the old photos when I was about six years old and there's one that just resonates in my mind around our Christmas tree at home with my older brothers and my father and mother. It was very rare that our family could be together. My father owned a small carryout and it was our family business. We had seven days a week we were open and the family was working all the time.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
But on Christmas, that one holiday, he was able to close the carryout and be home with the family. So that photograph of the family around the tree and all the toys that I got that Christmas, they're very cherished toys. I remember that day and I remember that photograph. It's probably one of my favorite photos.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
Oh, what a remarkable memory. So beautiful. Thank you for talking about that. Let's talk about you as an adult now in your own home. Specifically for our listeners, talk about the focus of your work.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
I am a universal design and accessibility design consultant. I work with architects and designers. I work with the builders. I work with realtors, I also work with consumers that would like to have a forever home or a home that will be more accommodating for them now and in the future. In addition to home design, I'm also working on workplace design to make sure that the workplaces are more inclusive using universal design strategies.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
I have a lot of different things that I do in the world of inclusive design, be it, the built environment in the workplace or in the homes, the condos and the apartments, and now I'm branching out into cities, helping the city to be more inclusive with all the attractions and all the hotels and all the restaurants and the transportation. To take a look at what can that city do to be more inclusive?
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Then the meeting professionals, what can they do to make sure when they're planning meetings and events that they have accommodated people both on the onsite meetings and events, as well as the all too typical virtual meetings and events. I also take my motivational program, learning lessons after my injury, the motivational program is about being resilient and adapting to change. I have a lot of different things that have become-
Marty Stevens Heebner:
You're busy.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
... part of my profession because of the '98 accident when I was suddenly paralyzed from the waist down, riding my bike. Everything just took a different path to be able to find a home that was going to be accessible. We could not, so we ended up designing and building one, and everything just started an evolution from that point on where people would ask me, "Can you do this?"
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Then other times I would like, "Why didn't I think of that myself?" And just start expanding the business. Of course during this pandemic, there weren't a lot of speaking opportunities so I had to think about more consulting. What could I do to consult in the design world? That took on a whole other perspective.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
It is remarkable to me how you came out from your accident with such a sense of purpose. Obviously there are the practical needs that you had after your accident, but what really sparked this idea of really making universal design beautiful and getting builders to start thinking about that from the ground up?
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, it had to be beautiful. It had to be functional. It had to have form. So when we were designing our home, we had a huge design team and an architect, and everyone knew that this was going to be a national demonstration home and garden. That it would be seen by people around the world. It would be in articles, I would be speaking about it.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
So they all wanted this house to really stand as a model of excellence, showcasing not only universal and accessible design, but also environmentally friendly, energy efficient and safe for everyone that was going to be using it as a model to say, "Here it is. It's beautiful. It's not institutional and it's very sustainable too."
Marty Stevens Heebner:
Not everybody knows what universal design means. Can you describe that, please?
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Think of it as a concept of being usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible without any specialized design. Design it right from the beginning, having no-step entrances, wider doorways, different heights of counters in the kitchen, looking at product design also. For example, the toilet seat, how high is it from the floor? Making products work for equitable use and ease of use in terms of physical effort and intuitive in their use. It's not only the design of the spaces, but it's the products also.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
People have this image in their heads of things like grab bars, ramps, being very industrial-looking and not very pretty. They could be extraordinarily beautiful. I have to say, there are mornings when I would love to have a good old grab bar, couple of them to help me in the bathroom getting around.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
That's why I think it's so brilliant to start, for lack of a better term, pushing designers and developers to just start doing this from the get-go, because a sloping entrance to your home, you don't even have to think of it as a ramp because it doesn't look like one. But it's simply without steps and they can be so beautiful with a little curve to it. It just looks like a natural part of the home and it just makes so much more sense.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
It's a natural pathway. It's just like the commercial spaces. Build them at level grade so you can get in, if it's at all possible. Now, we know that some of the lots are not going to be easy to work with and they have to be a gentler pathway to get in to make it no step, but there's usually a solution available for homes. We know that it's required for businesses.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
The Americans with Disabilities Act has been out now since 1990. That is what is compliant. There must be no-step entrances to everything that's built now, so why don't cities require all new construction for residences also to have at least one entrance that is step-free?
Marty Stevens Heebner:
That makes so much sense. A previous guest on this episode, Alison MacCracken, of Sotheby's Realty, she does a lot of development too. With the homes that she's developing and building, she makes them universally accessible. It just makes so much more sense for everybody, especially with say walk-in showers. How many times have I stubbed my toe walking into a shower because of that annoying little threshold? It's safer.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Everyone appreciates it. You're going to start seeing more of that in the hotel designs. Then once you go to hotels and then you experience this gracious shower with no step and the water staying in and you've got great lighting in there and you've got an adjustable shower head and you've got a seat there to shave your legs or someone who's pregnant that just prefers to sit and shower or showering small children, it's just so much more accommodating to have a shower that is curb less.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
It makes so much more sense. Current buildings that exist do tend to lack accessibility, but the thought of taking on the design and construction of your own home seems so daunting. How did you two decide one day that you were going to do this and gathering that team around you to create your beautiful Universal Design Living Laboratory?
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, it wasn't our idea to make it a national demonstration home. It came from a mastermind group in January of 2005. We had been meeting with this group of fellow professional speakers and consultants and writers and we had told them that we were planning to build a home and that we had been discussing with different manufacturers, things that we wanted in the home, and it was their idea.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
They said, "Why don't you make it a national model? Why don't you get sponsors? Then make it green too. Then why don't you build your business around it and write books about it, write articles about it, speak around the country?" It was like, "Are you kidding me? You guys have this big audacious idea, I can't imagine how we would execute that." That was in 2005. That's the timing of Mark and I looking at this idea and their insistence they would help us.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
We had to find a marketing person to help us to understand, how do you approach manufacturers to be a sponsor of a house that we're going to be living in? We had no idea. We had an architect to design it. It was an amazing project led by Robert August, who was our marketing strategist to put the website together and to teach us how to have a conversation with manufacturers and then to go to the International Builders' Show and meet with these people.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
We were very selective of what products were going into the home. It was obviously a great marketing decision for them to partner with us. Your product was selected because it fits the criteria of the product design and the accessibility and the green building.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
As you were dealing with your home following your accident, what were the most frustrating things for you?
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Everything was frustrating. Getting into the home when I first came home from the hospital, Mark had to actually lift me in the three steps at the front door. There was no way to get into our house when I first got home. Then getting into the foyer, there was a little section of hardwood. Then the rest of the house was carpeted and it was so thick I couldn't roll the wheelchair on it, so Mark had to push me around until we got into the kitchen where there was a vinyl flooring so at least I could roll in the kitchen and nowhere else in the house.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Then it was like, "Okay. I'd like a glass of water." I opened a cabinet door and I couldn't reach the glasses. "Okay. Mark, get me a glass." I took the glass over to the sink and I couldn't get to the faucet to get water out to put it in the glass. This was so frustrating, so depressing. The whole house was just not going to accommodate me.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
The width of the doors, the lack of privacy in the bathroom, the inability to take a shower, forget about the whirlpool tub and it's everything in that house was aggravating and intensifying my disability. I knew that something had to change.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
It's almost like your home became your enemy.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
It was not compliant with what I needed. Of course, I was really in a bad way. I had a neck brace, a body brace, a rented wheelchair, very weak in terms of I was feeding myself. Now I was starting to write with a pen. I couldn't move anything from the waist down. To get in and out of a rented hospital bed, I needed a sliding transfer board. I needed 24 hours of someone there to navigate, to move me, to transfer me, to dress me, to shower and to take me to physical therapy three days a week that was a long recovery.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
I can only imagine the feeling of isolation, especially because you're clearly a go-getter. You enjoy engaging with people. So often when you're used to your independence and doing everything in a moment by yourself, that dependency must have just worn on you.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Yeah. I don't know if you've got a husband or a spouse or any of you listening to say, who would be your caregiver? My husband, Mark, was a wonderful, supportive, loving husband. We'd been married only three years. He saved my life when the tree fell on the bike path, so he was just in total grief and total depression because I was the one injured and he was not injured. He led the rescue.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
He stopped working and took care of me. His income then ceased, my income ceased. The bills are still coming. What in the heck are we going to do now? We did hire a personal care attendant so that she would be there during the weekday so Mark could go to work. Then she would transfer me into her car and take me to physical therapy three days a week, do our laundry, do our cooking, do our cleaning. Somebody had to do it.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
When you first moved into your home, this beautiful home that you built, what did that give you to be able to do all those things by yourself?
Rosemarie Rossetti:
This was May of 2012 so we're looking at 10 years ago. I distinctly remember when the moving van brought in our furniture and how I just zipped through this house. It was like, there's no carpeting. It's all hardwood flooring, all porcelain tile in the bathroom, all great spaces. I could reach things in the cabinets. I could get things in and out of the oven. I could wash dishes in the dishwasher. I could get dressed. I could shower. Everything was set up so that it would be totally independent for my use and my husband also.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
What a transformation that must have been. Oh, you must have felt so great.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Yes. It was a jubilation beyond. Of course, I was here during construction. It wasn't like, "Oh, I get to see the house for the first time." Mark was here every day. He was the general contractor and so I would come very often to see what was going on, to get my opinion of things in terms of where does the center island go in the kitchen? Is there enough space to do a 360 degree turn? How high do you want these grab bars? Where do you want the ironing board? There are a lot of decisions that were finalized on site.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
My understanding is after you designed your own beautiful home, then you started designing others. How did you start getting those projects going?
Rosemarie Rossetti:
We had builders here during construction and lots of other visitors. In 2014, when the house was finally finished, we opened to the public. We've had over 3,500 people physically in our home so far. That's how the story got out, is people were coming here, touring it, builders were coming here. Then all of a sudden we had the opportunity to have conversations with builders.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
What about your models? Would you like us to help you create more accessibility in your current design? We would reach out to families that would come here saying, "We are about to build. Would you work with us?" Then when I'm speaking and they'll come to me later and say, "I am a large developer in Texas, I want you to come see my model now and make it better as I'm working to develop more land and more models."
Rosemarie Rossetti:
It just kept coming from people in the audience, people who would come to see the home, as well as by them searching on the internet and finding my website.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
It's just a friendlier home for everybody, especially if you want to age in place, and so many people do, especially baby boomers. You got to start thinking about these things now. They're so beautiful. They're not the kinds you see in hospitals. Is there any kind of resistance you get when you're talking to developers and designers?
Rosemarie Rossetti:
The resistance is they keep thinking it's going to take more land to build universal design. Land is at a premium and they want to build something on a smaller lot. They think it's only ranch style. That's the misconception. It'd be great if you put first floor living at least a master suite and master bathroom.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
But there are other ways to make the home accessible in a two-story in terms of some additional elevator consideration where you would put in two closets, one on the first floor and one on the second floor, right above each other, so that if you wanted an elevator later, you take those closet and convert it to elevator shaft. Or maybe you need a stair lift.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
There's other ways to get to a second floor. Don't always think that universal design is going to add more cost. Those are misconceptions.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
Especially if you build it that way from the ground up. Now, what do you love about what you do? There are so many things I can tell just hearing you talk about it, but I'm curious what you'd say.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
I love the feedback that I get from people, how they have hope that's restored, how they've taken pictures. They're so excited as they leave this house with fresh ideas for their projects. Be it commercial or their own residence. I'm also enamored by feedback from my audience. When I get done and I see a standing ovation of architects that I had last week in Chicago, I'm like, "Are you kidding me?"
Rosemarie Rossetti:
I had over 200 international architects standing on their feet after I presented and then a line of architects waiting at the stage to talk to me afterwards. Then I left the room and started rolling around the convention center and people were stopping me, "I loved your presentation." That's what I love, is the feedback is positive.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
You've really inspired them, and architects are not an easy crowd, so getting a standing ovation from them is really remarkable. Congratulations.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Even getting them to the presentation. I'm thinking the last day, 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday, "Who in the world is going to show up?" They started coming in at eight o'clock. I'm like, "This is odd." At 8:30, I had no more seats left. They really wanted to hear me, or they wanted the credit for their certifications.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
Well, yes, but I'm sure there were other courses they could have taken or what have you. What's the toughest part of your job?
Rosemarie Rossetti:
It's so many demands on me right now, especially since the pandemic has eased, where I am now invited to go somewhere and speak, go somewhere and consult, working with clients that have been on hold for two years that are now thinking about, "We're going to have a conference now. We've been waiting."
Marty Stevens Heebner:
What should people ask as they're considering working with you?
Rosemarie Rossetti:
They want to know, how does that work? How do I work with them? Can I work virtually if they live in New York or they're in California? There's no problem working virtually. They send me the plans electronically. We look at them on screen. If they prefer, they can print them and have them delivered to our doorstep. We have lots of virtual meetings with that team if it's the consumer or the interior designer or the architect, and then we'll communicate what changes we're recommending to them.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Otherwise, if they want to come to our home, we invite them to our home. We spread out the plan on the kitchen table. We bring the design team together of their architect, their designer, their family members, and let them see our home and let them take pictures in our home, take measurements in our home. Then as we review their plan, we say, "Here are some suggestions."
Rosemarie Rossetti:
We're another pair of eyes, my husband and I, and it's a wonderful opportunity for them to have not only my eyes from a 4'2" perspective seated in my wheelchair, but my husband who's 6'4" in standing position. Being that he was the builder, he's really good at design and knows how to read architectural plans and knows how to draw architectural plans.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
What's the difference between working with a residential client and a corporate one?
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Yeah. There's a lot of differences in that the Americans with Disabilities Act now comes in play for the commercial. They have to be ADA-compliant in anything commercial. It does not apply to private residences. If we go back now to the corporation that has been ADA-compliant, meeting the minimum standards. We have a proprietary list of over 200 different ideas for more inclusive workplaces, looking at how to get into the building, how to park, the cafeteria, the gym, the conference room, the lighting, the restroom designs.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
What we'll do is take a look at renderings. We'll take a look at floor plans. They may even do a real video tour to help us so we can work around the world with any corporation, looking at their offices, their manufacturing facility, their distribution facility, so that they'll attract more people with disabilities and be more customer service focused for their clients that have disabilities.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
For people who are interested in this, or just curious, what resources can they use to learn more about this? I know you've got a great website.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
The one you've mentioned is the Universal Design Living Laboratory, udll.com. We have a wonderful virtual tour you can take from your desktop, your phone or your tablet, and it's a fun one. We had Google taking over 700 photos and put them together and so you can see our home from any electronic device. We had the cat loose that day and the photographer said, "That's not a problem. We'll let the cat out."
Rosemarie Rossetti:
She's in many of the photos, her name is Kiko. She's a little orange tabby cat, so you'll see her throughout the house. To support that tour though, the Universal Design Living Laboratory's book is the Universal Design Toolkit. There's a place for you to download a free copy of the Universal Design Toolkit chapter and you're going to get a list of all the universal design features in our home so you can follow that list as you're going through the virtual tour.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
There's also a video tour so that you can follow Mark as he's narrating the house. There's over a hundred articles about our home and about universal design aging in place.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
You really want to look at all these things on the Universal Design Living Laboratory's website, udll.com, because I've looked at them and they're amazing. Plus, you are such a great speaker, Rosemarie, and I think you have a website for that as well.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
Yes. My speaking business, consulting business is simply rosemariespeaks.com. How easy is that?
Marty Stevens Heebner:
That's wonderful, so needed as well. We have all of Rosemarie's contact information on our website, so be sure to go to howtomoveyourmom.com. It has been such a pleasure speaking with you. You're just a warm and wonderful person, and then on top of it, you have such a remarkable story and do such remarkable work. Thank you so much, Rosemarie.
Rosemarie Rossetti:
It's a pleasure working with you, Marty. Thanks for the invitation.
Marty Stevens Heebner:
Thank you so much for listening to How to Move Your Mom (and Still be on Speaking Terms Afterward). Please visit howtomoveyourmom.com for more information about this episode and for additional podcast episodes, featuring other extraordinary guests and conversations. Until next time, this is your very grateful host, Marty Stevens Heebner.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (00:02):

We've all heard about reverse mortgages, but they're really a kind of a mystery. I don't know about you, but they certainly are for me. So keep listening because I have an expert who has all the answers. Welcome, Janice Cohen. I'm so honored to have you on as a guest.

Moving your mom or your dad or yourself isn't just about moving things from one place to another. It is much more complicated than that. As are so many things having to do with later life. How to Move Your Mom (and still be on speaking terms afterward) provides in-depth conversations with professionals, older adults, and their family members who share their stories with warmth, understanding, and humor.

I'm your host, Marty Stevens-Heebner and here you'll find answers to many of your questions as well as different perspectives that I hope will inform and inspire you.

Janice Cohen (00:59):

Thank you, Marty. It's great to be here with you.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (01:03):

You are such an expert at this. Let me tell you a little something about Janice. Janice Cohen works with Mutual of Omaha as a reverse mortgage specialist, with 17 years experience. Talk about a veteran in her field and her approach to reverse mortgages is really unique, because she doesn't just think about it as a transaction. She really approaches it from a life planning perspective. What's your favorite memory of your grandparents?

Janice Cohen (01:31):

Oh, I had a wonderful, brilliant grandfather. We lived in New York city and he lived in our neighborhood, and he would come over every Sunday, and take me to the playground. He just had boundless patience and he had boundless energy for us as children. Those walks to and from the playground are forever in my soul. He always had a passion to make the world a better place or to help people feel embraced or to help them feel included.

Janice Cohen (02:04):

Every kind of person I'm Jewish. We used to have a Passover Seder every year at my grandparents' house. And he invited every type of person. He wanted to share our traditions. He wanted to share the amazing foods that we would eat on Passover, and he wanted to open his home. He was just a magnificent human being.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (02:27):

What a wonderful person to have had in your life. And that kindness and playfulness, you inherited that because that's the kind of person you are in a beautiful way.

Janice Cohen (02:37):

I hope so.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (02:38):

So you often become part of a team?

Janice Cohen (02:41):

Most of my business comes to me from trusted advisors who have very long-term relationships with the people who end up being my clients. I feel even more of a responsibility to evaluate if this is truly the right program for the right candidate. There have been clients who've been referred to me, who I have felt were not a good fit for a reverse mortgage. And I've told them that, and I've told their financial planner or their estate planning attorney that I felt that way and why.

Janice Cohen (03:16):

Just to give you an idea, there was a real estate attorney who called me one day and said, "I have a neighbor and she's been receiving phone calls from a reverse mortgage advisor. She already has a reverse mortgage and I would really appreciate it if you would just look at her most recent statement." And I looked at this statement and I noticed that this reverse mortgage was from quite a while ago and this lady's line of credit had grown to over $1 million.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (03:48):

How?

Janice Cohen (03:49):

She had done it. I think in the 90s and a reverse mortgage line of credit grows at the same rate that borrowed money is charged interest. And this lady was now in her 90s, and her rate was very low. We had a conference call, the real estate attorney, her neighbor, and I said, "Anne, what you have, you should never change." And she said, "That is so odd.

Janice Cohen (04:14):

This gentleman, this reverse mortgage specialist, has been calling and coming to my home. He brought over a dinner for me." I asked her for his contact information and with her on the phone, I placed a call and I said, "Hi, I'm Janice Cohen. I'm calling with Anne on the other line. She shared with me that you are talking with her about doing a refinance of her reverse mortgage."

Marty Stevens-Heebner (04:40):

And I can imagine the look on that guy's face on the other end of the line.

Janice Cohen (04:45):

I didn't even tell him that I'm a reverse mortgage specialist. I said, "I'm just curious. What is the benefit that she will get from doing a refinance of her reverse mortgage?" And he said, "Well, she'll get a much larger line of credit." And I said, "She's in her 90s, she has a million dollar line of credit. The rate will be higher?" And then he fumbled fumble. And, "Thank you for calling. Take care. I won't bother you anymore." Once I got behind Anne and said, "Hey, what are you doing?" Then he left her alone. I think it was not in the best interest of Anne.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (05:21):

It was in his interest, that's for sure.

Janice Cohen (05:22):

It was in his best interest. And I don't think about what's best for me. It's the way I earn my living. But still I think about what's best for my client. I would never try to complete a reverse mortgage for someone, for whom it was not appropriate.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (05:40):

You wouldn't push it.

Janice Cohen (05:41):

No.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (05:42):

And that's why there's an awarding after you.

Janice Cohen (05:45):

Yes, there is.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (05:46):

A Janice Cohen award, you were the first recipient, and it's unique in that you have to be both tops in bringing in clients.

Janice Cohen (05:53):

Yes.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (05:54):

And customer service.

Janice Cohen (05:55):

Yes, I'm a top producer at my company. Yes. I have top customer service scores and I take a lot of pride in both of those things. But I came on board to my company as the very first loan officer. And my CEO always said to me, "Janice, it all started with you. This was a leap of faith on your part." And I help to inspire other top producing loan officers to come over to our new company, which they did in droves.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (06:26):

And you're good at making things happen when it's the right fit for your client. Let's discuss the basics. What is a reverse mortgage?

Janice Cohen (06:34):

A reverse mortgage is a tool that allows a senior to borrow approximately 50% of the appraised value of their home in tax free money. So there are no taxes charged on loan proceeds, and there are no payments that are ever expected or required. Once you borrow reverse mortgage funds, you can be receiving money, you can have a line of credit to draw from in the future, but there are no repayments that would need to be made.

Janice Cohen (07:05):

I'm under the age of 62, I have a regular mortgage, I have to make payments. Anyone who's not old enough to do a reverse mortgage has to make payments on a mortgage. That's how it works. But on a reverse mortgage, there are no payments expected or required. And yet, if you want to make payments, you can do that. Otherwise, your loan balance is going to grow over time. Imagine if you had a mortgage and each month you have the option, "Should I make a payment or should I not make a payment?"

Marty Stevens-Heebner (07:34):

Do you have to keep up insurance or maintenance?

Janice Cohen (07:37):

You must have homeowner's insurance, and you must pay your taxes in a timely manner. You must maintain your house. We don't look in the windows to see if the house is maintained, but here's what can happen. Let's say your house is not maintained, and a neighbor sees that the foliage in the backyard is overgrown. They see vermin, rodents. They're going to call the city. And that complaint is going to get back to the mortgage company. So things need to be kept in a good state of maintenance.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (08:09):

As people get older, it's harder to maintain those things. With a reverse mortgage, could they draw money out to pay a gardener or a landscaper or something like that?

Janice Cohen (08:18):

Absolutely. A lot of people will calculate how much they need per month to make their lives manageable, easier. And then they can receive that amount monthly in order to pay for these services.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (08:30):

That's wonderful. Do your clients also sometimes use them for aging and place modifications like stair lifts and ramps, grab bars?

Janice Cohen (08:38):

Absolutely. My clients are people who want to remain in their homes for the rest of their lives, generally.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (08:45):

I'm sure people are wondering, "Can I get a reverse mortgage and live elsewhere?"

Janice Cohen (08:48):

You cannot. A reverse mortgage is designed for your primary residence. Having said that, clients in New Jersey will sometimes spend the winter in Florida. And that's never a problem to do that because if New Jersey is going to continue to be your primary residence, you can spend half of your year wherever you'd like, as long as your driver's license is New Jersey, your social security information is linked to a New Jersey address.

Janice Cohen (09:18):

These are the things that make the state in which your home is located your primary residence. If you live in your home half a year, but you claim a homestead exemption in another state, you have credit cards linked to another address, you have a driver's license from another state, that's not going to work.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (09:37):

You're not really a resident there.

Janice Cohen (09:39):

Everything should be uniform and linked to the home that is your primary residence.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (09:46):

The residence you've used to take out the reverse mortgage, in other words?

Janice Cohen (09:49):

Precisely.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (09:50):

Speaking of New Jersey, I believe you were a cantor there for how many years with your beautiful singing voice and everything?

Janice Cohen (09:55):

For 25 years, I was a cantor in a reformed synagogue in New Jersey. And now I'm here in beautiful Los Angeles.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (10:03):

And you bring all that love for your congregation to your work now.

Janice Cohen (10:08):

The love that I have and have always had for my community is what led me to do what I'm doing. I'm truly invested in the benefit that this program is having on my clients. I want them to feel not only are they happy, but they would shout it from the highest mountain that this reverse mortgage made their lives better.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (10:30):

Your business has really boomed through the COVID crisis. And I bet reverse mortgages were a lifeline for some people.

Janice Cohen (10:37):

The fact that I became as busy as I did during COVID was a big surprise to me. And I thought, "Okay. When someone is in his or her own home, they can control who comes in and who comes out. And it is going to make life more manageable for that person during a pandemic," which let's face it, highly unusual sets of circumstances.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (11:01):

Yes.

Janice Cohen (11:02):

But I was happy to be able to provide that for people.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (11:05):

What do you find is the biggest sticking point for people?

Janice Cohen (11:08):

That's a very interesting question. Sometimes a person will say to me, "I want to be able to leave an inheritance for my children." And I say, "You may not leave them a paid off house, but they're going to be able to leave a legacy to their children." But I want to tell you something that you might find surprising.

Janice Cohen (11:28):

The vast majority of the time, it's the children who are calling me to do the reverse mortgage for the purpose of getting care for their parents. Interestingly, I get the phone call from the wealthiest child. Why the wealthiest child? You have the son who's, let's say, a CEO of a company. He'll say, "I love my brother and my sister.

Janice Cohen (11:50):

I've been giving my parents money every month, but the time has come for us to share equitably in the care of my parents. My feeling is that I am currently funding my sibling's inheritance by giving my mother money every month that I will not see in the event that something happens to her, and we are all accepting equal responsibility if we do the reverse mortgage for my parents."

Marty Stevens-Heebner (12:15):

That makes so much sense. In Los Angeles, we have a saying cash poor, house rich, because for example, there's an area called Calabasas, and 30 years ago, that was farm country. Now it's where the Kardashians live. So if you paid $50,000 for a house in what the 80s, it's now worth millions. When you're putting together a reverse mortgage, is it the current appraisal that's used for what amount they get or something else?

Janice Cohen (12:42):

It's a very interesting question, Marty. I do a lot of reverse mortgages in Calabasas, in Beverly Hills, and my clients all bought their homes in the 70s, 80s for less than $100,000 in some cases. But if a person has a home for which they paid $100,000 and it's now worth $5 million, if they sell that home, they are going to have close to a million dollars in long term capital gains taxes.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (13:15):

Wow.

Janice Cohen (13:16):

It's a huge chunk. A home is a highly appreciated asset. There is a law that says, if you own a home jointly with a spouse, and that spouse passes away, the surviving spouse gets what's called a step up in basis upon death. What that means is, once one of you passes away, you are no longer subject to long term capital gains. You get a step up in basis upon death. I'm working with a couple right now who paid a couple of $100,000 for their home.

Janice Cohen (13:49):

It is now worth $3.7 million, and they are trying to plan the next two years. He is not well, but they're hoping he's going to recuperate. They're saying, "We want to be here while we are together. If something happens to one of us, we'll get the step up in basis so we won't be subject to long term capital gains anymore," and that is when the surviving spouse will sell. It's very important information for tax planning.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (14:19):

Yes, it is.

Janice Cohen (14:20):

People will often list their home, not realizing that they will be subject to long-term capital gains. But if they wait until one of them passes away, then they will not be subject to long-term capital gains.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (14:34):

That is so important.

Janice Cohen (14:35):

I have several different programs that I offer. And this program that I'm discussing with them is a low cost, higher interest rate program. They have a very large mortgage to pay off. It's about $1.8 million mortgage. We are going to get that mortgage paid off for them.

Janice Cohen (14:55):

If they decide that they want to remain in the house for the next five years or 10 years, they certainly can do that. No payments will ever be expected from them, which is really nice because right now, they are scraping together money every month to make their mortgage payments.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (15:11):

Imagine if suddenly that mortgage payment every month just goes away.

Janice Cohen (15:16):

Right.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (15:17):

That can make such a huge difference to have those thousands still in your bank account each month.

Janice Cohen (15:22):

And for a lot of people, that's all they need. They're not looking for a big influx of cash. They just want to stem the flow of money every month.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (15:33):

Reverse mortgages used to have such a bad rap. Why was that, and what was the shift that happened?

Janice Cohen (15:38):

Back when I began doing reverse mortgages in 2005, if a person had a pulse, I could do a reverse mortgage for them. In 2013, the department of housing and urban development came out with the Reverse Mortgage Enhancement Act. It was a refined approach to reverse mortgages. To be quite honest, it pulled back some of the money that we lend, because we used to lend a much greater percentage of the home value than we do now.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (16:07):

Still, 50% is huge.

Janice Cohen (16:09):

50% is huge, but it used to be much more. In the past, we did not do a financial underwrite of each borrower to see if they had a history of a willingness and capacity to make payments in a timely manner on their taxes, their homeowner's insurance, and their credit cards.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (16:28):

So you need to make sure that they have a solid credit report.

Janice Cohen (16:31):

Exactly. And that used to not be the case. Now, mind you, if there are some derogatories on a credit report, we can usually write a letter that would explain extenuating circumstances, loss of a job, an illness, death of a spouse. These are all legitimate extenuating circumstances.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (16:51):

Here's a really important question. After you pass away or after you move out, what happens with that loan balance from the reverse mortgage?

Janice Cohen (17:00):

Once the person leaves the house permanently is when the loan becomes due and payable. At the time of the application, we collect from our borrower, who is the person that they would like to have settle their estate? What is that person's address? What is that person's phone number? That person, however, has to be an authorized person to whom we can speak. And that authorization has to be made clear in their trust.

Janice Cohen (17:28):

Anyone out there whose home is not in a trust really needs to reconsider getting a trust prepared and putting the house in the trust. Because the trust specifies who is authorized on your behalf to communicate with lenders, with tax collectors, with the insurance agency and a realtor. Let's say you want your house to be sold. If the house is not in a trust and they don't have a specific person who's authorized that they can be dealing with, the house has to go through probate.

Janice Cohen (18:00):

A big problem can occur with reverse mortgages when no one has the authority to communicate with the lender, communicate with the realtor, and the house has to go through probate, that can take months. And upon the death of the borrower is when the loan becomes due and payable, and the family has to make sure that the loan is repaid. They can apply for an extension, but six months is the initial timeframe.

Janice Cohen (18:27):

And it is a far superior position to have that trust and say, "We want to sell, here's our realtor. You'll have your money back within three months when the house is sold." Sometimes one of the children will say, "I want to keep this house is my own," in which case, that child will apply for a traditional mortgage in their own name, and they will use the proceeds from that mortgage to extinguish the reverse mortgage.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (18:55):

Back to your client who got her reverse mortgage in the 90s.

Janice Cohen (18:58):

Yes.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (18:58):

And it's now worth a million dollars, because I think on average it increases 3% per year, more or less.

Janice Cohen (19:03):

Just about.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (19:04):

So compound interest. Now, I'm assuming this woman lived in Southern California.

Janice Cohen (19:08):

She's in Malibu.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (19:09):

So very high value, bought for not much money [inaudible 00:19:12] speaking.

Janice Cohen (19:12):

Yes.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (19:13):

Her beneficiaries would have no problem, but in other parts of the country, the prices haven't gone up so much. In some places where it hasn't inflated so much or in some cases deflated, the price of the home, that would be really difficult for the family to pay off, which is.

Janice Cohen (19:26):

I did Gladys's reverse mortgage in New Jersey. She was one of my first clients. It was like 17 years ago. I get a phone call about two months ago, "Hi, Janice. I don't know if you remember your client, Gladys Smith." I'm her nephew. I said, "Oh yes. How is she doing?" "She's not doing well. She's in hospice and we don't have enough money to take care of her," but she never used the reverse mortgage proceeds, and now the line of credit that she had on the reverse mortgage is much larger than the value of her home.

Janice Cohen (19:59):

I said, "Gladys's nephew. Get on the phone tomorrow with the servicer of the reverse mortgage and tell them you want every penny of the available line of credit. You want it all in cash in Gladys's account, every penny of it, because it's hers to take and the house is worth less than what's available." So, "Now why," you would ask, "Why is she telling you to take out the money when the house is not even worth what's available on the line of credit?"

Janice Cohen (20:28):

And I'll tell you. A reverse mortgage is a non-recourse loan. Non-recourse means that heirs are not going to be on the hook to repay anything above and beyond whatever the house can be sold for. So Gladys's house, once she's been removed from the house feet first, which is what my father always used to say about how he wanted to leave his house.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (20:51):

That's true. It's true.

Janice Cohen (20:52):

And he did. He succeeded. At the time that Gladys is taken out of the house, the house will be listed for sale and the reverse mortgage will be satisfied through the proceeds of the sale. Even if the proceeds are lower than the balance on the mortgage, whatever the house will sell for will satisfy the reverse mortgage.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (21:13):

That's remarkable.

Janice Cohen (21:14):

It is. Heirs are never on the hook to repay anything above and beyond what they can sell the house for. And if the value of the house is higher than what's owed on the reverse mortgage, the reverse mortgage will be satisfied and anything above and beyond the satisfaction of the mortgage goes to the heirs. So I was happy for them. I said, "You have a little nest egg here, take it all out, put it in Gladys's account, use it for her care. And when she's done needing care, that will go to you."

Marty Stevens-Heebner (21:43):

Who says that to their client?

Janice Cohen (21:45):

I probably shouldn't have said it, but I wanted to remind them that it is a non-recourse loan.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (21:51):

That is your big heart that is coming at it from a people perspective.

Janice Cohen (21:56):

I care more about these families than I care about a hedge fund on Wall Street.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (22:00):

Thank you.

Janice Cohen (22:00):

So sue me.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (22:01):

I've heard you use the term hairy loan. What is the hairy loan?

Janice Cohen (22:07):

Oh, my gosh. I'm the queen of the hairy loan. Did you ever find a piece of taffy on the street and it's got hair stuck to it, it's got dirt stuck to it?

Marty Stevens-Heebner (22:19):

Yeah, we find that in housing.

Janice Cohen (22:20):

Sometimes I feel like this is representative of some of my loans. Now, I do very complex loans because many of my loans come from estate planning attorneys and probate litigators. So there are issues associated with my loans very often to start out with, conservatorships, powers of attorney, requiring doctors letters, feuding beneficiaries, feuding trustees. Just unbelievable messes that I get involved with for the benefit of the person who's being fought over, or usually it's their money that's being fought over.

Janice Cohen (22:55):

I'll give you an example of that I'm working on right now. Borrower bought the property from an individual 20 years ago, who did a seller carryback. So he financed the purchase of the house. He was the bank for them. They paid off the seller, but the seller never filed a release noting that the loan was paid in full. So this of course is told to me by the escrow company. I'm like, "Oh, my God, this guy, if he's still alive is 97 years old."

Janice Cohen (23:24):

Well through an amazing effort, we located the son of this man who is authorized to sign a release saying that the mortgage has been paid in full. Had we not located him, we would've had to have our borrower purchase a bond. A bond that if anyone came after her for this money, she could say, "Here I have this bond." It's an insurance policy to make sure that this money would be paid by the bond company if someone came after her. But meanwhile, we located the son. He's going to sign the release. End of story. Happy, happy ending.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (24:03):

Oh, phew.

Janice Cohen (24:04):

That's one hairy loan.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (24:06):

I'm learning so much today. What's the favorite part of your job?

Janice Cohen (24:11):

My favorite part of my job is getting a client to the finish line. Calling them and saying, "We are clear to close. When are you available for the notary?" It's the best feeling, because a lot of my clients are not accustomed to having as deep an examination for the purpose of getting a mortgage as we are doing. And it's not just us.

Janice Cohen (24:33):

All lenders nowadays are doing a very deep examination of their clients. There are a lot of hoops to jump through. And these are people, in many cases, who have not borrowed money in decades. They're saying, "Oh, my God, I can't believe how in depth this is." And so when we get to the end, "I can't believe you're finally calling me and telling me that we're clear to close. I didn't think this day was ever going to come."

Marty Stevens-Heebner (25:00):

And I'm sure it drag's on probably for a couple of months.

Janice Cohen (25:00):

When people say, "How long is this going to take?" And I say, "It could be six to eight weeks." "What? Six to eight weeks? But I think it shouldn't take more than three to four weeks." These higher value homes here in LA with title that hasn't been looked at in 40 or 50 years, it can take longer.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (25:17):

Because they're being thorough. We don't want another 2008 crash.

Janice Cohen (25:20):

We certainly don't. Speaking of the 2008 crash, a lender or a broker now has to go through an appraisal management company. I, as the mortgage consultant cannot know who the appraiser is, and I can't communicate with the appraiser. When someone calls me and says, "I'm not happy with my appraisal," I have absolutely nothing to do with your appraisal.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (25:42):

It's not just from the outside that they appraise it. They have to be able to get into your home or-

Janice Cohen (25:47):

Oh, yeah.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (25:48):

... at least pass the front door. And we worked together dealing with a hoarding situation.

Janice Cohen (25:52):

Yes.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (25:53):

And the appraiser just couldn't get to appraise the home.

Janice Cohen (25:56):

A hoarding situation is considered a health and safety risk. That house had piles and piles of papers that would've gone up like a Tinder box if that house caught fire.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (26:07):

People don't realize that newspapers as they decomposed can spontaneously combust. It's so dangerous, but we got it done.

Janice Cohen (26:17):

Yeah, yes.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (26:17):

We got it done. Got it appraised.

Janice Cohen (26:18):

Thank goodness.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (26:20):

And how do you feel as you're going through these journeys with the clients, especially when you work with older adults who are in their 80s, sometimes 90s? I know that you feel emotions strongly.

Janice Cohen (26:31):

I do. I have had instances where I've woken up at 4:30 in the morning ruminating over a situation with a client. I think we all do that. It is an emotional roller coaster. Sometimes I'm working on a reverse mortgage, and the borrower with whom I'm working passes away. That's happened a number of times.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (26:54):

That's very sad.

Janice Cohen (26:56):

It is.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (26:56):

It's just very sad. It's lovely that you're there for them, because I'm sure sometimes there are some really long phone calls.

Janice Cohen (27:03):

There sometimes are. But I tell you, I'm very grateful to the people who call me on behalf of their clients to do the reverse mortgage.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (27:11):

You care so much about your clients, and you just care about people in general. I'm sure you go on this emotional journey with your clients and also your clients must go on their own emotional journey. Can you describe what that's like?

Janice Cohen (27:25):

I'll tell you an interesting story. When I lived in New Jersey, I had a lead. His name was Marvin, and I spoke to Marvin every few months and Marvin said, "Janice, my future is uncertain. My wife is very ill. I want to wait and see what's going to happen because I just don't know where I see myself if something happens to her." I said, "That makes sense. Don't lock yourself into anything until you know what your future looks like."

Janice Cohen (27:55):

After about a year, Marvin's wife passed away. And he was a champ. He took care of her. He made sure she got the care she needed. He kept her at home. Family surrounded her. He was really good. I'd give him a call periodically. A year and a half later, I get a phone call from Marvin. He says, "Janice, you're never going to believe it. I met a woman. Her name is Judy, and I think I'm going to ask her to marry me."

Janice Cohen (28:23):

And of course she said yes, because Marvin is a doll. And they applied jointly for the reverse mortgage. He said, "I want her to be the beneficiary of everything I have, which is mostly the house." A little house in Toms River, New Jersey. I did the mortgage for him. A year later, I get a phone call from Judy, "Janice, Marvin passed away." And of course it was sad.

Janice Cohen (28:47):

And I said, "Judy, that house is yours to live in for the rest of your life." Talk about ups and downs with Marvin and Judy and his late wife. He saw that his life was in a state of flux, and it was not the right time to make a decision that could have permanent implications for his life. And a reverse mortgage can have permanent implications, so it's good that he waited.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (29:13):

Thank you so much, Janice. You're just always great to talk to. You explain things so well.

Janice Cohen (29:19):

Thank you so much for having me on your podcast, Marty.

Marty Stevens-Heebner (29:24):

Thank you so much for listening to, how to move your mom and still be on speaking terms afterward. Please visit www.howtomoveyourmom.com for more information about this episode and for additional podcast episodes, featuring other extraordinary guests and conversations. Until next time, this is your very grateful host Morty Stevens-Heebner.

[00:00:00] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Caring for someone with dementia is not for
the faint of heart. How do you guide yourself through it as well as your loved one?
Fortunately, my guest Lisa Bricker has been there and shepherds her clients to the
challenges she once faced herself. And Lisa will be telling us all about it..
Moving your mom or your dad or yourself. Isn't just about moving things from one
place to another. It is much more complicated than that as are so many things
having to do with later life. How to move your mom and still be on speaking terms
afterward provides in-depth conversations with professionals, older adults and their
family members who shared their stories with warmth, understanding anything.
I'm your host, Marty Stevens-Heebner and here you'll find answers to many of your
questions as well as different perspectives that I hope will inform and inspire you.
[00:01:00]
[00:01:01] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Welcome Lisa. So great to have you here.
[00:01:04] Lisa Bricker: Thank you so much, Marty. It's wonderful to be here.
[00:01:07] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Thank you. And it's going to be great talking
to you about what you've personally experienced as well as what you do
professionally with your clients. Here's a little something about Lisa. She has served
hundreds of families of diverse needs as a senior care consultant, as well as an
Alzheimer's and dementia placement specialist.
Her life's work is advocacy for caregivers and compassionate placement for the
local. Lisa created gently guided to help families transition forward with
compassion. Families feel peace of mind is she takes the burden of feeling alone off
of their shoulders. She also serves on the public policy committee for Alzheimer's
Los Angeles.
When it comes to being a caregiver, Lisa truly gets it because she became a
caregiver herself. When her husband, Gary was diagnosed with early onset,
Alzheimer's in 2012 and [00:02:00] he just passed away. It wasn't a during 2020.
Yes, April 1st, 2020. He was fortunate to have such a caring wife taking care of him.
That's wonderful. So I like to ask what's your favorite memory of your grandparents?
[00:02:14] Lisa Bricker: I would say that there were a lot of memories and mainly
with my mom's parents and we called them grandma and Papa, and they live not
too far from us. My grandfather, about the time I was born, had a stroke at 59. And
live for almost 30 years.
Wow. My grandmother's whole world was taking care of him. So they relied on the
family because resources didn't exist back then, but she always had lots of cookies
and she gave great back rubs. And she was just one of the most giving, loving
people I've ever known in my whole life. Less than five feet tall.
[00:02:54] Marty Stevens-Heebner: She had a sparkle.
[00:02:56] Lisa Bricker: But it was also something intuitive of me [00:03:00] that I
recognized one stroke is maybe genetically my thing growing up. So it was also
instilled in me that I need to take care of myself. Yeah. And I watched herself. We all
watched her suffer. He needed a lot of care and he shuffled around and lived in the
past.
[00:03:21] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Those long-term memories, they manage to
stick around.
[00:03:23] Lisa Bricker: And he had the, because of the stroke, it was more
vascular dementia where they can come and go a little more, to very different. So
that was a huge window into the future. Little did I know...
[00:03:38] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Speaking about what you saw your
grandmother go through taking care of your grandfather, and of course your own
experience with your husband, Gary, I actually wrote a blog called the exhausted
caregiver, and it's so important to find a way to take care of yourself. I don't mean a
selfish kind of way just to maintain your sanity.
[00:03:58] Lisa Bricker: Absolutely. [00:04:00] My husband, Gary did have
Alzheimer's he was 55, but we didn't know what it was exactly. You know, it took
seven years to get a diagnosis.
[00:04:10] Marty Stevens-Heebner: So young, so young. And I think times have
changed since 2005 tremendously. We still have a lot of room to grow as far as
diagnoses go, but he was still young and vibrant and he never had a good sense of
direction.
[00:04:29] Lisa Bricker: He did lose his keys occasionally. So the little things we
would just go, whoa, what's that? It was really confused. I think when it's your
spouse, it's very different than a parent or a grandparent because it's your partner
and the person you lean on for everything. And is there and not, he was
independent for a very long time, but a lot of things happened. He lost two jobs in
two years, four [00:05:00] times in three years of very confusing.
[00:05:03] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I can only imagine. And it must've been so
hard on you also, when it's your spouse, you realize you close in age. So that has to
throw you for a loop as well. You understand your parents having this happen,
[00:05:15] Lisa Bricker: but at the same time, my mother had dementia, but when
it's your spouse, denial's a powerful thing. It affects us. And it's really hard because
the stakes are so high and you might have a little thing. And I would just say, “Oh
no, please stop that.”
[00:05:29] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Oh yes.
[00:05:31] Lisa Bricker: But at the same time as a family caregiver, or I wasn't
even calling myself a family caregiver back then you're beginning to
overcompensate without even knowing it.
[00:05:41] Marty Stevens-Heebner: In what ways?
[00:05:42] Lisa Bricker: Taking charge, making decisions. It's the beginning of
thinking for two people at the same time, two brains at the same time and over
time that just increases. On the other hand, your loved one is overcompensating
trying to [00:06:00] cover or maintain or keep up. It's the beginning of this kind of
stress.
[00:06:06] Marty Stevens-Heebner: So you took care of your mother who had
vascular dementia and also your dear husband who had Alzheimer's. What are the
subtle differences between caring for a parent versus your spouse, your husband?
[00:06:18] Lisa Bricker: I would say we'd go back to the personalities. There's the
saying? If you. One person with Alzheimer's you've met one person with
Alzheimer's. My mother was really easy and she trusted me. My father became ill
with lymphoma in 2005. That was a fairly quick illness and her dependency on him
transferred to me. And so she lived with us for about six months, and then we
moved her into assisted living. My sister and I did.
[00:06:46] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And let's talk about your professional work,
right? Gently Guided talk about the focus of your work, because that dovetails
nicely with finding the assisted living for your mother.
[00:06:57] Lisa Bricker: Well, gently guided, we provide senior living [00:07:00]
options for families at no charge. And over the years I have evolved into an
Alzheimer's and dementia placement specialist. I've been doing this work for about
nine years.
[00:07:11] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And you're so good at it. Your personality is
so warm. You're clear about what you do and having lived through it. It must be in a
way, a relief when your clients understand that you've lived through it yourself. And
to have that personal insight.
[00:07:24] Lisa Bricker: It's an instant connection and, “Oh my gosh, I'm so glad
you get it.” And there's not a lot I haven't seen over the years. There's patterns
that you see, everybody may be different, but the way it shows up in many ways,
there are patterns to. Okay.
[00:07:40] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Can you describe those patterns a little bit?
That's fascinating.
[00:07:44] Lisa Bricker: I'll just shift over to once someone is diagnosed, it
becomes, I believe less of a medical issue, and now it becomes a quality-of-life
issue. And you're wanting to match that with that person's personality. Are they
social or the [00:08:00] introverted? What environment are there going to be
thriving? And I like to think of myself as a matchmaker and because we're such a
small company, there's only three of us and we're very hands on. We have great
relationships with our providers and that instills a lot of trust for our families.
So we're not bombarding them with a lot of options. I may give them three or less.
Sometimes there's only one available, but we don't want to overwhelm them. We're
here to take it off their shoulders and give them some peace of mind.
[00:08:31] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I know that they are, shall we say, large
corporate entities that advertise a lot on TV who have these big platforms. What's
the difference between dealing with a company like that, versus working with you?
[00:08:43] Lisa Bricker: We always try to say, stay off the internet, searching too
much, and it can be very tricky. Most of the people who work for these companies
have never set foot in any of the options.
[00:08:54] Marty Stevens-Heebner: In the board and cares, and the assisted
living and memory care area.
[00:08:58] Lisa Bricker: And they don't [00:09:00] necessarily tour with their
clients, either. They're not as hands on, and it's not fair. A family is so overwhelmed
to begin with that they don't need a list of 10 or 20 options that may not be
inappropriate match to begin with. We offer a personalized service, a very
concierge.
[00:09:20] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Really listening a lot to understand the
subtleties. And again, you've gone through it yourself.
[00:09:25] Lisa Bricker: The beauty of our business is that we're referral by
referral. So our referrals come from professionals, attorneys, fiduciaries, other
communities, so that when someone calls. One of the first things they usually say is
you come highly recommended and we're often running.
[00:09:41] Marty Stevens-Heebner: It really is shepherding, isn't it? Because
people are often desperate is a strong word, but sometimes they really are
desperate to find any kind of help that they can trust to lead them through this dark
tunnel.
[00:09:53] Lisa Bricker: It's frustrating. It's confusing. They're overwhelmed.
They're dealing with so many different things. At the same time. [00:10:00] I
evolved into this work because I was trying to find purpose and meaning for myself.
Because nothing makes sense. If you're dealing with a loved one and living with a
loved one with Alzheimer's or dementia, logic is now out the window, you have to
find a way to cope. And it's so frustrating.
At one point to now, after Gary was diagnosed, I ended up having to call 9 1 1 on
myself. My heart rate was so high. I was just so stressed out and you're thinking
here, come the paramedic. I remember them coming in and I'm saying, my husband
has Alzheimer's and he needs attention too. And we left the house.
I left my purse, my cell, because no, one's looking out for the caregiver for you. And
that was a huge wake-up call because the doctor came in the next morning and
said to me, you need to make some changes. This is a long journey. He was like an
angel showing up in that [00:11:00] room that day. It hit me right between the eyes,
and I realized that this is a long journey and I had to take care of myself.
[00:11:08] Marty Stevens-Heebner: What did he recommend to you?
[00:11:10] Lisa Bricker: He didn't really recommend anything. He scared the heck
out, but at the same time I was in a hospital bed with an I.V. of Ativan saying, “Wow
- this is like a vacation.” What’s wrong with this picture, right? Taking care of the
caregiver.
[00:11:27] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And you lead some support groups.
[00:11:30] Lisa Bricker: I lead a support group through the Kensington...
[00:11:33] Marty Stevens-Heebner: ...which is an assisted living community...
[00:11:36] Lisa Bricker: ...and memory care. That's correct. They're fantastic. We
are open to anyone who has a family member or loved one that has Alzheimer's or
dementia.
[00:11:46] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And that's so important because you're just
saying, who's looking after the caregiver and you were in that situation in this way,
with the support group, people trade numbers, they help each other and you just
know you're not alone.
[00:11:57] Lisa Bricker: It's a community. We have a core group that [00:12:00] is
amazing. And we're, peer-to-peer when they were asking me to be a facilitator for
this support group. I said, I can't, I want to have them. Well, that's why we want
you. And it's turned out to be one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done in my
life. It's incredible. And we just had someone find us from New York.
[00:12:23] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Wow. That is so challenging when you live
somewhere else. My dad lived in Buffalo about the only thing that wasn't wrong with
him was his mind sometimes to my chagrin, he did have all his faculties to the end,
but trying to help take care of him from Los Angeles. When he was in Buffalo, I went
back and forth a lot, but it must have been such a relief when that person from New
York spoke to you and realize that.
[00:12:46] Lisa Bricker: Yes now it feels really good. We welcome anyone that
comes into the group.
[00:12:51] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Let's talk about some of the work that you do
for Alzheimer's greater Los Angeles.
[00:12:55] Lisa Bricker: My husband, Gary, his symptoms started very subtly in
2005. [00:13:00] He started having these episodes in about 2007. He'd get pressure
and hot and cold, and it was affecting his short-term memory. So we started seeing
a neurologist and they just said, must be seizure. And we found another neurologist,
same thing, because he was so young, he was 57 by them and it just continued
slowly. Then he lost his job in 2010.
[00:13:27] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And this was because...
[00:13:28] Lisa Bricker: ...of performance issues. He couldn't keep up. There were
little signs. He had gotten lost a couple of times. And then we moved several times.
He took another job and that lasted about six months. Nothing is definitely wrong.
He went to a neuropsychologist for testing and they diagnosed MCI - mild cognitive
impairment.
We were referred to neurologist number three. That's how we got the diagnosis in
late 2012. So that took seven years to get to that [00:14:00] point. And at that
point, both of us were scrambling and struggling. He was overcompensating with
blame and humor, which can only go so far. Very, very stressful on both of us
financially.
We were bleeding money, just a lot of costs. And so once he got the diagnosis, it
was like, “Oh my gosh - we had an answer.” So I reached out to a support group in
the local area. It was a general support group initially. I knew that I needed
something specific. I was told there was a support group through Alzheimer's Los
Angeles.
I reached out and we actually had to wait for a support group to form for enough
people. That was their memory club. We both went, Gary went kicking and
screaming. There's a lot of shame with it.
[00:14:48] Marty Stevens-Heebner: A big stigma and embarrassment, because
I'm sure he's used to being in this very functioning individual.
[00:14:53] Lisa Bricker: He had been a real estate attorney or real estate broker.
Very intelligent, very smart. [00:15:00] Well-read this was the worst insult and the
scariest diagnosis. He didn't want to share. And I just started negotiating. Can I tell
one person, can I tell two, but we ended up going to memory club and the design of
their meetings are you have an educational hour and then the next hour you split
up and they go with the diagnosed and the caregivers go into their own group. And
it's fantastic.
[00:15:26] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I was going to say that's a great idea.
[00:15:28] Lisa Bricker: And he loved it because they could relate to one another.
They could talk about it. They could talk about their feelings, they could talk about
their fears. They could learn new tools to cope. There are tools that you can do, and
he downloaded the apps to stimulate his brain. So there were a lot of things he
could do and it gave me an outlet to, oh, I bet it gave us a social life, too.
[00:15:51] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And I'm sure it's such a relief for both. Let's
talk about some of the work you do for Alzheimer's Los Angeles. You're a public
policy advocate,
[00:15:58] Lisa Bricker: caregiver advocate, and that's [00:16:00] part of the
service to make sure that the caregiver is really taking care of themselves. It gave
Gary and I a purpose, and we actually advocated for public policy. Gary and I
actually went up to Sacramento. He testified before a Senate hearing committee
and helped pass the bill.
[00:16:18] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Wow. And that's at the state level in
California.
[00:16:21] Lisa Bricker: He was able to convey how this disease had affected him.
It was really powerful and he was really proud of themselves because he always
said, I want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.
[00:16:36] Marty Stevens-Heebner: It's very brave. He had Alzheimer's but that
was something he could do because he had Alzheimer's. Do you remember what
the policy was? They got past.
[00:16:44] Lisa Bricker: Yes. It was asking doctors to make sure they hand out
resources to those who are diagnosed or experiencing cognitive decline.
[00:16:53] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Nothing worse. I can only imagine then being
given that diagnosis and saying, okay, thanks - bye-bye
[00:16:58] Lisa Bricker: That's a whole other [00:17:00] subject because
Alzheimer's and dementia goes against everything a doctor ever learned in medical
school. There's no cure. There's no treatment. There's no protocol. It's very
ambiguous and it's emotional. So it's very awkward. It's hard. It's hard for everyone.
[00:17:18] Marty Stevens-Heebner: It really is. And I'm curious with not just
Gary, but your other relatives, did you notice change in their personalities? Can you
give me an example of that?
[00:17:26] Lisa Bricker: I just started getting quieter because they can't keep up
with certain conversations. The world starts becoming a little more overwhelming to
them. There's subtle changes and the filters go off too. So you never know what
might come out of the mouth of babes, right? And they start focusing differently.
There are certain stages. I put everything in basically three stages of early stage
where you really want them to thrive. That's the time to really catch it so that they
can maintain that cognitive [00:18:00] level for as long as possible to be stimulated.
[00:18:04] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And what did you start seeing with mid-stage
dementia?
[00:18:06] Lisa Bricker: More care needs, showering, bathing, grooming dressing.
That's a hard bridge to cross because they're used to being independent to
maintain someone's dignity throughout the process is so key.
[00:18:20] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And in late-stage dementia, there's an
obvious and profound disconnection for obvious reasons. That's the disease, but
people forget that there's still life in there. What kinds of things did you do? When
do you encourage your clients to do, to keep people as present as possible for as
long as possible?
[00:18:39] Lisa Bricker: It's just really important to be present with them. There is
no greater teacher to be in the present moment than this disease, because that's
where the are - in the present moment. And if we meet them in that moment with
compassion and patience, it's amazing what happens. They thrive in calm
environments, [00:19:00] safe environments, trusting environments, because it's
scary to lose control. And, at some level, they are very aware that they're losing
control.
[00:19:10] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And trying to understand their anxiety.
[00:19:12] Lisa Bricker: If they become overwhelmed, they're losing control. They
may not be able to speak their words anymore. Their feelings may be confused.
[00:19:23] Marty Stevens-Heebner: They're bottled up because they can't
articulate what they're feeling.
[00:19:26] Lisa Bricker: That's right. So the anxiety can show up in a lot of
different ways.
[00:19:32] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And another thing in addition to being a
place where they can trust people, it's also about being accepted wherever they
are, because sometimes they think you're the daughter or with somebody who's
older, their husband who passed away 20 years ago and not telling them that he's
been dead for however long, but rather just being there. And for that moment being
in their story.
[00:19:53] Lisa Bricker: It's their journey, not our journey. That's beautiful. We
want to follow them on their journey and [00:20:00] to create that story so that they
have peace of mind. I was fascinated towards the end of Gary's life. Gary knew me.
He knew his daughters.
When he went on hospice, it was for six months. And I asked them, how many of
your patients have Alzheimer's or dementia of some sort. And they said about half.
And I said, how many of your patients recognize their loved ones? And they said
about a house. And I thought that was really amazing. That is extraordinary
because there's that belief they don't recognize you anymore. And they may not.
But your essence is there and we're human beings just because we can't
communicate. We're still there.
[00:20:46] Marty Stevens-Heebner: It's so important to be yourself, especially if
you're a family member, then as much as you can be given the situation, because
it's not just what you look like. That is you, like you said, the.
If you're behaving differently, you'll seem like a [00:21:00] stranger. I remember
actually being at the board and care your husband was at towards the end, and it
was such a nice peaceful place and he was common peaceful. And that was lovely.
You gave that to him. Yeah, that was important. It was important. So as things
progress with Gary and with your clients and their loved ones, I'm sure people have
to go in and out of the hospital or a rehabilitation facility. What do people need to
go in for?
[00:21:30] Lisa Bricker: That is a great question because that's an adventure. All
of its own. When someone with Alzheimer's or dementia has to go into the hospital,
they don't know why they're there. Very confusing for them because now they're in
a new environment. It's really tough if they have to have an Ivy or need assistance
of any kind.
I remember Gary had to be in the hospital for a little over a week. I couldn't leave
the room until under four doctor came in to either [00:22:00] change him or do
some procedure on him. And then I could take a break. Even then the doctors or a
nurse, even if simple thing of taking them to the restroom or having them shower,
they don't realize they don't know how to do that by themselves necessarily, or that
they need assistance with that every step of the way.
So I found myself training them or just trying to share with them how to approach
him and that he needed more assistance. This is why I do what I do, because I didn't
have somebody like me along the way to show me I want to be there for somebody
as I would have wanted somebody there to be with me.
There are resources. We don't even know that they're there. It's really about
learning how to ask for things and how to navigate around that. And that's the most
confusing part. The same goes for skilled nursing facilities and rehab as well.
Sometimes hospitals have sitters. You can hire them.
[00:22:59] Marty Stevens-Heebner: What do you [00:23:00] love about what you
do?
[00:23:01] Lisa Bricker: I love the relationships from the providers that we work
with and then the families that I work with, we get into some amazingly deep
conversations. We're just sharing and we're talking and we're understanding
because not everybody understands the world of a family caregiver who has to deal
with that.
Sometimes people on the outside, even if they're a family member, if they're not
directly involved in it, they don't quite understand. They can have opinions and
suggestions, but unless you're in it, nobody really gets it. And how difficult it is.
There was a book that I read several years ago called loving someone who has
dementia by Dr.
Pauline boss. It's all about the caregiver, even though it was written several years
ago, one of the first things she says in the book is that 63% of caregivers pass away
before their loved one does. And that [00:24:00] hit me right between the eyes. I
have taken that seriously. You can't take care of yourself enough.
You have to take care of your own health or you'll go down the tube. And now where
are you? That's the important part, but I love the sharing, love the connection and
the fulfillment of finding that right match for a family
[00:24:22] Marty Stevens-Heebner: The right community for them.
[00:24:24] Lisa Bricker: And knowing that I'm part of our greater community,
where my services are trusted. That's such a rewarding feeling, knowing that as you
will agree, our working worlds are very small and tight knit. We rely on each other
as resources because who are we without our resources? We can't educate enough.
[00:24:48] Marty Stevens-Heebner: My big goal with this podcast is to get people
talking and thinking about it and sharing expertise, whether you're a professional
working with older adults and their families or the caregiver [00:25:00] at home.
Emotionally just knowing you're not the only one, I guess it's like child rearing and
that every day is different.
[00:25:06] Lisa Bricker: That's right. I used to feel like I could just barely get
oxygen some of my darkest days. And when I talk about this with other family
caregivers, I'm feeling like I was living in a phone booth on the sidewalk, watching
the world, pass me.
The isolation is really detrimental. It's so easy to become isolated and see people
going on with their lives. Literally, I'm just now learning to have a life you have to
relearn, and re-enter the world. That's something that you never get over. That's
the bond we all share.
[00:25:41] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And all these things they happen. And it's
not going to go back to normal. It will be a new kind of normal because so much has
changed as a result. What do you wish people knew about the work you do and
what kind of questions should they be asking someone if they're interviewing
people who do placement? Well,
[00:25:58] Lisa Bricker: I think it's really [00:26:00] important to create a circle of
trusted advisors for yourself. My coaching background helps me with listening and
being present for people and really taking a stand that they honor themselves as
they move through this process. I think it's so important to trust yourself and you
can lose sight of that. It's so important to stay connected any way you can with your
own intuition, because there's no map, there are no instructions.
So you have to figure it out as best as you can to move through it because there's
no right answer. The guilt, the torment of making that decision to place your loved
one is probably the hardest decision you'll ever have to make in your whole life.
[00:26:44] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And yet finding that perfect community where
you can place them is such a relief.
[00:26:49] Lisa Bricker: And many times family are at odds with their opinions.
And there's a lot of things that are happening at the same time. I believe being a
caregiver is a [00:27:00] leadership position. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
[00:27:03] Marty Stevens-Heebner: You're a professional certified coach for 25
years. People are completely baffled. And so often the huge mass of emotions that
surround them end up triggering bickering and fights and everything.
[00:27:17] Lisa Bricker: It's almost like people's unresolved childhood issues can
come up in the dynamics of this. It is the opportunity to heal. If you can be open to
that, say it's a son or a daughter watching the. Parent decline. It's giving up that
role of being the child and stepping into more of a parent role. Some people go
through it naturally and some people can't see it. Some people struggle with it, but
somebody has to take.
[00:27:47] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Yes. As the adult child, you go from being
the one cared for, to the one caring for the parent, you were dependent on them.
Now they're dependent on you, whether they want to be or not.
[00:27:57] Lisa Bricker: And we see all types of different [00:28:00] qualities of
relationships that have happened. Sometimes they didn't get along so well yet they
are entrusted with the care of a loved one. All of this journey as a family, caregiver
has huge part of ambiguous loss grief. Dr. Boss's book is all about ambiguous loss
because it's grief without closure and you have to learn to live in uncertainty.
If there's anything I've practiced in the last 16 years is living in uncertainty. It's a
great practice because it's not easy, but it's walking that tight rope of being in the
present moment as much as possible.
[00:28:36] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Mindfulness, Lisa, thank you so much for
your openness and for all the extraordinary work you do.
[00:28:43] Lisa Bricker: Thank you, Marty.
Marty Stevens-Heebner: Thank you so much for listening to, How to Move Your
Mom and still be on speaking terms afterward. Please visit
www.howtomoveyourmom.com for more information about this episode and for
additional podcast episodes featuring other extraordinary guests and conversations.
Until next time, this is your very grateful host Marty Stevens-Heebner

[00:00:00] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Your parent gets a dreaded dementia diagnosis. You live in one city, they live in another. Who do you turn to for help? You'll find out in this week's episode of How to Move Your Mom and still be on speaking terms afterward.

Moving your mom or your dad or yourself. Isn't just about moving things from one place to another. It is much more complicated than that as are so many things having to do with later life. How to Move Your Mom and still be on speaking terms afterward provides in-depth conversations with professionals, older adults, and their family members who share their stories with warmth, understanding anything.

I'm your host, Marty Stevens-Heebner and here you'll find answers to many of your questions as well as different perspectives that I hope will inform and inspire you.

Barbara Hament, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here with me. 

[00:01:00] Barbara Hament: Marty. It's a pleasure to be here. I adore you can pay to be here with you

[00:01:04] Marty Stevens-Heebner: today, back at you. And you're so wonderful as a person, and you're just so resilient as a professional. Let me tell you a little bit about Barbara Hament of Senior Care Navigator.

LA has devoted her career in geriatric care to helping people age with. Dignity and the best possible professional care known for her work in dementia. Barbara is considered a pioneer in her field, providing expert support and caregiving services to older adults and their families in the LA area and beyond for more than 30 years.

For the past decade, Barbara has led caregiver support groups for Alzheimer's LA and UCLAs Eastern center for Alzheimer's disease research, including one for caregivers of persons with Lewy body dementia. And we're going to talk a little bit about that because there are all kinds of different forms of dementia. Barbara, I like to start out with asking you, what's your favorite memory of your grandparents?

[00:01:55] Barbara Hament: 

I had a wonderful relationship with my maternal grandmother. Tilly. Tilly was an amazing woman. She was very smart and very funny. And she was a terrific cook. She was a chef in New York city. We visited her in the city every week. And then I called her every weekend, every Sunday and on the first of the month, because that was good luck.

My favorite memories of her, I would have to say were her lenses and her borscht fabulous

[00:02:23] Marty Stevens-Heebner: cook. Yeah. You're making me hungry and about food and especially a chef. And I'm there, you were a very devoted granddaughter. And was it that relationship that led you to the work that you do now?

[00:02:38] Barbara Hament: I would say yes, that relationship has I'm the youngest of five.

And so by the time my parents had me, they were older. And so I was just used to being with older people. It came naturally. And so I gravitated to older people in high school. I volunteered in that local nursing home. I volunteered in the evemimgs. I was a candy striper in the local hospital in college. I went on and volunteered in the ER.

So I was just always around seniors. And of course my career has been. So it was a natural lead-in

[00:03:17] Marty Stevens-Heebner: for me and you and your cohorts, your colleagues at senior care navigator, LA your care managers. And can you talk to us about the focus of that kind of work?

[00:03:26] Barbara Hament: After 27 years of working in a hospital with a multidisciplinary team of doctors, nurses, and I asked the social worker, the department cloves, and I basically went out into the world doing geriatric care management, or we're now called aging, professionals. And so it was pretty much a tweak on what I had been doing at the hospital, which was working with seniors, connecting them with the community resources, but doing that in an outpatient clinic. And finally, as a care manager in their homes, wherever their homes are. So the focus of our work is seniors, obviously geriatrics.

And our caseload is comprised of either adult children who live out of town who want eyes and ears in. Or adult children who live in town and are just too busy with their families, their jobs, their lives, and really don't have time to deal with everything with their folks or people who just don't like their parents.

It doesn't matter where they live. So they hire someone to deal with their mom and it's. Okay.

[00:04:31] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Okay. And it's lovely because it gives them more energy to just keep. Or their entire family, including their parents, rather than be distracted by doctor's appointments and things like that. 

[00:04:42] Barbara Hament: It lets them just be the son or the daughter.

So I can be the bad guy. I have no history with their parents, so I can be the bad guy and they can remain the son or the daughter. And it's, it works out very

[00:04:53] Marty Stevens-Heebner: well, which is wonderful. Especially when somebody gets diagnosed with dementia. Can you talk a little bit about what can happen to the family and the family dynamics when.

[00:05:04] Barbara Hament: That's a difficult diagnosis because we both know that the road is long and hard. It's a gradual deteriorating aggressive diagnosis, and it's not easy to be the caregiver. What's so

[00:05:18] Marty Stevens-Heebner: sad is their mind can be going, but their body is completely healthy.

[00:05:23] Barbara Hament: Yes, that's exactly right. And they don't realize that their mind is going right.

So the adult children or the friends, or the neighbors, or whoever is involved in their. It's calling a person like me, a person, like you saying, oh my gosh, something's happening with my mom? My mom needs help. I'm trying to tell her that she's not listening to me because at the beginning we all dig our heels in a little bit.

I'm fine. What are you talking about? Okay, so I have a little forgetfulness, but I'm okay. I'm doing fine. They're not usually doing fine. The struggle. That's where this conflict, the adults will say, mom, you need help. You shouldn't be driving. I'm worried about you in the kitchen. It doesn't look like you're taking your pills and then the struggle begins.

That's often when we're called in there

[00:06:16] Marty Stevens-Heebner:. And what's frustrating is a lot of doctors don't want to diagnose dementia.

[00:06:21] Barbara Hament: Yeah, it does take a little bit to diagnose dementia. Oftentimes a diagnosis rules other things out. That usually takes a face-to-face clinical interview, getting scans of the brain and extensive blood work.

[00:06:37] Marty Stevens-Heebner: It is a process. Aren't there some things you can do to at least mitigate it somewhat to possibly slow the progression?

[00:06:42] Barbara Hament: That's what the drug companies say that the drugs that are out there slow the progression of. From what I've seen in everyday life, everyone's still, as you say, progressive,

[00:06:56] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Can adjusting one's diet and exercise and making sure that they're not socially isolated?

Can that help a little bit slow the progression?

[00:07:06] Barbara Hament: It depends on what the diagnosis is. Why is it good to get diagnosed early? I would say to get your affairs in order, because at the beginning you are able to make decisions for yourself. You're able to tell people what you want. And that is so important.

So if there's one thing that your listeners walk away with today, it's that if you have a diagnosis of dementia, go to your attorney and fill out your documents and your healthcare directive, do that so that your family doesn't have to guess what you want. They know exactly what you want. I can't tell you how important that is.

[00:07:44] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I had a discussion with Ken Kossoff and also Jamie Gonzales, who are wonderful estate planning attorneys, about how vital that is, and also about capacity with fiduciary Donna Bogdanovich about how tricky it can become to determine when people have capacity. So all the more reason when you do still have capacity, at least most of the time to really get that in order because that'll help take care of you and also take care of your family.

Those around you now, there are different forms of demands. Can you talk about that a little bit? I mentioned Lewy body dementia up front, all dementia is cruel, but that one is particularly unique because of the hallucinations. 

[00:08:28] Barbara Hament: So there are different types of dementia. I'm a social worker. I'm not a physician, but yes, we all know that there's Alzheimer's disease.

There's dementia related to small strokes called vascular dementia. You can have both of those, which is a mixed dementia. And then there are these ones like frontotemporal dementia. And Lewy Body Dementia. There is a dementia related to alcoholism called Korsakoff dementia.

[00:08:53] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I recently read an article that some of the police and firefighters from nine 11 are getting dementia and in early age,very early onset dementia.

[00:08:59] Barbara Hament: 

And those tend to be more aggressive. Sadly,

[00:09:04] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I just learned something. I didn't know that. So Lewy Body Dementia is related to Parkinson's, correct? 

[00:09:11] Barbara Hament: It's related to Parkinson's. Yes. And that's oftentimes the first symptom that people experience is the shuffled gait, the rigidity. And then oftentimes, like you said, the hallucinations start, and that is pretty typical with Lewy Body Dementia. It can happen at any age, but it's so difficult. 

[00:09:31] Marty Stevens-Heebner: That's what Robin Williams had. And not that we will ever know it's possible. He was in one of those few states when he died. I remember meeting with a client and she was 90. She had been with her late husband for 70 years and he had passed away a couple years before I met with her.

And she too had Lewy Body Dementia. As I'm sitting there talking with her, she keeps mentioning that she keeps seeing her husband around the house and I'm thinking, “That's just the dementia. She doesn't remember that he's passed.” 

But at one point she says, yeah, I see him by the pool. And I know he's gone, but I keep seeing him. And then ice came into my veins because I realized she was hallucinating and she knew he was gone. How tortured she must have been. So it's very haunting. I think it's wonderful that you lead these groups.

[00:10:14] Barbara Hament: I love support groups. I really do. I think magic happens in support groups. What kind of magic caregivers help each other in a way that professionals can use.

I truly believe that as a fellow caregiver, trudging along this long awful road, the support and the advice that they give to each other is heard in a different way than when professionals say it. They give each other tips and techniques, ideas, love and support. We laugh and we cry in group and it's amazing.

[00:10:50] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I can only imagine and just being able to vent, to let it out.

[00:10:54] Barbara Hament: Exactly, because they understand each other perfectly.

No one can understand if your spouse is asking you the same question 10 times in 10 minutes - who understands the frustration of that? You're going out of your mind, basically they know each other's frustrations, so it's so helpful. 

[00:11:15] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I bet great friendships form, too. I can only imagine if you're living with that person and you've been with them for decades in those situations, it gets to the point where it's difficult to remember it's the disease that's doing that, not your partner, because you have your own frustrations and you're exhausted. And that's why it's great. If you can hire a care manager, an aging life professional, because that can ease some of that heavy burden. 

[00:11:39] Barbara Hament: I agree. If you're able to hire a care manager, it can be a good resource for you.

[00:11:44] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And what kind of things do you do for your clients and their families? 

[00:11:48] Barbara Hament: We help with taking people to the doctor if you're at work and you can't take your mom to her doctor's appointment. We'll take her to the doctor and we’ll tell you exactly what happened. So we're documenting everything that's happening at the doctor's office.

And then letting you know what happened, but medication changes there are what recommendations the doctor had. If your mom goes to the doctor and has a little bit of forgetfulness, she might not remember exactly what the doctor said. So it's handy to have someone else there.

[00:12:14] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And also somebody who understands the medical jargon, because I can imagine if you're an older adult and you're a little frightened by the possible diagnosis or the diagnosis you do have that the doctor can do.

I'm saying things and you might be too intimidated to ask what that meant. Exactly.

[00:12:31] Barbara Hament: They're embarrassed. They're a little bit ashamed and they might not ask questions because they're afraid. Most of the time people are aware that they're not quite right. They're not as sharp at the beginning stages.

So it's nice to have someone else. It doesn't have to be a professional. Anyone, the adult children or a friend can be, they're all.

[00:12:48] Marty Stevens-Heebner: It's so important to have an advocate.

[00:12:50] Barbara Hament: Yes. Especially in doctor's appointments. Cause you and I, if we go to the doctors, we don't always hear what they say. 

[00:12:55] Marty Stevens-Heebner: So I imagine when somebody gets the diagnosis of dementia, do they often get depressed or their family members get depressed?

And how can that be here?

[00:13:05] Barbara Hament: People do often get depressed, especially at the beginning. And there are geriatric psychiatrists out there who specialize in geriatrics and psychiatric issues, psychiatric medications. I would say any medical professional that specializes in geriatrics really understands the whole polypharmacy issue.

All the medications that get thrown at seniors. And Really good to have people who specialize

[00:13:28] Marty Stevens-Heebner: in seniors, making sure there isn't some kind of weird signer, just tick effect, some weird combination of drugs that create all kinds of problems. And even

[00:13:36] Barbara Hament: over the counter medications, supplements,

[00:13:39] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I think people hear the term social worker and don't really know what a social worker does.

And I'm wondering what you learned by doing that, that you carry into your practice as an aging life. Perfect. It's that

[00:13:50] Barbara Hament: person's tempered approach. It's the physical, the psychological, the family, the support system, or thinking about the finances and thinking about them in their environment as the person in their situation and social workers, they call the psychosocial approach.

We're thinking about whether they’re eligible for any sort of government program that we can tap into that we can apply for, or their veterans benefits - stuff they could get. There's all sorts of things. And that social workers are thinking about. We're trying to help keep them safe and where they want to be wherever that is as independent as they can for as long as they can and it's usually at home. 

[00:15:00] Marty Stevens-Heebner:  What do you love about what you do? 

[00:15:13] Barbara Hament: I love meeting people. I love meeting seniors. I think they're all cute. Most of their adult children think they're a pain in the neck. I love hearing their life story, their living history. I learn a lot of life lessons from them. I know that whatever stress I have in my life they've lived with, they've dealt with, they've gotten to their nineties and it'll all work.

[00:15:00] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I love seeing your kitty. We often see pets, whether it's in a zoom meeting or in a podcast, and it's great. It just makes it a little more human. What do you wish people knew about what you do?

[00:15:13] Barbara Hament: It would be good if people knew we existed. I don't think most people know that there is this profession out there that can help you with your folks.

I don't think most people know that. And although we're a private pay service, if you don't have the resources, maybe you can tap into case management at your local senior center. Or maybe there are case managers at the local hospital they can tap into for resources. We're there to help you. We have so many resources at our fingertips that we can save you a lot of time and effort and give you advice and help.

You can just do an assessment. We’ll meet with you for an hour or two, and say here are my top three referrals for this particular thing or that particular thing. And it's really helpful. 

[00:15:58] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And you deal with this every day. Also, I find even in a city as big as Los Angeles, that the professionals working with older adults and their family, we're a very tight group.

[00:16:07] Barbara Hament: We are, we're a tight-knit group exactly. Here in a big city. We know each other, we've known each other for a long time. Like I've known you for many years. It's really great to have those connections in a lot of different

[00:16:18] Marty Stevens-Heebner: areas. It's so important. The care manager can have such a major impact on the lives of everybody in the family, especially if somebody lives out of town and just wants updates and that sort of thing.

[00:16:31] Barbara Hament: I would say, if you're looking for an aging life care professional, we all belong to the Aging Life Care Association. So you can go in there and locate a care manager near you. You can put your zip code in or your mom's zip code and find the local aging life care manager. The association is wonderful.

They have conferences, and regional conferences, national conferences. 

[00:16:54] Marty Stevens-Heebner: What you do is really difficult work. It's tough, especially when you're dealing with something like dementia. You often come in somewhere in the middle or the beginning and you see them to the end.

[00:17:04] Barbara Hament: It's a long-term relationship. You said it exactly. No one calls us when things are running smoothly. We usually hear from when a family situation is not going well, and they're implementing services for people who don't want them. So it takes some creativity and some massaging to build the relationship and the trust, and then trying to introduce things slowly. It's not easy.

[00:17:31] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I can't imagine that it is at all. And I think a lot of it is really learning to read people's emotions and really getting inside their shoes. Because to me, there are people who manipulate, who are awful people. And then for me, I consider persuasion, not such a bad thing. I feel when I'm trying to persuade someone it's because I really feel that what I'm talking about, what I think they should do will really benefit.

[00:17:54] Barbara Hament: And that's the tricky part. And so we come in, we try to find an angle. For instance, let's say the doctor just reported your mom or your dad to the DMV, and now there's issues with driving, right? So maybe instead of saying you need a caregiver, which sounds. We say, how about a driver, someone to take you to the grocery store?

And most people are like, oh no, I don't need a driver. Just saying, what about if we find someone just to take to the pharmacy when you need to go well, okay. Yeah. I suppose just a little door open can go a long way and then we can get someone, even if it's an actual caregiver from an agency, if we call them the driver or whatever, we're good.

We're good.

[00:18:41] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Especially for this generation, that's in their eighties and nineties now. And they were the greatest generation because of World War II, but they're also the deprivation generation because of the depression, all the rationing during World War II. And even if they were born shortly after World War II, their parents had been traumatized by all of it and certainly imprinted those feelings on the child.

And part of that was. Keeping everything you've got, which keeps my company busy, but also it's about never being a burden. Can't be a burden. And so that's a wonderful way of having a caregiver drive them or something like that. To finally start getting them to accept some help and finding out that it's not such a bad thing.

[00:19:22] Barbara Hament: When you think about a little bit of help can keep you at home. That's what people want. We want to keep people at home safely, and then if they can get. So that's the whole goal is to remain wherever you want to be safe. And if it's not as well, that's okay, too. So as care managers, we often move people into assisted living facilities,

[00:19:41] Marty Stevens-Heebner: and there are so many wonderful communities now with COVID people have become so socially isolated and social isolation is so dangerous with anybody who has depression.

[00:19:51] Barbara Hament: And that's oftentimes what happens. A spouse dies or adult children move away, and here's the senior living at home. Let's say they do finally bring in a caregiver. Then it's just the caregiver on the senior at home, unless you're still running around town, which oftentimes they're not seeing their friends are going to play Mahjong. Sometimes they're not doing that anymore.

There is something about the social interaction that takes so much more of your brain and also just the companionship. I always say, I want to move into assisted living. I am such a social person. I can't imagine living at home by myself, but you can be in your room and close your door and you're by yourself.

You might not need that caregiver because you can walk out your door and get the help that you need when you need it. 

[00:20:33] Marty Stevens-Heebner: What's the toughest part of your job?

[00:20:38] Barbara Hament: So I think we touched on it, getting people the help that they need, getting them to accept it, to pay for it. That is probably the toughest.

[00:20:48] Marty Stevens-Heebner: But what a difference it can make.

When I first met you, you were just yourself and you've now expanded. So you have other great care managers, aging life professionals, on your staff. What do you look for and listen for when you're considering bringing somebody onto your.

[00:21:04] Barbara Hament: I feel like the one thing that I cannot teach is passion for geriatrics, the love of seniors. I teach you everything else, the nuts and bolts, the paperwork, whatever. I can't teach you to love seniors. Like you were talking about, you were asking me about my relationship with my grandmother and that you can tell it brings me joy. If you have had that, you come, I believe, with what you need. No one can teach you to love seniors. 

[00:21:34] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And to admire them, even when times are tough. And maybe they're giving you a hard time or what have you, but think of all that they have lived through, it's extraordinary. The stories can be really wonderful. And for us, it's a story of stuff. You never know what you're going to find.

That's great. The story of stuff I love. It's intriguing. It's fun. It's curious and being a bit inquisitive, not overly curious, but wanting to know more. That's one of the things I look for along with the empathy that you're talking about when I'm hiring, it's so important. So

[00:22:06] Barbara Hament: it's one thing to take someone to the doctor, but if you're building a relationship, when you're in a car, taking someone to the doctor, it's not just the mere act of going to a doctor's appointment.

It's hearing about their life and everything. It's rewarding. It's hard work, but it's really rewarding.

[00:22:20] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And you must go home at night knowing that you've really done something to ease people's burdens, even if it's just being their companion for a time. But, of course, with your professional skills, there's a lot more going on, but that's what they may experience. They may appreciate it.

[00:22:34] Barbara Hament: It's true. And just assessing along the way. So the minute we get to your dad's house, we're assessing how many steps to the front door and what does the law look like? That we get in the front door? What do we see? How is he navigating? Can he get up the steps? 

[00:22:47] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Is there expired food in the fridge? What are they eating? Hopefully not just candy bars or something. 

[00:22:54] Barbara Hament: Taking a look in the pill box. Are they taking their meds? It doesn't look like they did today. Just putting pieces together, doing an assessment, coming up with a plan, take it slowly but surely.

[00:23:05] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And one thing working with the care manager is you're not seeing them every single day.

You come at different times and if there's been a shift, even a minor one, you can see that a shift has happened. 

[00:23:15] Barbara Hament: Like they look more tired and you can say, God, you just seem exhausted today. Are you sleeping at night? Well, no. Are you calm? And they've fallen. What happened to you? See the changes? Yeah.

[00:23:27] Marty Stevens-Heebner: What kind of questions should people ask when they're interviewing professionals like you care managers, aging, life specialists, what should they ask?

[00:23:36] Barbara Hament: On our association website they give you a list of questions to ask your managers. So go to www.aginglifecare.org. There's a list of questions there. Of course it talks about what we do, but I would say basic questions. What area do you cover? How much do you charge? If there's an emergency on the weekends or in the evening, can I call you?

[00:24:26] Marty Stevens-Heebner: What kind of backgrounds do they have?

[00:24:46] Barbara Hament: Yeah. So the profession draws mostly from nursing and social work. Absolutely ask, “What's your prior experience? Your degrees?” People are savvy these days. So they've gotten on the website. They checked us out, they looked at our education. They've seen who we are and what we've done, but people just want to talk to you and get to know you a little bit.

Some people on the phone you click with and some better than others and say, go with that gut feeling.

[00:24:26] Marty Stevens-Heebner: And usually your. And so we'll add the national website as well as your website information on www.HowToMoveYourMom.com with your episode so people can find you if they're not in Los Angeles to find others like you in their area. Barbara Hament of Senior Care Navigator, thank you so much for spending time with me today.

[00:24:46] Barbara Hament: Alrighty. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

[00:24:52] Marty Stevens-Heebner:

Thank you so much for listening to, How to Move Your Mom and still be on speaking terms afterward. Please visit www.HowToMoveYourMom.com for more information about this episode and for additional podcast episodes, featuring other extraordinary guests and conversations. Until next time, this is your very grateful host Marty Stevens-Heebner

[00:00:00] Marty Stevens-Heebner: What sort of legacy would you like to leave behind after you're gone? I never really put any thought into it until our next guest Matt Paxton invented the “Legacy List.”

Moving your mom or your dad or yourself. Isn't just about moving things from one place to another. It is much more complicated than that as are so many things to do with later life. How to move your mom and still be on speaking terms afterward provides in-depth conversations with professionals, old, older adults and their family members who share their stories with warmth and understanding I'm your host, Marty Stevens- Heebner and here you'll find answers to many of your questions as well as different perspectives that I hope will inspire you.

[00:01:06] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Thank you very much.

[00:01:07] Matt Paxton: I'm excited to be on I'm a listener and is excited to be on the podcast for years now in a decade, I think. Yeah,

[00:01:15] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Matt Paxton is one of the top cleaning, downsizing, decluttering, and hoarding experts in the country.

He was already an expert at hoarding before he joined the show hoarders for 12 years. Now as his reward for that, he hosts the Emmy nominated PBS show legacy list with Matt Paxton. And if you haven't watched it, you really need to, because it's so inspiring and wonderful. He's also the author of the secret lives of borders.

True stories of tackling extreme clutter and his newly released book. Keep the memories, lose the stuff, declutter, downsize, and move forward with your life. Matt lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his new wife and seven kids, or as Matt likes to point out one more than the Brady bunch played. His moved to Georgia was a fairly recent one.

And we'll get to talk about that later. Uh, Matt, I'd like to start out by asking what's your favorite memory of your grandparents?

[00:02:14] Matt Paxton: But my best story is my grandma. She always told the story. They lived in Oklahoma. And they would go to vacation in this little town outside of Walden, Colorado. And my grandpa went in to get nightcrawlers, to go through.

And she goes, you knew it was in there for 10 minutes longer than he normally was. So I knew something was up and I think he ever tell him the story to him. And he came out and he goes, we're moving here. I bought the store. She goes, okay. And they moved there and they lived there for 30 some years until they had this ranch.

And then he has this country to where they both ended up becoming postmaster. It was an amazing story and they were just hardworking, dedicated people. They didn't believe in buying anything. You didn't eat anything unless you grew it or went and hunted for it. That house was at 9,900 elevation. So the house was listed at 10,000 and I'd spend the whole summer there working on their ranch because their growing season was four months.

They didn't have snow four months a year and they would have to create all their food that four months. And so it was really hard living by. And I got a lot of good stories sitting on horses and sitting on tractors. I took me till I got them 47. It took me 47 years to appreciate the memories and the experiences you had as a kid.

And I had to clean a lot of houses too, to really understand. I didn't realize that was the best part of the job like you and I do this week. We get to clean up people's houses with. And it was amazing, but you don't realize how incredible the stories are and how addicting they are. And that's what keeps you going.

It's these little just incredible stories that someone drops on you and it just keeps you going. I did a speech a couple of weeks ago called hug and a check. It's the only job that someone gives you a hug, and then they give you a check. That's the coolest equation in the world.

[00:03:58] Marty Stevens-Heebner: What other profession does that

[00:03:59] Matt Paxton: happen in?

I've listened to your podcast. So I know you really get into the stories, but for me, I, it probably took me till about five years ago to rise. Okay. Look, this is my angle. I'm going to wrap around the store. That's what I identify the most with, but you've hung out with me at a bar. Like I tell a lot of stories and Marty and I have met at many conferences and a lot of the work at NASA conferences.

All of us just hanging out at the bar, talking now.

[00:04:22] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Our brains are built to remember stories where they're just built to do that. And your journey is fascinating because of course I've read your book and the way you were drawn to this. Cause there was the personal experience of cleaning out your father's house with rich really impacted you.

And then the word got around

[00:04:38] Matt Paxton: town. I lost my dad, my stepdad, and both of my grandfathers in about 18 months. And so that farm, I just told you about, I had to go clean. With my grandma and I found all these notes from my grandfather. They lived there for 30 some years, just the two of them. And they would spend from November 1st, basically to March 1st, they were.

Just the two of them and they would plan their garden for the next season. That's what they did. They didn't have TV, they had radio, they would listen to the Broncos games, but we really just hung out together very quietly. And they, and they worked all summers. So they could just live in this house that they built.

And I got to go through that house with my grandma after my grandfather died. And he had left her notes everywhere. Like this is a light bulb for this, and this is a light bulb and oh my God, this, I have to tell this story. They got married when they were 16. My grandma wanted to marry him at 40. And could you imagine in her mom wouldn't let her.

And he was 86 when he died. So do the math 70 years that we're married. She never forgot that her mom didn't let her marry him at 14 and never forget. We were cleaning out the house and I'm in the basement, like basically with flashlights and I find an old tackle box and old fishing box. And it's all the papers from Oklahoma.

My grandpa had them all organized my grandma in the basement. We're going through this and she's wait a minute. We found her parents' wedding certificate and wedding license. My grandma was hardcore. Christian, never cursed men in her life. And she realized her mom was 14. When she got married. And she was furious.

She goes, dag gone it that woman from me, this is an 87 year old woman yelling at her mother because in her mind, her mother took two years from her when they dated, they just weren't married. So it wasn't like they missed all these good times, but it was amazing. I grew up in all of these just incredible loving stories and everywhere I turned, I'd see them.

And I'd love

[00:06:35] Marty Stevens-Heebner: the story about.

[00:06:38] Matt Paxton: That is a sweetheart man. She was the first non-family member and it was the first paying client should pay me $500. And it was like, wow. But that would have been like a $15,000 job nowadays. But at the time, no, I had no idea. It was like eight days, 10 hours a day. It was just me and her.

I didn't have a crew yet. I didn't have a truck. I had a 1993 Saturn station wagon. You could literally see the ground through the floor of the car. I would go to the. Three times a day because I fill up the station wagon I'll drop the stuff out. There was no 800 got junk. There was none of these things back then.

And he just had to figure it out. Adam was amazing. She was just kinda coming to terms with being single for the first time in her life. She wanted to stay in her home, but medical was making her have to move. We found the pictures of her and her or her husband yet. They were just dating and it was the night they got back from world war.

And she said she knew she was going to marry him that day. That night. It really felt like these two young kids coming together, you know, he was 20 years old. He was just got back from the war and they ended up being married for 50 some years. Just incredible stories. And any, these are stories you and I hear about.

Yeah, she was so upset about her stuff. And I'm like, honey, you've already sent your boyfriend off to war. This is not going to be as hard as that. And she's kind of like, you're right. And I can't remember what got edited out of the book or not, but she was just this bad ass, excuse my language woman. And you've met a hundred of them.

And I think hopefully a lot of your listeners are the same way. The history of the stories that y'all have is something that might generate. We'll never experience

[00:08:07] Marty Stevens-Heebner: granted that demographic that went through world war II and also the depression and all that. They are the greatest generation. I also call them the deprivation generation because of going through the depression and world war II and all the rationing.

When you live through those kinds of hardship. It creates a certain perspective when it comes to things. And I know you and I have to deal with that quite a bit because it's difficult for them to let go. Let's talk more about that. What do you think causes that?

[00:08:36] Matt Paxton: There's a lot to say on this. I think when you work so hard to achieve something, those items have more value.

My grandma, they literally started with nothing and they remember being on record. And they have the ration stamps and where you see the shoes that have been resoled six times. And it's because they did go through nothing, two things there. I think one is, they're just very proud of what they've accomplished because they have accomplished so much.

But secondarily and I learned this from the hoarders. They also take pride in what they came from. My grandma, she was Oklahoma dust bowl. I remember Asher said, what, what's the weirdest thing you ever saw? And she was like, oh, a car. I'll never forget. The first time I saw a car, I was 17 working in a field and picking cotton.

It's not that I knew what a car sounded like. It didn't sound like a horse. I didn't hear the clock. I heard this and they looked up and they saw a car. And six months later, I got to use a bathroom in doors, in a building in Oklahoma city. And that was mind blowing to her that she got to see a car and use the bathroom and saying years she'd already married and had a kid.

Wow. So the point of this is perspective and I'm really lucky to hang out with a lot of fascinating people. A lot of these women's take true pride. In living in squalor or living with nothing because the people they love that raised them did the same thing. So there's a little bit of pride in that deprivation.

It connects them with the people they loved. Our clients have the same feelings when they won't spend a nickel on anything. It's not that they're cheap. They take pride in behaving, like the people that they love. And it's really a celebration of the people before them. And I think we all have that at different light.

Yeah. I

[00:10:12] Marty Stevens-Heebner: remember at the start of the pandemic, people were making their own sourdough. Oh yeah. They were knitting and quilting and all those things. It's interesting that we went back, not backwards. We touched that part of ourselves. Like you say,

[00:10:28] Matt Paxton: Yeah, we all try to find positivity in what we're doing and where else better to look than our ancestors.

Look, I think there's some good that came out of the pandemic. A lot of people passed away and I hate that. And a lot of people got sick. God knows a lot of people in our house got sick. That just big family and stories took a bit of a jump forward and appreciation for the past. You and I have always seen that in our job.

Anyone that's listening here, if you're trying to figure out how to go through your parents' house, just stop and listen to the stories first, take your time. Those stories will get you through it. If you try to bang it out in a week. You don't have time to enjoy the stories. And also the stories sometimes put a, an emotional value on an item that didn't have financial value.

If you knew the story, all of a sudden everybody wants it. So I'm really saying that to both grandma. And then we have the oldest adult daughter, right? So mom and the oldest did hot dogs.

Two 60 five-year women and then 65 to 85. That's my two fan bases. And it's usually the oldest daughter who's having to make all these decisions. So I'm telling grandma, trust me, she wants your stuff. She just doesn't know the stories yet. And so it's not that she doesn't appreciate you. My grandma wanted me to have all of her China.

My mom wanted me to have the China. Her mom wants me at 10. I got my aunt's 10 and I'm like, guys, I'm a single man. I don't need three sets of China, but you know what I did want from my grandma, she had a bicycle. That she used to ride around town with this in, and one time we had a hill at the back of our neighborhood.

I'm gonna tell you another story because it's part of what I do. Oh, it's fun. We have this massive hill end of our neighborhood. It's about a, about a half mile down. It was called dead man's hill and folklore where someone died on it dead man's hill was like Christmas story type of legend to me. We would sled down it.

And one year when I was seven or eight nanny, so I called my grandma. Her name was nanny. She was probably 40 or 50 at the time we wrote her. And we were going pretty fast and my brother and I hit her. And she went flying down. Debbie. She was angry, man. She took her about an hour to get ready, to get back.

She had to go through all these streets and we were at home, my brother and I go home and she was so angry. She goes, why did you guys leave me? And we're like, oh, we're not allowed to ride down a dead man sale. She wanted to spank us. She was so angry and we'd just laugh. We have. So when she was downsizing, I was like, I don't want your China.

I don't want your crystal. I want that. Yeah, because my favorite memory is of the damn bike. It's not on the China. So I just went to both sides for the moms. Remember, you got to tell the story why that China matters, because I might want the China, if I know the story, why it matters to you, it's a context.

And then same thing to the kids. If you want that. Tell your grandma, why you wanted that bike? Cause she knows how much it means to her. She knows how much you mean to her. It runs both ways. Doesn't it? Every time I almost wrote two books and the original concept was it was going to be a two point view book.

It was going to be for mom and for daughter, you would read each page, but you would read it from your perspective. And I couldn't do it. It was too hard and no one would buy it, but you'll see throughout the book, I definitely have some communication techniques in there that if you feel like I'm talking to you, when you read the book, I am.

Either I've been there as a son, or I've seen it as a client where I've seen the fight people, because at the end of the day, when you're cleaning out. Someone's house, no matter which party you are, it's all about communication.

[00:13:39] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Interesting to when it's not necessarily the daughter or the mother, sometimes it's just mad.

Paxton. Who's moving into sending like his own client.

[00:13:47] Matt Paxton: Yeah. So middle of this book, I fell in love with this amazing woman and I realized I had to move. It's very easy to give advice. It's very hard to take your own advice. I was halfway through my book and I called my publisher and I was like, dude, I'm moving.

I got a downsize. Now. I think I got to put this as the book. I almost decided not to go. Like it got so hard to go through my stuff. Cause my attic was filled with divorce. It was filled with death. It was a shrine to people that I loved. It was avoidance to things that I didn't want to talk about. There was a lot of truth, not good truth in my attic.

And that's one challenge about that room and your space in your home. I love my wife more than anything in the world and the life we have now here with all seven kids, but now almost gave up on it because I couldn't face all those awful things in my attic. I remember calling her and I was like, I just don't think I can.

Now my wife is a minimalist, so she goes, so you're going to give up on me in our life for stuff. Oh yeah. I got to call you back and told me wrong. I struggle with three or four different times. So that was the moment when I finally connected with my clients and I've been helping for decades. It was like, oh, That's why they're having such a hard time.

It's

[00:14:58] Marty Stevens-Heebner: so different when it's somebody else's stuff it's much easier to organize and move that than it is to do your own. You actually made me feel better about your own house. I actually, I hire clear home solutions. In other words, I bring in my own staff to work with me.

[00:15:16] Matt Paxton: I do the same thing. Mike Keller from my TV show legacy lists actually had to come and help me do my attic because one thing I tell everybody is you got to have an audience for it.

So one of my big tips, you've got to have an audience. You can't tell a story to nobody. I've had families that have called me and been like, Hey man, your advice was amazing. We now do a legacy list night with our family. And grandma holds up items and tells a story and we record it. I'm like, oh, I love it.

That wasn't the plan, but I love it. But I needed Mike to go through the house with me. So as my best friend and former employee of 10 years, he did. And what a lucky man, you have to have that buddy that. I guarantee you there's some of those right now saying, well, that's great advice, man, but I'm a widower and I don't have anybody.

Let me tell you some people at church neighbors, friends guarantee you they're always offering help. And this is the perfect situation to take that advice. You say, you know what? Old lady from church, I am going to take you up on that. I need you to sit on a chair and listen to my stories for the next two days.

And I guarantee you they'll say yes and you'll end up having a plan. Because the stories are amazing. That's the best thing about my TV show legacy list. I've gotten to travel the country and I now believe you can do that show in any house in the country. Everybody really does have a story. And we have a family from Katrina on legacy lists this year.

He was an NBA basketball coach and they had just gotten there. They had to leave because of Katrina and they're in their car. They're driving. They have everything that matters to them and their two kids in two boxes. And he goes, it was. We got on the bridge two hours later, the water is almost up to the bridge.

We still haven't moved this rain sideways. It's raining everywhere. And he goes, we're just praying to God to get us off the bridge. And one of the kids on my production crew was like, what's Katrina. That's so recent for you and I, but there's kids. They'll remember it, same thing with nine 11. Every item is attached to some point in history, whether it be family history or life history and world history.

And I just think it's so important to tell the story, have somebody in the audience with you and it doesn't have to be your best friend. I wish there was a volunteer service, honestly, where you can just do that. Uh, your friends and

[00:17:16] Marty Stevens-Heebner: family are tired of hearing the

[00:17:17] Matt Paxton: stories. Mine are. I'll tell you that they are done here in.

Everything has a story. So I've just really become almost a preacher of tell us stories and you can let go of the items a little better. It makes

[00:17:29] Marty Stevens-Heebner: such a difference. So how did you move through your.

[00:17:32] Matt Paxton: Well, I had a really firm deadline and that was super important. My house sold real fast, like surprisingly fast.

And I had about a month to clean up my home. I just really set a schedule and I was just cleaning and doing a little bit every night. I was also leaving a community that I had lived in my entire life. And my dad and my grandfather had both lived in my entire life. I lived within four months. My entire 47 years, I had to prepare to say goodbye to the community, not just pack up some stuff.

It was very heavily emotional and had a few beers at my favorite places had more ice cream than beer. I'll say that. And this was in the pandemic. So it was hard to say goodbye. It wasn't a big, massive celebration. You

[00:18:11] Marty Stevens-Heebner: pointed out in the book that as you're getting ready to move, say goodbye to people at their homes for outside your home.

You don't want to spend those hours having to prepare food and all of that.

[00:18:22] Matt Paxton: I did have a packet party with a couple of good friends would just be like, Hey guys, I'm packing, come over, come and do the kitchen tonight. And so I'd have one or two guys and we would just tell stories and we'd pack up the whole kitchen.

And so I was able to use friends and wrap up that to saying goodbye part as well. Everyone's like, dude, you're doing good, man. I'm like, yeah. And I'm finally happy. It's such a joy to just be happy. It's my wife, Zoe. I knew she was worth the. I don't want to underscore what a lot of our listeners are going through.

They've lost that love. And so they're having to go to a new chapter in their life. Without that person, it was very easy for me because I was moving to a new chapter with someone new and solid. My grandpa always said, don't run away from something bad. Walk towards something. Good. I'll say that again.

Let's say that again. He said, if you running away from something bad is going to be bad. And if you're walking towards something good, it's going to be. It's a shift of perspective. And so I try to tell people, it was very simple for me to see what I was walking towards. I wasn't running away from anything you and I get to see people that are moving to a senior living community, or they're moving back to home, to age, in place with their adult children.

And nobody can see that it's going to be great in a year. We just see what. And there's no way for you to see what you're walking towards, but I'm begging people when they read this book, I really hope you're able to change perspective and see, you might be walking towards something better. You don't know it, but I promise you if you give it a hundred percent effort and you really try it is there.

It was literally like jumping. I was like,

[00:19:44] Marty Stevens-Heebner: all right, courage. Even when you're moving to Zoe and love and the Brady bunch plus one, that was

[00:19:50] Matt Paxton: a gamble. It was a jump.

[00:19:53] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I have this perspective on fear. Fear is our greatest ally. All I want us to do for us is help us survive even resistance. That's fear too. And the way I've changed my perspective is when I'm feeling that I kind of bring fear over, sit it down and say, okay, what's going on here?

You're putting me on alert. For some reason, you're making me really pay attention and giving me that adrenaline rush for some reason. Is it, and if it's the old baggage and we don't want that stopping me. And in your case, like I said, your entire life was in four miles.

[00:20:24] Matt Paxton: I was afraid of losing. Right. And now I have a daughter for the first time in my life, but like I'm having all these new experiences because I took that leap and you're right about fear.

I mean, never thought about it the way you said it. What a lucky opportunity to look at yourself and say, what's really going on here. We blame stuff. It is never about the stuff y'all like ever. It's just the easiest thing to blink. Like you blame your sister, cause you can always blame your sister. It's not always special sister boyfriends.

Usually it is the ex-boyfriend. I had a lady one time. I don't know if I'll put this in the book or not. Adelaide, two sisters are fighting over. And one wanted it. The other one had been gifted. It dad had died. They're just screaming at each other more than he loved me. And she was like, you're right. He did.

And they were saying hurtful stuff to each other. And finally she goes, I don't want the piano. I just don't want you to have it. Now it's like ladies, you are horrible to each other. Like what is going on? And individually, it would've been about a boy when they were like 14. And I was like, you guys are almost seven.

You guys have wasted 50 years over some loser. Let's look them up on Facebook. I made them look at what this Larry Guy was. Now you guys are fighting over this and it really made them laugh. Sky's 400 pounds. You could split them. Finally, I was able to. And be mad at him and not each other. And they ended up selling the piano.

They were able to have a come to Jesus about really what was bugging him. It had nothing to do disappeared. It was about something that happened when they were 15.

[00:21:43] Marty Stevens-Heebner: That's so frequently the situation they will obsess about this pencil and certainly address that and say, okay, got it. You really need that pencil.

And just know that there's something

[00:21:53] Matt Paxton: behind this. When did they give it to you? Where did you live when you got that pencil in? By the third question, we know what's up. I'm not saying this is a full press mandate. It doesn't work all the time, but it will get us started. It'll get us past some of the heavier parts of what really is homeless.

It's a pencil y'all often times I'll be like, all right, I'll give you a hundred bucks for that. And they'd be like, ah, I don't want to give you the pencil. I'm like you said, it was a hundred dollars here it is. And they'd be like, no, I'm like, all right, what's up now? Hey, I don't do that all the time, but I used to do it a lot.

I would keep a couple hundred dollars in my pocket for that exact reason, because I don't think it's ever about the money almost never. And it's rarely about this stuff now. There's a fine line. If you're the adult child helping, maybe mom's not ready to talk to you. All that stuff. Maybe she doesn't know that she can, we come across some very private stuff too.

A lot of people know my background. I had a big gambling addiction and I lost everything gambling and had to start over at twenty-five. I'm very open about it. I totally thought one time. I wonder how much I can get for being a prostitute. And I found out and I was like, oh God, no, I'd rather just go bankrupt.

But I went to a really low places and I'm like, guys, I know you're upset about this China, but I almost prostituted myself to pay off a gambling debt to a Bucky. You'd be like, that's horrible. I go, yeah. That's horrible. What you're going through it. And half spare thing is that, and then they start to tell a story that they're going through it.

You have to give somebody maybe a little freedom to tell their story because their story, what they're hiding is holding them back. It's really the emotions attached to the stuff that holds us back

[00:23:16] Marty Stevens-Heebner: and legacy list. You had the opportunity to work with a family who had quite the civil. Background and going through those photos, that was a very intriguing process that you wrote about this

[00:23:28] Matt Paxton: family.

It was an African-American family that had some of the first people in the 19 hundreds of Howard did. They had a business college in Brooklyn in 1908, specifically for African American families. They had a lot of African-American history. The most amazing one was they had a family photo, four generation photo of great grandma, grandma.

Mom and daughter, all four women for generations. Grandma was enslaved and then. In fact, she had a bracelet in the picture and we actually found that bracelet in the house when we were cleaning. And the family never knew that that bracelet was in that picture. And so the formerly enslaved grandma was wearing that bracelet and she was like, look, I can't give away these pictures.

Like I got to go through them. And I was like, you're exactly right. You have an extreme situation where you're very well-documented family. His father was one of the first African-American men on a mixed Navy ship during world war II. So in that situation, we actually did have to bring in a historian to like help them understand what they had.

And these two were also retired librarians, so there's nothing more important in the case with this family. And it was a real challenge. So for them pictures and letters and books is going to be the worst thing. So we put that to the. Right because it was so extreme, it was so much important things for them.

So it was really easy to go through the garage. It was really easy to go through. The entertainment room was good. He's even easy to go through the bedrooms. I normally say bedrooms for last, because it's the most private room, but for them it was the study man. It was the library that was their home. And then we were able to bring in a professional photo organizer for them on that, because that was above my skill set.

A lot of us have not really locked into professional photo organizers and they have skills and techniques that can help you get through your photos a lot better than even I can. And so for me, the moral story here is no matter where you are, there's probably a professional of what you're getting stuck with.

Just make sure the person knows what to do. And the organizers of taught. Back up your backup, have a backup of all your pictures digitally, and then also have another backup of that on a flash drive and have that stored somewhere else, like in a safe or something. I

[00:25:27] Marty Stevens-Heebner: love that you developed this idea of the legacy list.

I've watched your show and reading the book has inspired me to really think of that for my own life. And actually I was going through things in my own. My home office. And I came across this notebook full of press clippings from a company called re bags, which was the company I had prior to clear home solutions.

And there were all these press clippings. And I said, that's part of my. So what kinds of things come up most frequently when people are putting together their legacy

[00:26:01] Matt Paxton: lists? So legacy lists is really a list of five or six items that will define your family story and your history it's really meant to be like, how am I going to be remembered?

It originally started when I first started cleaning out houses, I started doing a technique where I'd be like, Hey, look, if your house catches on fire, what do you want to say? If you ask us is on fire, what do you have to have? I'd give them a piece of paper and say, just write down the items you have to have.

They would write like a hundred items and I'd be like, Your house is on fire. And I would pull out a stopwatch. You got 30 seconds go find him and they could never find any of them. And then through the years, that kind of progressed to what's the most important items what's going to leave your legacy.

And what I found was it was never financially valuable items. It was emotionally valuable items. Look, if it's that important, why are we not showing them? Why are we not displaying? Rarely is it something that the person I'm asking has done? You know, it's usually stuff from your mom, not you. And so I've tried to encourage people.

Remember this is going to be less for your next generation too. And so what are they going to know about you? They don't want it to just be about a great grandma that they never met. Both of my grandfathers were two of the most important people in my life when I was 24. I lost every man that raised me and I have six boys.

None of them ever met my father or any of my grandfathers. And so they don't care. Um, the only legacy they're going to know, I do have a cookbook from my mom. She put it together and it's all my grandmother's recipes. My great-grandmother's recipes, both my other nannies recipes, my mom's recipes. And so I have every recipe from like pretty much every woman that's ever raised me.

And here's the best part it's handwritten. And so it's actually the writing of all these women. And it's so cool. That's one of my favorite things is when I find a note from someone that mattered to me, if that was my grandfather's signature and I get really excited and that's one of the main things, my legacy lists, because it's all these roots, which by the way I found out they're incredibly unhealthy, all.

And anything, it starts with two sticks of butter. This is probably not something you should do everything in my mom's cookbook. Is it two sticks of butter? And then it goes on. But that to me is a legacy that will live on an album. One of my boys cooks out of that book. And so I get to see my son cooking with my mom out of that book.

And he's cooking recipes that my grandma made. And that's a great example of Thanksgiving. Like I love watching my son cook something. My grandma first made me and they didn't even know. So to me, that's a legacy list item. I really encourage people to find things like that and keep it to five or six and then display them.

You've got to make space. People got to see them. They're meant to be shared when you have people in your home and people are going to see it and say, Hey, what's that? And so a lot of people, so I don't have space for it. I go, then it's not a legacy list item. We got to make space for it. You gotta be able to display it and share it.

And I promise you, your friends will love the stories. They want to hear it. That tells you where you came from and it tells you who you are. And it tells them where you're going. The kids will put up. The value on them before you pass away. Not necessarily after

[00:28:42] Marty Stevens-Heebner: you have these things that inspire you and have such deep meaning and they're in front of you and you can see them.

And each time you look at them, the

[00:28:49] Matt Paxton: reinspired yeah, yeah. That's what I want. And like, one of the things is just know where you're going. I always want to know not physically where you're going, but emotionally, what's the point here? I'm on a diet right now, like aggressively I'm walking five miles a day.

The healthiest I've been in probably 10 years, honestly. And it's because my son asked. Are you going to be a grandpa? And I said, what do you mean your dad died? When he was 52? You're 47. I'm going to be in high school. If you die, when you're 52, he goes, are you going to die? When you're 52? And I was like, I hope not.

And he goes, well, like you drank all that soda and you always eat candy. You say it's bad for you, but you still do it. And he goes, dad, do you want me to clean my room? You won't even stop drinking soda. I want you to be a brand. I'm in tears and he's totally right by the way. And I was getting ready to come up, promote this book.

And I was just like, who am I to tell people what to do with their stuff? If I can't get my own crap in order. And so here's the point I want to be a grandpa. And so I have on my wall, a piece of paper, this is grandpa. So anytime I'm like, I don't want to work out or I want to go eat some pasta. Cause I haven't had pasta in six weeks.

Oh yeah. I'm going to be a grandpa. And that makes me get back. And that's my goal. That's my finish line. That's where I'm going. And so I tell people the same thing. And when you're decluttering, you gotta have your goal. If you want freedom, if you want to still. By yourself. We got to get rid of encyclopedias.

I don't care how much you pay for them. It's all on the phone now. Okay. I just say to people, look, you got to have that goal and you gotta paste it on the wall. I got to see it. It's got to be in my face and I'm going to guilt myself into doing this. And that is a technique pure. Self guilt. And most people over 55 guilt still works under 55.

People are not really guilted. I'll be honest. I'll say, I just really want to put that goal. What do you want to do? Put it in front of you and it makes you stay focused on it. That's really helped me a ton, both professionally and now, personally. And that's

something

[00:30:37] Marty Stevens-Heebner: you emphasize in the book to have a deadline, have a goal.

[00:30:41] Matt Paxton: I'm very linear. I have a timeline. I basically signed my house contract to force myself to follow that guideline because I don't think I ever want to do. And tell the end of the story, but I'm in Georgia and I'm very happy, but it was still scary if you're freaking out about it. Honestly, anyone that's still alive right now listening my God.

If you got through the pandemic and everything you've gone through, I promise you moving is not that big a deal. And it feels like it's, I don't want to minimize the feelings you're going through. You've got all these feelings, you've got all those things that have built on you and wait on you. All right.

They're in your house right now. There's a reason hoarder's houses are like walls of stuff because hoarders feel safe behind those walls. They've been harmed so much by someone in their life create

[00:31:21] Marty Stevens-Heebner: this huge amount of physical armor for themselves to send off the emotional feelings.

[00:31:27] Matt Paxton: And with our own stuff, we do that at a much smaller level just to protect ourselves.

Cause it's easier to stay in this little bubble. And I just remind people, man, I remember the day I went to college, I was like, this is a bad idea. The first day college, first date, all that stuff. Like it's all scary. But a lot of times it works out. And guess what? If it doesn't, you're a strong enough person that you'll figure it out and you'll move on.

You'll find something.

[00:31:48] Marty Stevens-Heebner: It's sometimes going to that worst case scenario, like your mood, for example. Okay. So if I move, I get to be with love of my life and all the pre kids. If I don't move, I give that up.

[00:31:59] Matt Paxton: Yeah. It was on me to make that decision. Like that was a full-time data three, and I knew that this was the best move for us.

And I was like worst case. I can go back to my hometown and I got to tell ya, I don't regret it. I missed some things, but I miss my grandparents' ranch and miss my grandma. I carry that in you. Yeah. It's still there. All those stories are there. They're all inside me. And I'm now making new memories. Joy is a choice.

I really believe positivity is a choice. Then I really want people to start trying to make an effort to live in it. And so really change that perspective if you're going to say, cause my son made me say, because I want to be around my grandchildren, but like the point is I promise you this better stuff on that.

Just gotta be willing to jump. And if you're stuck call professional, there's people out there that whatever you're stuck with really, there's a professional and whatever's holding you back, reach out to them and you don't need to hire someone for a million hours, maybe just two hours. We'll get, you started.

Just try. I promise you it'll be better. And then that's why I wrote the book. I just want people to have hope and know that it will get better

[00:32:55] Marty Stevens-Heebner: and hold. So we can see the beautiful, there it is.

[00:33:00] Matt Paxton: Keep the

[00:33:01] Marty Stevens-Heebner: memories, lose the stuff, declutter, downsize, and move forward with your life. And that can mean moving physically, or it can just be having a space that works for you

[00:33:12] Matt Paxton: brilliantly.

Yeah. I heard a number there that a 93% of people actually age in place, either stay in the home or move to a smaller home nearby. Yeah, I'll have to maybe move into a senior living community. That's okay. Um, we've adjusted our show because of that, because so many people are just moving in with their adult children.

My in-laws just moved in here this week. I have, yes, we have two. And they have three dogs. So dinner is 11 plus three with 14 miles to feed at dinner, but that's okay. It doesn't matter where you're moving in. You just don't let yourself hold you back. Sometimes

[00:33:43] Marty Stevens-Heebner: I'll push myself out to 90 or 95 years old.

Yeah. Will I have regretted not doing this because I don't believe in living life with regret. I mean either. And so what would my 90, 95 year old think about. And 95 year old, Matt is awfully

[00:33:57] Matt Paxton: glad you moved. Oh yeah. I have my wife there. She's like, are you okay? Are you happy with being here? I go. I wouldn't be here.

If it wasn't happy here, I'd already Virginia. Now I've learned if you've taken a chance on love or life. It's not really a chance. You're just looking at a new viewpoint, but you can always go back if you don't like it. And I guarantee you half the people won't even know.

I got to call her there. He guys, Hey man, you want to go down to the river, go for a walk. And I'm like, dude, I moved a year ago. He's like you did. And I was like, yeah, the pandemic has changed lights so much that I do think in a positive way, it's helped us focus more on our family and at home now more than ever, if you're thinking about whatever that move is, whatever the situational changes.

If you're not. The doing is where the joy is. It's the deciding and taking action and proving to yourself that, Hey man, I did it at 73. I'm a bad ass man. I did something cool. I didn't think I could do it. That's where the joy comes

[00:34:53] Marty Stevens-Heebner: from and a life fully live. Yes. Sit yourself down with your fear and any resistance.

So how. Get themselves moving forward. What kind of tips do you have for them?

[00:35:03] Matt Paxton: I got a bunch. First one is find your finish line. What's your goal? Where are you going? So many people call me and they're like, I need to move. Great. Where are you moving? Oh, I don't know, but tell me what furniture I should take.

You know, actually I need to know where you're going. So understand where you're going to understand what your finish line is and then why I think the why is so important. Are you moving for freedom? Are you moving to be closer to. Right that why down and put it on the wall. Start slow. That's number two, start slow.

I'm all about a 10 minutes a week. Start for 10 minutes. I used to run marathons. Believe it or not. And you don't start off by running 26 miles. You walk one, right? You walk one mile. We've all done. Speeches where you ask people in the audience. How long have you lived in your house? Five years, 10 years, 20 years.

And a lot of times it gets into 50. If it took you 50 years to fill your house, you're not going to clean it in a long weekend. And in fact, that's the worst way to do it. Start slow. I tell people start and final jeopardy. When they say, Hey, we're going away for final deputy, you got 10 minutes. It's find a little one foot by one foot area and start cleaning that out.

Start organizing it and start small. I like a junk drawer or one shelf somewhere that's easy. That's achievable because you need to be able to know that you did it. You need to be able to feel successful. So underwear tour is great. Throw out the ones that don't fit and have holes in them. Real simple. If you're on photos, when you have doubles, just get rid of the duplicates.

That's it. Vince. It's a 10 minutes week. Stop come back the next day for 10 minutes. I promise you, you do that five, six nights a week. You're going to start to really feel it. But if you like, Hey, go clean the garage today. And you're 12 hours in. It just kills you. And you're like, you know what? Nevermind.

If you try too big and you try to bite off too big of a bite, you're going to fail. You're just setting yourself up for failure. And the whole point is to like finish this. And I'm really big about donate. I want you to invest a lot of time here. I am all about donating. You will be disappointed in what you sell.

I promise you there's rare exceptions, but for the most part, you think it is worth more than it's going to sell for. Settling is an act of a third-party giving you an independent value for. It's not someone saying your dad paid 50, so I'll give you a 51. You're gonna be disappointed. So you will not be disappointed with donating.

So please focus on finding a nonprofit that, that fits your mission, that you really dig and go donate. And it may just be a person like the story and the book about the guy with the tools. It's the greatest stories. And this woman, her husband, he was a. And her kids wanted to sell the tool set. It was worth about 40 grand and a significant amount of money.

She didn't need it, but it was still hard to walk away from, but there was a mentor that she really wanted to give them to. And I don't want to spoil the story, read the book, but she made a choice and I'm telling you me and I got a thousand of those stories and then it's gonna be pretty easy. You sell a few items.

I go, I go Facebook marketplace. If it doesn't sound like I give it away in the local buy nothing groups on Facebook. And then the other one, like have a friend present. The last one is tell the stories document. Please hit record. Everybody's phone has a recorder on it. You hit recorder, and then you'll be able to just tell the stories, man.

And you can hear some amazing

[00:38:01] Marty Stevens-Heebner: things. It's expensive to get them

[00:38:03] Matt Paxton: transcribed. No, not at all. I'm really big on video. Now, when families started doing these zoom legacy. It puts grandma on camera and it puts a timestamp on everybody. I really love that grandmas are doing this. Now. It blew my mind that people were doing it, but they're like sharing stories once a month or every other month.

And they say, grandma, tell us about this. Tell us about that and think about this in 20 years, we're probably watching like on a headset, that's implanted in our head, but someone's going to watch and be like, dude, look at uncle Tommy. He had hae her or he had blonde hair, not gray, or gosh, I found a picture of my dad the other day and I was like, guys, this was my.

This is grandpa. And they're like, he had an earring. I'm like, yeah. And they realized I had an ear and I was like, yeah, actually grandpa had my dad the day my mom got remarried. The day before my dad took us all out to get earrings, my brother and myself and him. Now at the time, I thought it was really cool in hindsight, like horrible news for my dad to get us all hearings, but there was a story and I still have a hole in my ear for the rest of my life, but like get those stories because I promise you, they're going to actually give you joy and it's going to help you get through this process.

And then you're going to find out that some people want the items now because the story. That's my tips and buy my book. That's my last tip.

[00:39:13] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Yeah. Do yourself a huge favor and get a copy of, keep the memories, lose the stuff downsize and move forward with your life. It's wonderful while you're at it, get a copy for someone you love, because they'll appreciate it.

It

[00:39:27] Matt Paxton: is buy one and give it to them. They give it to him. Cause I don't want to clean up two copies in your house in 15 years. I want to find one copy of your house or get the Kindle

[00:39:37] Marty Stevens-Heebner: or the audible.

[00:39:39] Matt Paxton: However you consume the book. I hope it'll help you and give you some hope and some focus on some joy, listen,

vital

[00:39:44] Marty Stevens-Heebner: information.

There there's lots of resources. Oh,

[00:39:47] Matt Paxton: the resource section. That's the best part of the whole book. And most people that are interviewing me have not gone to the end of the book. So they don't know about the resource section. So here's the best part. It's got the top a hundred items that people always call in and ask me about a collaborative with a RP on this book.

And I've done a lot of online classes for them. I get thousands of questions when I do those classes. And so we took the hundreds of. Items that people have about piano, China, whatever. And I tell you where to donate it or where to sell. So if you're in a hurry, you go to the back and you'd be like, oh, piano, where do I go?

And it has all the charities you can give your piano to. And then after that junk removal, movers, a cleaning company, cleaning supplies, any supplies that I think you might need, it's all there with their websites. And the updated version is on my legacy list.com the TV show website. And you're going to try to do it.

We've done a lot of the work for you. It's all there. If you need a move manager, you're going to go right to NASA and find your local news. And ASAM

[00:40:36] Marty Stevens-Heebner: stands for national association of senior in specialty move

[00:40:39] Matt Paxton: managers. If that's the only thing you take from this podcast, if you're stuck, call us senior movement who should go to nasa.org, find a move manager, and they're just as passionate and just excited to hear your stories as we are with keeps it

[00:40:51] Marty Stevens-Heebner: memories, lose.

It has obviously vital information, but also it is beautifully written. It's very easy to read. So get yourself a copy and just enjoy it. And

[00:41:03] Matt Paxton: you put it to use. Thank you. I had a co-writer he really gained of my best friends and we worked and worked together. I can tell the story all day long, but I can't get it on paper.

And he really helped me get it the right way. So, and I think you'll laugh probably more than you can. But you'll know what to do and to

[00:41:17] Marty Stevens-Heebner: get started. And y'all hear what other people have come up against what Matt came up against with his own move. Yes.

[00:41:23] Matt Paxton: Each chapter I do follow one of my tips. It outlines it all the way through, and then it gives you an entire story of one of my clients along the way.

You'll relate with somebody in there. And you'll think about your mom. You're probably gonna want to call your mom, honestly, when you finished the book and just tell her you like. Uh, and if you don't, you probably should go over and visit, listen to stories and hanging out. Thank you

[00:41:42] Marty Stevens-Heebner: for taking the time to be here.

It's just great. Thank

[00:41:44] Matt Paxton: you for doing this podcast. It's the podcast they need to be made, and I love listening to it as well.

[00:41:48] Marty Stevens-Heebner: Thank you for that endorsement. I appreciate

[00:41:50] Matt Paxton: it.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (00:00)
Ever wonder what later life is like in some other part of the world? Come with me today on a podcast trek to New Zealand. Moving your mom or your dad or yourself isn't just about moving things from one place to another. It is much more complicated than that, as are so many things having to do with later life. How to Move Your Mom and Still Be On Speaking Terms Afterward provides in-depth conversations with professionals, older adults and their family members who share their stories with warmth, understanding and humor.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (00:39)
I'm your host, Marty Stevens-Heebner and here you'll find answers to many of your questions as well as different perspectives that I hope will inform and inspire you.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (00:50)
I'm so happy that Paul Lawrence is here from New Zealand. Thank you for bringing here, Paul.

Paul Lawrence: (00:56)
Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks so much for having me on board.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (00:58)
Oh, my pleasure. My guest Paul Lawrence is one of the co-founders of Senior Move Managers, the leading relocation business in New Zealand serving older adults. Paul and his partners launched their company over five years ago and now have seven offices that cover all of New Zealand. Senior Move Managers also has plans to expand to Australia in the next few years.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (01:20)
And Paul does have a personal side, he really does. He's engaged to Anna and together they have a five month-old son, George, as well as a dog named Taco. Tell me about your favorite memory of your grandparents.

Paul Lawrence: (01:32)
The one memory that instantly comes to mind is my grandfather got unwell quite early on. So the doctor encouraged him to stop drinking alcohol, but of course, being a Kiwi bloke, he wasn't too keen to give up his gin and tonic every night. So my grandma started mixing him gin and tonic with black current juice-

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (01:50)
Oh.

Paul Lawrence: (01:50)
... and she slowly started removing the gin from the drink and so ended up just giving him black current and tonic and he never knew.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (01:59)
Grandma was a genius. You're so funny. So talk to me about how you started Senior Move Managers in New Zealand. What inspired that?

Paul Lawrence: (02:08)
We've been going for coming up six years now. It came from personal experience. Brad, my co-founder and myself, he was playing professional miracle football in Germany. He came back to New Zealand and his grandparents were going through a downsizing process. They looked for some additional help outside of a traditional relocation company that would drop all your furniture off and your boxes in the middle of your bedroom.

Paul Lawrence: (02:30)
I was selling residential real estate. I had a lot of elderly clients who were moving into retirement villages as well, and they asked me, "Hey, look, is there anyone that can actually help us through this process?" So moving companies can't look after that emotional element. It's just the physical side of it. It's an aging population right across the globe. So Brad and I, we sat down and did a lot of research into the market in the United States and saw that there was about 12 move management companies in 2002.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (02:57)
That was just the beginning. We have over a thousand members of the National Association of Senior and Specialty Move Managers.

Paul Lawrence: (03:05)
... [crosstalk 00:03:05] and New Zealand is very different to the retirement industry and the United States and anywhere around the world. The way that things are done here, and I don't say this lightly, it is certainly looked upon as a really successful model for the retirement industry. It's certainly leaning more towards retirement communities as opposed to fixed homes or retirement villages.

Paul Lawrence: (03:26)
And the perception from myself growing up, my only real exposure to the retirement industry was my grandma after she had had a stroke. And so she was under 24/7 care and she had a studio apartment so she would go out a communal space and have her meals every day. Now, there's swimming pools, there's movie theaters, there's salons. There's full functioning bars where you get a beer for $2 as opposed to $12 if you actually go to a real bar. It's like resort living here in New Zealand.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (03:53)
And we definitely have communities here that feel like resorts. They're very expensive. Now, how does it work in New Zealand in terms of what other care might be provided by, I don't know if it's called a National Health Service, but you definitely have a national health system, which we don't have here in the U.S.

Paul Lawrence: (04:10)
Yeah. It's referred to just as Public Health System here in New Zealand.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (04:12)
[crosstalk 00:04:12].

Paul Lawrence: (04:12)
In terms of the retirement space, there is age residential care in these retirement communities. We look at them both very separately. The retirement communities are independent so essentially it's in an apartment building where you do everything yourself. So you do your own washing, you'll vacuum, you'll cook your own meals. And then you've got your aged residential care, which is more of what my grandmother was in when she had her stroke.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (04:38)
So I think here we call that assisted living.

Paul Lawrence: (04:40)
Yeah. Exactly the same. For the two different models, for your independent or your retirement communities, you pay a capital cost or capital fee upfront and that ranges depending of the region that you live in New Zealand. The way that it's set up is that everything that's provided that I mentioned before, those bowling greens, the swimming pools, the movie theaters and the beautiful grounds that they have, the security, it's a model that works really well.

Paul Lawrence: (05:06)
One really good thing is that we have a continuum of care, probably 85, 90% of village operators in New Zealand will actually have an assisted living option once you need that. So if you're no longer deemed independent, you can move into a different part of the village and get that care provided too.

Paul Lawrence: (05:23)
Now, some providers are providing that care into your independent unit, but then others will transfer you through that continuum of care. The way that the age residential care model works here in New Zealand is that it's subsidized by the government. So it might just be [inaudible 00:05:37] home level care where you're getting your meals provided and you've got a little studio or it might be highend dementia level care where you're in a secure area.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (05:46)
But there are communities called continuing care retirement communities, often called CCRCs because it's a lot faster to say, but that's where you make a big investment upfront. Same thing, you pay a monthly rent for the often well-appointed apartments that you have so you can move in and be independent, but then when you start needing more care, it's available to you. But then there's assisted livings where there isn't that big upfront investment, but you do pay substantial rent per month, but you are also getting food and cleaning care.

Paul Lawrence: (06:21)
Yeah, the population's growing at such a rapid rate that providers across New Zealand need to build 53 new units every week for the next 25 years, just to keep up with population growth.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (06:33)
Wow.

Paul Lawrence: (06:34)
Our workload, our business has essentially doubled year on year and [crosstalk 00:06:38]-

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (06:39)
Oh yeah.

Paul Lawrence: (06:39)
... it'll continue to double for the next two, three years as well.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (06:42)
Which is tremendous.

Paul Lawrence: (06:43)
Having management plans in place becomes really important. My business partner, Brad, he's got a degree in public health. He was a lecturer in a health division in the New Zealand defense force and he also has a bachelor's degree from university in pharmacology and microbiology.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (07:01)
I love this. He's a football player with a degree in pharmacology. Very interesting.

Paul Lawrence: (07:07)
I know, I know.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (07:08)
Eclectic background.

Paul Lawrence: (07:09)
Yeah, we both do. We've got very colorful backgrounds, but that suited us really well.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (07:13)
In what we do, you have to be really adaptable. Every situation is different environment is different.

Paul Lawrence: (07:19)
I agree. So, I studied a sports science degree at Otago University. From there, I went into hospitality, managing bars and restaurant. From there, I worked in commercial radio, organizing the promotions and being on air and a sales team. And then from there, I went into selling residential property and now I'm here. Certainly not a linear direction that we followed.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (07:39)
When you're a realtor, when you're handling real estate and hospitality, you really have to learn to understand customer service. Especially with real estate, you're handling most families' biggest financial asset and it's their home environment. So there's a lot of emotions understandably going on.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (07:56)
And in the work that we do, when they're older, a lot of people are feeling that they can touch the end of their lives. I don't know what it's like there, but here, they've lived in their home for 40 or 50 years. We once moved someone who was 89 years old out of the house he'd been born into.

Paul Lawrence: (08:12)
Really? Wow.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (08:13)
Yeah.

Paul Lawrence: (08:14)
So our longest standing client, they built their house in 1949. So they've been here 65-ish years and they hadn't done any work to the house other than renovated the kitchen probably-

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (08:26)
Oh.

Paul Lawrence: (08:26)
... 20, 30 years ago. Yeah. Similar story here. Everyone's been in their house at least 30 years. The big message we make when we are doing presentations out in the community and meeting with people is, that move when you can and when you want to, not when you have to. There's no point moving into a retirement community and not being able to enjoy the swimming pool or the gymnasium. Move when you want to and when you can, so you can enjoy it.

Paul Lawrence: (08:51)
But we are working with a lady at the moment who has a house in Christchurch, New Zealand. And she's been there 30 odd years and it's flood-damaged, it's earthquake-damaged. It's never been repaired. It was a big 1930s villa, two story place. There's no floorboards, insulation's hanging out of the ceiling, it's an absolute mess. She had no power. She was almost like a squatter and a hoarder.

Paul Lawrence: (09:12)
She had a fall, ended up in hospital and the District Health Board got in touch with me and I've been working with her since August last year. And we are now getting her house on the market ready to sell, but she's paying $1,300 a week now for here in this village and the government won't pay any of her cost because she owns a property, even though the property's is worth diddly squat, because it's going have to be demolished. So she's basically racking up this bill that she'll then have to pay. This is a very extreme case, but there are people that are on the end of the spectrum that don't have money, but still need that support and that care.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (09:48)
We're currently working with a client whose home is probably going to sell for anywhere from 1.5 to 2 million. And they bought it back at the seventies for 49,000. So there are a lot of people here who've been in their homes a long time, who are what we call cash-poor, but house-rich.

Paul Lawrence: (10:05)
Yes. Yeah.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (10:06)
And they are great candidates to sell their property also for reverse mortgages.

Paul Lawrence: (10:10)
Yep. Reverse mortgages are starting to become more popular here in New Zealand as well. It certainly becoming a more hot topic here.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (10:17)
Yeah. Paul, let's you and I talk about what we do on a daily basis. Project manage moves. I believe you guys are not just the only company in town that does this, but basically in the country, correct?

Paul Lawrence: (10:29)
Yeah, that's right. We started in 2016, but we've gone a little bit further than just project management. We decided that by bringing in outside providers, people haven't met the bill in terms of that level of customer service that we need. A traditional mover is not someone who would sit down with your grandma and have a cup of tea or your mom or your family. We want to get to know the clients that we are working with and build that relationship.

Paul Lawrence: (10:54)
Our values are transparency, integrity, empathy, and respect. For us, it's doing the right thing. We've got two ears and one mouth. So I'm a big believer in listening first talking second. And then also the respect element is that everyone has a story to tell. I believe that everyone's superior to me because they know something that I don't.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (11:14)
Isn't that so important to realize that everybody has their yields of expertise and they're not the same? Older adults would love to be able to tell their stories. Our tagline is, where compassionate meets knowhow, for clear home solutions. And when I'm hiring, I'd like to say that those of us who work here are friendly nerds who can't sit still. It's that blend of empathy, usually from some past experience they've had with their own grandparents or parents, also, just that wanting to get things done and a bit of inquisitiveness, not nosy curiosity. It's really being open to hearing what people have to say.

Paul Lawrence: (11:51)
Yeah. We heard Kendall on your podcast and one of the previous episodes-

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (11:55)
Hmm. Kendall Young, the realtor?

Paul Lawrence: (11:56)
Yeah. She made a comment that really sat with me. That was that, she was a super curious person, intent on finding solutions. For me, I think that basically described my personality down to an absolute T. Helping people is something I've always been really keen on and whether it's helping them get the next drink from behind the bar or helping them find the right home to buy. And it's certainly an area that I have a passion for.

Paul Lawrence: (12:22)
We hire all of our staff against our values and every single business decision that we make, whether it's to open an office here or disciplinary action with a staff member here, it is based on those values. That's really to the success of our business and that high level of customer service that we aim to deliver every single time.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (12:39)
It really is important for any company to have those core values. And like you say, hire to those core values. It takes courage to walk into a hoarding situation and tackle it. It takes courage when you're new to this industry, to work with someone with dementia and handling surprises that arise.

Paul Lawrence: (12:57)
When you mention hoarder, I'm going to have to share the story of one of our most challenging customers that we worked with. So on average, our tasks take between probably 30 and 40 people hours to sort, organize, pack, move, unpack, and clean their house. Obviously, there's outliers and some a bit easier. The most challenging client that we worked with was 268 hours.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (13:21)
Oh my.

Paul Lawrence: (13:22)
In New Zealand, we have skip bins. So essentially a portable rubbish bin.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (13:27)
We call them dumpsters.

Paul Lawrence: (13:29)
Yep. So it would hold nine cubic meters, essentially the size of a medium size four-wheel drive truck. It would hold one of those. So we filled up 19 of those with rubbish. There was plastic ice cream containers filled with organic food that had turned to liquid. If I could show you the photos, you would be horrified. We filled container after container with magazines. Here's probably the kicker. We found 28, a big dramatic pause here, 28 dead chickens.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (14:00)
No.

Paul Lawrence: (14:02)
Yeah. Unfortunately.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (14:04)
There are different kinds of hoarders, right? And you do have hoarders who love animals so much they bring them in and can't take care of them and that's what happens.

Paul Lawrence: (14:15)
And this particular lady, we would fill up the dumpster and at the end of the day, we'd leave. And then we'd come back the next day and she'd taken half of the stuff back into the house. No one was really interested in working with these people. And historically, the assistance has fallen on the healthcare provider. So the nurses and the social workers and the hospitals, and it's not their job. Hoarding has now been classified as a mental health illness in New Zealand in the last 12, 18 months, which is really good to see because then support does become available.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (14:46)
I often have to explain, they're not intentionally not taking care of the animal. And you'll find cat litter everywhere and maybe there's some rashes on these pets, but you'll also find, as you were noting, the expired food for the person. They don't take care of themselves either. They don't know how to, because that's what a hoarding disorder does.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (15:06)
Let's talk about the process of what we do as Senior Move Managers. You're basically the whole show in New Zealand with what we do. Here in the U.S., there are a number of companies and different people who do this sort of thing. It's most important that people work with whoever they are most comfortable with. That's why it's so important to take time and listen to their questions and their stories.

Paul Lawrence: (15:27)
Yeah. Like you said, it's the listening, it's the understanding, it's the respect, the compassion. So to actually get an understanding and a feel for actually what's required because everyone's situation is different. If you go in and you've got a template of what it looks like, and what's going to occur and what you are going to do to manage this project, then you're not tailoring that to the individual needs. Sometimes moving house isn't a happy experience because that house, yes, it would have a lot of memories to him, but he might be really sad he's actually leaving that house. But if you don't understand the grief that's associated with that, you're on a different path.

Paul Lawrence: (16:01)
And one of our team said to me last week is that, we don't actually move belongings, we move memories and feelings. And that really is true. It's certainly a process that can't be overlooked.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (16:13)
The sorting is always, especially with clothes and things like that, that's always fascinating. They're often living in two-story houses with a garage, maybe a shutout back, and they're moving into maybe a one bedroom.

Paul Lawrence: (16:25)
Yeah. It's a lot smaller. And maybe there's no comprehension of what will fit and what they can take. We hear one lady moving into a one-bedroom apartment and she took 11 occasional chairs. Most people have one or two in the house. She took 11 into a one-bedroom apartment as well as 16 chandeliers. And she had, [inaudible 00:16:43] about eight or nine wall mirrors as well. And this was a tiny little wee one-bedroom.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (16:48)
Here's the thing that if they are legally in charge of themselves, so if they want to keep it, we have to respect that.

Paul Lawrence: (16:54)
Absolutely, and we did in that particular instance, talk to the village management and raised health and safety concerns. If she was to have a fall in the apartment, there was no way to get a gurney into the room. She could fall and seriously injure herself. We're obviously looking out for the health and safety of our clients that we are working with, but at the end of the day, you're right. It's their decision. You can lead them to where they need to be, but if they don't get there, there's not really much you can do. 99% of people take too much.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (17:19)
They tend to. And if they're moving locally, I'll say, "Let's just pick out your favorite and most useful items. Let's just start with that and get that moved over there so you can be comfortable. Your house isn't going to fall off the cliff the day you move."

Paul Lawrence: (17:31)
New Zealand's a unique space. We've got two islands. We've got the north island and the south island, probably 3, 4% of our clients move between islands. So it's not a huge amount, but we are doing a thousand moves a year at the moment. So there's regulations in terms of what can and can't go and that makes it tricky.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (17:49)
Your furniture and other items that you're moving. The minute it hits the water and has to be transported that way, it's so much more expensive. There's a lot more forms. There can be taxes and charges and things. If you're going internationally, you really need custom agents, good ones on both sides of the move. That's why, when people are moving internationally or even to Hawaii, we just say, "Minimalize. Buy it there."

Paul Lawrence: (18:12)
That's what we say. Even moving inter-island, it can be cheaper to buy everything brand new. And that's a conversation we have with some of our clients as well. But like I said, you can lead a horse to water, can't you? 16 chandeliers. Exactly.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (18:26)
[crosstalk 00:18:26]. Oh my goodness. So you do the sorting and then make sure the packing is all done properly?

Paul Lawrence: (18:32)
Basically the complete service is the sort, organize the pack, the shift, the unpack, and then the setup of the home becomes really important. The little touches go such a long way. If you don't do them, then it becomes just a minor inconvenience, but if you've got 10 minor inconvenience on a day that should be exciting for you moving into this new property, then all of a sudden you've got this sense of, disappointment's not the right word, but lack of excitement is probably better.

Paul Lawrence: (19:02)
We'll always set the clock on the microwave. We'll always fill the jug with water. Connecting up their wifi and making sure that their cable TV is running and operational becomes really important. So 9 out of 10 times, got no idea what's happening behind the TV with all of the plugs and cables.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (19:17)
You and I know how carefully you have to pack all the remotes, all the cords, document where they go so they can be plugged in on the other side.

Paul Lawrence: (19:26)
Yeah. One element that seems that's common sense, and an absolute no-brainer, if we're in someone's house and they're moving a China cabinet, we'll open up the doors of the China cabinet and take a photo of each individual shelf. So we'll have the tea ups, the ornaments, the photos of the grandkids. And then when we move it to the new residence, we'll unpack it and set it up exactly as it was. Those comforts of home go a long way.

Paul Lawrence: (19:49)
Then when our clients walk in the door and the place is set up and there's familiarity there, that just goes such a long way to making their transition into a new home easier. Do you have preferred real estate agents that you work with? What's your process for helping the clients sell their home?

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (20:06)
There's a certification you can get here in the states as a realtor. If you see the letters SRES, senior real estate specialist. So they are certified. And so they'll understand the unique tax breaks here. They're more informed. Talk to people and see who you feel most comfortable with. Do your research.

Paul Lawrence: (20:24)
Agreed. For us here, probably about 50% of our clients have engaged real estate agent already. So what we have decided to do here in New Zealand, we thought our clients deserve true value. [inaudible 00:20:36] Senior Move Managers as providing that value to our customers over and above a moving company. So what we wanted to do now is, do the same thing with real estate, or have been licensed for seven years now. So what we are going to do here in New Zealand is, charge a competitive commission rate to sell homes and offer completely free marketing to offer a complimentary moving package as well. No one else at this point is able to do.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (21:01)
What's the population of New Zealand?

Paul Lawrence: (21:04)
Five million, or thereabout, less than LA. A lot smaller, but definitely still huge amount of population.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (21:12)
And like you said, more people moving there.

Paul Lawrence: (21:13)
And we're getting a lot of people moving back to New Zealand now. More the younger generations of the forties, 40 and 50 year-olds, comparatively speaking, to our clientele who have decided with COVID, it's time to return back to New Zealand. So a lot of people returning back here.

Paul Lawrence: (21:28)
From the real estate perspective, the New Zealanders are accustomed to paying huge real estate fees. What we wanted to do is, again, provide some real value to our clients and to our customers. We'll also expand outside of the senior demographic with that as well. We're starting now to have conversations with other agents to come on board and we'll begin a really strong marketing push in real estate here, and hopefully getting some momentum with it.

Paul Lawrence: (21:51)
We had a really thorough strategic planning session, and we decided that our mission is making lives easy or making life easy. The people that we are working with, they haven't moved house in 30, 40, 50, sometimes 60 years, the process is completely [unnorm 00:22:08] and for us to then come in, take care of their belongings and make this process easy, that's what we want to do.

Paul Lawrence: (22:15)
And one thing that we find is, that when people do engage us to use our services, they have this expectation of the move because of what's happened historically. These health concerns, they've just lost a loved one, whatever it may be that makes the move still stressful, that after the shift, when we sit down and we chat with our clients, as they say, "Oh, this was actually amazing. I didn't know moving house could be like this."

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (22:40)
Moving is scientifically and statistically, one of the biggest stressors in life. It's like in the top five, if not the top three stressors.

Paul Lawrence: (22:48)
It was death, divorce, public speaking and moving house. I didn't really understand the true value of the services that we provided until I moved house myself. My partner Anna's mom, Helen had really severe kidney and liver failure and we were really unsure what the future held there. This was on the Saturday morning and we were meant to be moving house on the Tuesday. Anna stayed up in Auckland until Friday following and being a typical Kiwi bloke over the weekend, I did absolutely nothing. So I didn't pack the house. Monday came around and I woke up in shock thinking, "Holy, I'm moving tomorrow."

Paul Lawrence: (23:27)
Thankfully we had a couple of additional staff available who came in and actually helped to pack up the house. And then we moved and then they helped unpack and set up the house as well. Just the amount of stress and workload it took off just me personally was absolutely amazing.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (23:42)
That's wonderful. It has been such a pleasure talking with you, Paul. Thank you.

Paul Lawrence: (23:45)
Yeah. Thanks Marty. I really enjoyed it as well.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (23:50)
Thank you so much for listening to How to Move Your Mom and Still Be On Speaking Terms Afterward. Please visit howtomoveyourmom.com for more information about this episode and for additional podcast episodes featuring other extraordinary guests in conversations.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (24:07)
Until next time, this is your very grateful host, Marty Stevens-Heebner.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (00:00)
Wouldn't you love to have a wonderfully written guide for what your later years or those of your aging parents could be. Squint: Re-visioning the Second Half of your Life by Margit Novack is that guide. Margit Novack's vision for later life is no less than revolutionary. And she's here to tell us all about it. Moving your mom or your dad or yourself isn't just about moving things from one place to another. It is much more complicated than that as are so many things having to do with later life. How To Move Your Mom and still be on speaking terms afterward provides in-depth conversations with professionals, older adults and their family members who share their stories with warmth, understanding, and humor. I'm your host, Marty Stevens-Heebner and here you'll find answers to many of your questions as well as different perspectives that I hope will inform and inspire you. I'm honored and delighted to have Margit Novack, who is my mentor, colleague, and dear friend. Welcome Margit.

Margit Novack: (01:10)
Thank you, Marty. I am delighted to be here. It's great to see you again.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (01:14)
It's been forever and I can't say enough great things about your book. Let me tell you a little bit about Margit. Margit Novack is an entrepreneur, thought leader in aging and the founding president of the National Association of Senior and Specialty Move Managers. She launched her award-winning company Moving Solutions in 1996. The National Association of Senior and Specialty Move Managers recognized Margit's commitment and service by creating the Margit Novack Award for excellence in senior move management. And then in 2020 Margit left the formal work world and began a new role as author, speaker, and champion of a revisioned picture of aging. She lives with her husband, Bill, and three dogs, and she loves to kayak up wind. When you read Squint, you'll know what she's talking about. She's also the author of the trailed blazing new book Squint: Re-visioning the Second Half of your Life. Margit, do you remember how you and I first met and what really sealed our friendship?

Margit Novack: (02:13)
I do. We met at a NASMM meeting and I was talking about the last time I was mothered. It was a story about my, it wasn't my final days with my mom, but it was one of the things I remembered of what it still felt like to be mothered. And I was thinking about this 30 years after my mom had passed away. It's now almost 50 years. And what I was describing is that she had been ill and in the hospital for many months. Today, it would be treated on an outpatient basis, but she had been in for six, eight months and I would visit her each day. And at this time it was my birthday and my then boyfriend had not given me anything, not even a gift.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (03:04)
Ooh.

Margit Novack: (03:05)
And I walked into my mom's room and she said, hi, honey, happy birthday. And I burst out crying. And she comforted me. And what I thought of years later, because often it takes us years to look back and think about what an experience really meant. This was the last time I was mothered by my mom, from her hospital bed. She became very ill after that and died within a month. But I also thought about the fact that I had been the dutiful daughter taking care of her, visiting each day, talking to doctors, paying the bill, the hospital bills. I wanted desperately to feel like a daughter. And she wanted desperately I believed to feel like a mother. So that experience we had together fulfilled something very special in each of us. And I believe that it was as important to her feeling like herself as it was to me, feeling taken care of. And it's really exquisite to think of what it feels like to be mothered.

Margit Novack: (04:20)
And no matter how old you are when your mother or your father passes away, there may be months where you are the caregiver, but I hope we all hold onto that feeling of when they took care of us. It's not physically taking care of us. It's someone taking care of us emotionally in the way that parents are so selfless. It's a wonderful feeling. And I was telling this story and there was a lot that resonated with you and you shared your own experience. And I think after that, we were just connected in a spiritual as well as professional and fun way forever after.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (05:03)
I couldn't believe it because I was a newbie. That was my first NASMM conference. And I had been admiring you from afar. We had a weird coincidence that we discovered right then. And that was, we had both been 26 years old when our 58 year old mothers had died. Separate times. I love that blog that you wrote about that years ago. And of course that's in your book and it's just wonderful. You refer to the 10 pound mirror in your book. Can you tell us what that's about? Because I thought it was fascinating.

Margit Novack: (05:35)
We have a mirror in our home. People like to look at themselves in this mirror. They pose in front of it and say, Hey, I look good. I look about 10 pounds better than I normally look. The optics are off somehow. And most people like to see themselves looking just a little bit better. The mirror is an object, but I thought about how the mirror could be a symbol for just being kinder to ourselves and not as critical as we often are. When we look at ourselves, when we think about ourselves, we're usually harsh critics. This mirror, which encourages us to see ourselves in a better light, maybe that could be something that we could become for someone else. Maybe a person can be a 10 pound mirror for someone else and help them see themselves just a little bit better than they are. I had friends and colleagues who did that for me. And it was sometimes embarrassing, but always delicious.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (06:44)
Yes.

Margit Novack: (06:45)
To have people who make you feel good about yourself. And I believe, and I hope that I have been 10 pound mirrors for some people. And I think it's a good metaphor for us to keep, whether it's someone who works for us, a family member, can we say some things to them and about them that make them feel good about themselves? It's a gift. So I hope that our goal is to be a 10 pound mirror for other people. If I'm a 10 pound mirror for other people that will make me see myself better.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (07:22)
You have definitely been a 10 pound mirror for me repeatedly over the years. And I'm very grateful to you for that. Because people aren't always the 10 pound mirror for others in their family, there are those big conflicts that can often arise when that huge shift happens in later life for people. And I love the part in Squint where you point out that we speak about our aging pets in a much more positive way than we do our aging parents or older people in general. What is that about? Why do we do that?

Margit Novack: (07:53)
Well, I'll get to the why. I wrote this when one day I heard two women talking about parents and one said, how are your parents doing? And the other said, oh, they're deteriorating. And I thought, that's how she's talking about her parents. What about they have some struggles, but they're resilient. They're making due, they're getting by, I'm still involve with them. And that's when I thought about my aging pets. At the time I had a very old Greyhound and a very old cat. And I think this is not just about me. I think it's about every pet owner with an old cat or an old dog. If someone says, how is Peace Blossom doing?

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (08:38)
Aww. Thank you.

Margit Novack: (08:41)
You would've said she's doing great. It's hard for her to get up and sometimes there are accidents. She can't go for walks very much. And I have to give only soft food. I have to lift her into the car. I'm looking into a ramp. You would have done what we did, which is we had ramps. We had steps for our cat so she could continue to get into my husband's chair on her own because dignity was very important to Tiger. We cut a hole in the litter box because she could no longer step in. And we felt happy for everyday we had our aging pets. I think almost everyone with old pets is happy for everyday they have with them, even though the pets are very different from who they were when they were younger. Why is it different with our parents? We don't look at our pets and see what they've lost. We accept them with their changes. And we're okay with that. I think it is much harder for people to accept changes in their family members.

Margit Novack: (09:52)
I looked at my old cat saying, that's what a 20 year cat looks like. This is what an 86 year old person is. And to celebrate the good experiences and times you have with them not, oh, it took so long to walk here. I have to do this. I have to do that. We're not embarrassed when our cats had accidents, but we'd be terribly embarrassed if our parents have accidents. And we're asking them to be something they can't. And I'm not suggesting that everyone's parents develop incontinence, but we are able to accept changes in pets. And we have a much harder time accepting them in our parents and believing that they can still have a good quality of life even though it's a different quality of life. My old cat had some hours in the sun every day and he gave love and received love. We need to find a way to look at people as they change and not just see them as diminished, but interact with them in the way they can be. And I think find creative ways to help them be as independent as possible.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (11:02)
It's extraordinary because when I read about that in your book and you talk about it so eloquently, it really struck a chord with me. It seems like we see what is lacking in humans versus what's still there with pets. And thank you for bringing up my sweet late Peace Blossom who passed away at 18, such a good long life. In our pets we celebrate what's still there. We don't do that with older adults.

Margit Novack: (11:27)
No. I think we also need to have a paradigm switch and it's not just the family members. It's the older adults, where we look at mobility aids and see them with embarrassment or shame versus this is great. Now I can do something easily and independently. When my husband was about six months away from his hip replacement surgery, he said, we're not doing things and we're not going places that we used to because of my hip. Let's look for a scooter. I was on Facebook marketplace the next day and I had one. And I was surprised that he said that, because I thought if I would suggest it, he might be offended. But he saw it as not wanting our lives to get smaller.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (12:13)
To be limited.

Margit Novack: (12:14)
And I think whether it's a cane, or a walker, or a grab bar, people are so reluctant, both the family members and older adults to look at these aids as something that enables them to continue to have a full life and a big life. And that's a big obstacle. It really is a switch that we all need to make in our heads so that we look at hearing aids and say, that's a way to stay connected. Of course, I would want that.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (12:43)
I've met young people with hearing aids. How wonderful we have these things. I remember my father before he ended up needing diapers and a stair lift in the home in Buffalo. He'd say, oh God, if I end up with diapers, just shoot me. That was John Heath or what can I tell you. When the time came, yeah of course that's what you use. And if you need a stair lift, you need a stair lift. He didn't realize that these things help you keep going. And these are good things to use.

Margit Novack: (13:06)
One of my favorite stories is from a 100 year old. I had moved into a retirement community when he was in his low 80s and he moved to a building that was far from the main dining room. And about 17, 18 years later, I got a call saying, I don't know if you remember me. I did. And he said, I'm going to be 100. I live in building H, which is the farthest from the main dining room and where all events are held. And I'm finding that I some days ordering my meal delivered because I don't feel like walking that far or I'm not going to events. I don't want my life to get smaller. So I want to move to a closer apartment.

Margit Novack: (13:46)
And I loved that a 100 year old doesn't want his life to get smaller and took steps to make sure that it didn't. That to me is someone saying, I'm going to buy a ticket. Why can't I win the lottery? God, you never let me win the lottery. And then God says, help me out here, buy a ticket. I think people as they age need to buy tickets, they need to have some intentionality and some mindfulness that if they want to age well, they both need to do physical fitness and be connected. And look at the things that are involved in aging. That may include bringing in different types of modifications to enable them to thrive and be independent. So that's buying a ticket. It doesn't happen by accident.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (14:36)
You have to be aware, yes. Don't be embarrassed to ask for help or recommendations because the whole point is live your richest life to the variant. Suck that marrow out of life. In your book, you cite a study that showed older people are generally happier and more content than younger people. Are you happier in your later life?

Margit Novack: (14:56)
I am. I know that the experience of writing the book was one that gave me a lot of aha moments. I did revise my personal narrative a number of times, and that was interesting, but I think there's more acceptance of who you are. There's also a recognition of resilience. There's this forgiving one's self for failures and sometimes just rejoicing in things that were put off for many years. When in the first few months, when I left work, a paid job and I could read a book at three in the afternoon or go for a walk, I just couldn't get over it. Because I had worked full time my entire adult life. And it seemed miraculous that I could be reading books in the afternoon.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (15:43)
And you could enjoy yourself and go kayaking.

Margit Novack: (15:46)
That's interesting because it's not just having time. I think it's having mindful time. For my husband and myself. He had a really severe heart attack three years ago.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (15:56)
Oh. Yeah.

Margit Novack: (15:56)
And he miraculously recovered. But when he recovered, we were both back at work, full time seeing each other for an hour or two in the evening. And for us it took COVID. It took a complete shutdown when we went to a shore home and said, if not now when? We're healthy, we're doing well. If we don't appreciate this now, if we're not grateful for each of these days, when are we going to do that? So it's not just having time. I think it's being mindful that you have this time and being grateful that you have this time.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (16:29)
That's beautifully put. And that's just one of the keen insights you offer in Squint. There are so many. You also talk about that later life is different and you can be engaged and there's no way to age quote appropriately. You do your own thing. Like you got a tattoo.

Margit Novack: (16:46)
I wasn't that old when I got the tattoo, I was probably 55. I was getting my hair done and came home with a tattoo and it's a little butterfly. When I gained weight, its wings got bigger. But when I started thinking about senior ink, which is what they're referring to for older adults who are getting first time tattoos, they're one of the largest age groups. There are hundreds of thousands of people above 65 who are getting their first tattoos. We think of it as something that young people do. Some people are getting them because they're no longer working full time. And they feel that they have more freedom to have a tattoo. Some people are getting them because their mother said over my dead body and now their mother is dead. Some people are getting them because people say, what will it look like when you're old and your skin is wrinkled and they go, my skin's already wrinkled.

Margit Novack: (17:38)
That's not why most people are getting them. Most people are getting tattoos when they are older because they crave an experience or they crave a connection. My brother-in-law is 83. When he was in probably mid 70s, he said to each of his five grandchildren, if you want a tattoo, I will be with you when you get your first tattoo and I will get one also. And he has flown around the country three different times to be with his grandchildren when they got their first tattoo. And he has three different tattoos representing those experiences. The experience was the tattoo, but it was also this bonding with their grandfather who was wanting to be with them to share it. So people were using tattoos and the experience of getting them as a way of connecting to one another. And that's not how we typically think about tattoos.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (18:35)
No.

Margit Novack: (18:35)
Even nail art. I was at a salon getting my nails done and I saw a woman in her mid 80s getting nail art. And my first reaction was agist. Oh, that's unusual to see someone that age getting nail art. Then I did some research and there were articles interviewing older women who had gotten nail art. And one woman said that having nail art caused other people to either come up to them and start conversations or it made it easier for them to start conversations. And they liked having the increased connection that having nail art gave them. So I loved how mindful and aware these women were that they sought connection and had a way of getting the connection they wanted with other people. And I know you might say those were very casual discussions, but I think we all saw this in COVID. We yearn for deep discussions, but sometimes casual discussions are gratifying too. I think we need a combination of them. I love that people took action to enable them to connect more easily.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (19:44)
That's brilliant. And I love that you saw that and then went and researched it. That's so Margit of you. But talking about, sometimes people are avoided if they're ailing or older because people don't know what to say. And that's awful. You talk about this beautifully in your book.

Margit Novack: (20:03)
It's sad. It's sad for the person being ignored. And I think it's sad for the people who do the ignoring. I read a blog from a physician who had been newly diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And it was the first day of the blog. He said, as a physician, I understand full well the progression of this disease, but what scares me right now is not my future with the disease, but my fear of being abandoned by my friends, because they won't know what to say. And he said, I know this will happen.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (20:36)
Yeah.

Margit Novack: (20:36)
Because that's what I would do if people had dementia, I would be embarrassed and not know what to say. So I would avoid them. And he said, so what I fear is that fear of abandonment. And sometimes reading stories like that helped me think about, would I do that? And I felt that I could and I would, and I needed to not do that. When that arises, I want to reach in and be the person I want to be, which is the person that doesn't ignore them.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (21:06)
Doesn't avoid them.

Margit Novack: (21:07)
So I'm hoping that reading those stories helps me be the person I want to be.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (21:12)
People aren't always aware of what's going on inside them. Why do I feel this resistance?

Margit Novack: (21:15)
All the articles that I have read have said expressing sincere sorrow, concern in saying, how can I help? Is the best thing. They may tell you it's nothing, but still they appreciate being asked.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (21:29)
And maybe they don't need help right then. Maybe a few days later, Margit said she could help. And I do need some help and they'll reach out to you. That's so important because people want engagement. You have a really interesting section early in the book called the Bubbie Chronicles in which you talk about your mother-in-law Bubbie for whom you and your husband, Bill were caregivers. And Bubbie had a lot of struggles, but through tough love, you and your husband were able to help her and it was good for her. It was also good for you guys. What advice would you give families that need to show tough love to an older parent?

Margit Novack: (22:01)
I think the concept of tough love toward parents and older family members is really complicated because we are taught to respect our parents and to obey our parents. The question becomes, when do you become involved? When are you willing to do something that is not what your parent wants? In our case, my mother-in-law was we thought abusing Valium, but it was prescribed by a doctor. So we changed doctors. We did go through a withdrawal phase with her and she then got on an antidepressant and she did remarkably better. And she became like a different person. But whether it's taking away keys or being concerned about how much a parent is drinking, the question is when do we insert our judgment for someone else?

Margit Novack: (22:52)
My grandmother moved to an apartment in her mid 80s. She wanted the apartment, but thought it was too expensive. And we spoke with the leasing agent and said, she doesn't want to pay more than this amount per month. Can we pay the difference? And she made us up a separate lease and she made a dummy lease up for my grandmother and told her it was because her son was a doctor, which she completely believed. And she wasn't supposed to tell anyone else about the special deal. It was interesting. We had no qualms about essentially lying to my grandmother because we thought this was about preserving her dignity and comfort. But someone might argue she was mentally competent and you deceived her. And that's correct. We felt comfortable with our decision. With driving, that is a concern because there are other people who could be impacted.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (23:52)
Yeah.

Margit Novack: (23:53)
But I think it also requires understanding what giving up keys means, independence. I would encourage anyone to read widely about how people have approach this. The fact that it doesn't work at one stage of their life doesn't mean it's not something you can revisit at a later stage. It's not a battle that gets lost forever. It's a battle you may choose not to fight at a certain time. One thing that has struck me was the concept of a pyrrhic victory and Pyrrhus was an ancient emperor who did win the battle, but lost all of his generals. And in fact, his army was decimated. And he said, another victory like this, and I'm ruined. From that came the expression, pyrrhic victory, a victory where the cost was so high that you had to question was it really a victory.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (24:47)
I read an article recently about the car keys. And they said, rather than saying, you're too old to drive, you might approach them and say, what about other modes of transportation, sometimes can facilitate a better conversation about it.

Margit Novack: (24:59)
I also think for many people, especially women, grocery shopping is something they have done their entire life. And while you could say, oh, but mom, we can get this delivered, that doesn't get them out and with people.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (25:15)
Yeah.

Margit Novack: (25:16)
When my mother-in-law used a walker and oxygen tank, she loves to go to the grocery store. She put her tank next to her pocketbook. She didn't need the walker because she was able to use the cart. And she went up and down every aisle. She had all three meals prepared by the community in which she lived. She didn't need a lot of groceries, but she liked going to the grocery store. So when we think, oh, we've got such a good solution because we can get food delivered. We're missing the fact that they still may want that experience. So maybe the solution, isn't how to get the food. Maybe the solution is how do they still keep the experience? We're ready to say, have the food delivered. That's not addressing her comfort level of, I like going to the grocery store.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (26:04)
Right.

Margit Novack: (26:05)
It's something they've done their entire life.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (26:07)
Yeah. Margit, I could talk to you for hours. It's Squint: Re-visioning the Second Half of Life. I have dogeared so many pages and written little things in pencil. I remember when you were first talking about doing this book and it's been so exciting to see how your ideas have evolved. Thank you so much.

Margit Novack: (26:27)
Thank you very much for having me. I'll look forward to seeing the rest of your interesting podcasts.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (26:34)
Thank you so much for listening to, How to Move Your Mom and still be on speaking terms afterward. Please visit howtomoveyourmom.com for more information about this episode and for additional podcast episodes, featuring other extraordinary guests and conversations. Until next time, this is your very grateful host, Marty Stevens-Heebner.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (00:00)
Senior living communities. We all know what they are, or do we? My guest, Dawneen Lorance is here to talk about what you should look for and how to discern which community is right for you. Moving your mom or your dad or yourself, isn't just about moving things from one place to another. It is much more complicated than that. As are so many things having to do with later life. How to Move Your Mom and still be on speaking terms afterward provides in depth conversations with professionals, older adults and their family members who share their stories with warmth, understanding and humor. I'm your host, Marty Stevens-Heebner, and here you'll find answers to many of your questions as well as different perspectives that I hope will inform and inspire you. Dawneen, thank you so much for joining me.

Dawneen Lorance: (00:58)
Hey, Marty. How's your day? It's

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (01:00)
It's good. How's yours?

Dawneen Lorance: (01:03)
Great. Great.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (01:03)
It's always good to see you. Let me tell you a little bit about Dawneen Lorance. Director of marketing at Villa Gardens senior living in Pasadena, California. She's been working with older adults and their families for over 20 years. The expertise in compassion from her previous career, which was managing the marketing and fundraising for non profits, those skills have searched her well as she began to support people through their later years. Villa Gardens, where she works, is an exceptional example of a continuing care retirement community. In the biz, we call that a CCRC. We'll be talking about the differences between a CCRC and assisted living and that sort of thing in just a bit. But right now I want to start off with you Dawneen and ask you, what's your favorite memory of your grandparents?

Dawneen Lorance: (01:52)
We didn't live near my grandparents. My parents both grew up in Oregon, and my dad wanted to be in aerospace. So they came to California. Every two years we would go up and have a vacation in Oregon. So my mother's stepmom was the wife of a rancher. She had homemade baked bread and cookies every day, which was not like being at home.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (02:16)
Please have her adopt me.

Dawneen Lorance: (02:20)
We rode horses. So that was my memory of my mom's family. And then my dad very much the city boy, his mom lived in a row house in Portland, Oregon. And I remember going to the basement and playing with her ringer washing machine that she used. So, good memories of these people.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (02:39)
I can just place you there, and I kind of want to place me there too. That's so great. So talk to me about the focus of your work at Villa Gardens.

Dawneen Lorance: (02:50)
As a marketing director, I'm one of three on our marketing team and it's our job to introduce the world to our community. Villa Gardens is a retirement community. We say community, facility is the F word in our industry, we don't say that.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (03:08)
Yes, it is.

Dawneen Lorance: (03:10)
So three of us introducing us out in the world. We also introduce people by doing tours, bringing them in, helping them make that decision to move. And it's often relationship building that makes that happen.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (03:22)
You have a wait list out the yin yang.

Dawneen Lorance: (03:24)
We do have a wait list and we have some openings. It's always a tricky thing to say, you have a wait list. Right? Because you're not really full all the time. But we have some people who are ready to move, but I don't have the exact view they want, [inaudible 00:03:39] apartment. So they're going to wait. Others know they want to be at Villa Gardens. They've toured, they've met residents. They know this is the culture of a community they want, but they're just not quite ready. So they're on the wait list. And then when they're ready, I'll be ready. We'll find them the right place together. So couple reasons for a wait list.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (03:58)
I was going to say, it's good that your phone's ringing because you guys are always busy.

Dawneen Lorance: (04:03)
It's true.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (04:04)
[inaudible 00:04:04].

Dawneen Lorance: (04:05)
I've been here nine years. And right now we are in August of 2021, and we're busier than we've been in nine years.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (04:13)
Wow. I imagine during COVID that people may have put off moving in because people were so concerned about communities. In Pasadena, was there a ban on moving people in? I can't remember.

Dawneen Lorance: (04:23)
Well, each community is different. Pasadena has the good fortune of having its own health department. So we were mandated by both Pasadena Department Health and LA County Department of Health. If you had cases, there were different levels of shutdowns at different times. We were closed for move-ins for about six to eight months. So, interesting time. I think in the beginning we thought, wait, people will never want to move into congregate living again. Right? Everybody was a little nervous. It went on so long. Remember the days when we were like, eh, three weeks it'll be done. But as it went on, I think what people have found now, people who were alone and there's [inaudible 00:05:06] some health effects and maybe they would've declined that way without a pandemic.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (05:09)
It really did impact them, especially early on. And there was a client that was moving into Villa Gardens that we worked with. You referred them to us. And I remember meeting with her. I think it was in late February, maybe early March of 2020. Her hair was dyed red. She had this thick Scottish brogue, and she was so fun and fascinating, a spitfire. And she had some cognitive decline at that time, but there was the ban and everything else that they couldn't move in. Later in the year we got a call from her son and he said, "We have to move her in." And when I saw her I nearly burst into tears, because her hair was wild and completely silver. And she didn't really know who he was. She couldn't speak and articulate words and she had to be helped along. That's what isolation can do to you. Like you say, she may have declined precipitously on her own-

Dawneen Lorance: (06:05)
That's a real good example. And he didn't want to move her here sooner because there were no visitors. And by the time he moved her, we found a way for him to become a caregiver to her because medical staff can come in. So we were able to follow some regulations that allowed him to come in as a caregiver. We've had two people move in who experienced some aphasia, some inability to articulate words. And now that they're here, it's all back. They're fine. They're having full on conversations. It wasn't a permanent decline for them.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (06:40)
It makes such a difference. Those connections are so important. So what's the difference between your community Villa Gardens, a continuing care retirement community, a CCRC, and an assisted living community?

Dawneen Lorance: (06:56)
The short straight answer is a continuing care retirement community has, I want to say, all levels of care, but that varies too, each community is different. At Villa Gardens, we have 215 apartments. They are independent apartments, but they're all licensed for assisted living. So you can get assistance in those independent apartments as well. 19 of those apartments are a secure memory care for people with more advanced stage dementia, secure not locked. They're like alarmed doors.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (07:27)
People with dementia often go, what we call, wandering. Right? They walk out the front door and they just keep walking and they don't know where they are, they don't remember where they live, and they may not even remember their name. And so that's why there have to be alarm doors just so everybody's kept track of and safe.

Dawneen Lorance: (07:46)
And staff trained to work with people specifically with dementia. And then we have a skilled nursing, another word for skilled nursing is rehab. So for post-hospital rehab, short-term stays or long-term stays. We have that on our campus as well. That's a separate building. We have a pool. We have a state-of-the-art gym, really rich activity program. The concept is you can come and have every level of care that you may need. You will hear those same words from an assisted living. So what is the difference? Because you can move in independent, and then get assistance in that apartment in an assisted living. They often have the memory care.

Dawneen Lorance: (08:23)
The difference, there's a financial structure that's a little bit different, but the residents actually have more of a buy-in into what happens here. We have more of a culture of independence. Residents really are involved in what happens here as far as the committees and the oversight. Most of us are owned by nonprofit. We're owned by a company called Front Porch. So there's a Front Porch board of directors and there's resident representation on that board, other layers that really give the residents involvement in the community. And we also have incredible care when that time is right when they need it.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (09:01)
And that's why you all have such a superb reputation. You haven't brought up the food. It's yummy there.

Dawneen Lorance: (09:09)
Food is everywhere. When I do tours every day I'm saying, "We have the best dining program in any senior housing." I'm just sounding like a sales person now. What sets us apart is we've got the daily options, all the things you think of, and a three page menu. And on the holidays, we're like a five star hotel with our buffets, mother's day buffet and all those good things. And we have a bistro. So if you didn't want to sit in the big restaurant one day, you can go to the bistro. It's like a Starbucks. Come and have a snack or a sweet sandwich and sit and have your cup of coffee.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (09:43)
Just like in your home where food is an important thing, and also your real estate is an important thing. Same thing with the CCRC. You had mentioned earlier that people on your wait list, it may not be that there's nothing available. It may just be that they want a two bedroom instead of a one bedroom or that they really want that corner apartment.

Dawneen Lorance: (10:05)
Right.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (10:07)
It's a different way of thinking of real estate.

Dawneen Lorance: (10:09)
We're in a community where the majority are one bedroom started over 600 square feet, and we go up to 1800 square feet for apartments. You've helped us move people in. And some people hire decorators. We definitely will make it new and beautiful and updated for any resident. And then those who want to upgrade and create even more like their beautiful home they had on Orange Grove Boulevard or San Marino or wherever they were are welcome to do that as well. Apartment homes, as we say, every single accommodation looks like their home.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (10:43)
It's home.

Dawneen Lorance: (10:43)
Again that culture of independence, it can still feel like home. We'll do the housekeeping weekly, that's included. We got the fun stuff going on so you can be engaged. You got a drip under your faucet, call the maintenance man, go to your exercise class, hopefully carefree lifestyle.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (10:58)
You have such a great culture there because you get a lot of retirees from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which works with NASA and is right there in Pasadena, all kinds of great things going on in Pasadena. The big Rose Parade on January 1st. And I know there is a group that got together to create a float for the rose parade in early 2020.

Dawneen Lorance: (11:20)
Thank goodness we did it that year because they didn't have a rose grade last year. We have a resident who moved here. Yes. We have a lot of Pasadena people, JPL, Cal tech, people who live here and love the Huntington gardens. We've got a community at Villa Gardens school of philanthropists, local philanthropists, supporters of the opera, Colburn, which is a conservatory music school. So that's who lives here. But we have people who come from your hometown, Rochester or-

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (11:48)
I'm Buffalo.

Dawneen Lorance: (11:51)
Sorry madam.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (11:52)
[inaudible 00:11:52].

Dawneen Lorance: (11:52)
[crosstalk 00:11:52] sorry being a California person, over there. Right?

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (11:56)
Yeah. People out of state think San Francisco and Los Angeles are right close together. Like, oh no.

Dawneen Lorance: (12:02)
So Nan is a resident who lived in Rochester and she wanted make sure we celebrated the 100th anniversary that passed the 19th amendment, the women's right to vote, was inspired by Villa Gardens resident. I just get involved and supported this incredible grassroots movement. For people who don't know, it cost $300,000 to make a rose float. I did not know that previously. I love that it was inspired by Villa Gardens resident.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (12:31)
And also which award? It was the theme trophy. Wasn't it?

Dawneen Lorance: (12:34)
Yes. Every year there's a president of the tournament of roses, and they get to pick, and it was the power of hope. Our float won the theme award.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (12:44)
What do you love about what you do?

Dawneen Lorance: (12:46)
Meeting people. Hearing stories. This week, we did a book signing by a resident. She decided to start writing her memoirs. And once a week she would write an essay and distribute it to all the residents. And then other residents got inspired and would give her their stories. And that would be in these weekly distribution. So, this week, her published book, she brought it to the residents. We had a little party in the dining room and she signed books for people. Any books she sold she gave the money to all the Front Porch communities foundation.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (13:24)
What's the book called?

Dawneen Lorance: (13:26)
The Essays of Ann. Her name is Ann Grant. Available on Amazon.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (13:32)
Fantastic. All right.

Dawneen Lorance: (13:35)
So clearly that's the best part of my job. I think this decision of making a move to retirement community is a serious decision and sometimes takes years. So I actually have frequently had relationships with residents for a few years before they come here. And hopefully, I'm supporting them and giving them whatever tools they need until they're ready. Another wonderful part of this job is meeting people like you. People in our industry, and I know you agree with me, 95% of the people we meet who are serving senior living in general are really cool people. People I want to meet and hang out with. So I feel honored to be doing what I'm doing for a few reasons.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (14:20)
The people who are drawn to working with older adults and the professions that involve that tend to be really compassionate people and also very patient.

Dawneen Lorance: (14:32)
Yes.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (14:32)
What I'm seeing as a thread here through these podcasts is just how long we stay involved with our clients. And especially for realtors, placement agencies, communities, often it can be a two or three year relationship, at least, before an action is actually taken by that person or their family. And I think that speaks to who, like I say, has the patience and the inquisitiveness and the dedication to really be drawn to work with older adults and their families. And you're so right. I've met so many friends since I started this company eight a half years ago, including you.

Dawneen Lorance: (15:11)
I appreciate you. I got into this industry not, "oh, I've had a grandmother." I hear those stories. Because that's not me. I was a single working mom and was offered an opportunity that had a little less stress and a little more money. I said, "Hey, I'll give it a try." But that associate who recruited me offered her mentorship. And she used to say, "Like a fish to water. You just took to it." And I'm not sure how that all evolved, but I just have no reason to leave it. It's been a great fit for me. And like I said, an honor to work with people at this stage in their life. As we all age, there's so much to learn.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (15:56)
It really is an honor to get to work with people no matter who they are. There are those rich stories and you just go home feeling like you've lifted a burden from somebody, in our case, because we're dealing with the moves and aging a place and all of that. And with you, it just must be wonderful knowing that you have a thriving community there and the older adults who live there are so satisfied.

Dawneen Lorance: (16:20)
Well, and unlike you, I get to see what happens after they move. If I'm not always be as directly involved, but I can certainly ask, how's this going? And continue those relationships sometimes depending on the person. But there are days where we'll look at each other in the marketing department, we did a good thing today. Today was good. We did a good thing. This person needed to move and we were able to guide them through. Yeah, we have a prospect, is what we call people who are getting ready to move. She's been on our wait list for six years. She's moving, and she's ready now. So that's good. You don't want anybody to move before they're ready if they can possibly help it.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (16:58)
Who's a good fit for a CCRC, and maybe even just senior living in general? What do you think?

Dawneen Lorance: (17:07)
People who are done with the care of their home, getting tired, losing energy over the care of their home. I think that's one thing. They don't want to cook. We also provide transportation. Sometimes it's a matter of, you had to give up your car, maybe eyesight issues, maybe just you're ready to give up your car. You can regain independence by being in a community where there is transportation provided. And you also have to just make a phone call and somebody will take care of it. Some of those things can be offered in your home too. I always say community living isn't for everybody. Of course, I think it is, because of what I do and what I see.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (17:43)
Me too.

Dawneen Lorance: (17:44)
But there's always going to be people who aren't going to move in. And that's great. There's something for everybody. Some people do wait until they're sicker or unable and need some care. That's okay too. I encourage earlier if possible, because we have such engaging programming and there's never a boring dinner conversation. You'll meet the coolest people if you move in here and you are still wanting that level of social engagement. At Villa Gardens we talk a lot about that. But I think that question of who is it good for? It's also good for people who want to relieve their children of that care. Managing care for a parent is very involved and overwhelming. And even if you don't have children or if you're working, it can be a lot.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (18:33)
Yeah, very daunting. So what kind of questions and things should people be doing as they approach a community and consider living in it? What questions, what things should they do? What do you think?

Dawneen Lorance: (18:45)
I think they've got to visit the community live. Research, research, research. Ask everything. Do not be afraid to ask. And there's plenty of lists online. Anybody can pull up lists and lists of questions to ask. The real obvious things are cleanliness, and are people happy when you walk in the door, what kind of service are you given? You may want to do some phone calling before to make sure it's in your price range, in your wheelhouse. There's a lot of different, I'm going to use the word, products, and people don't think of it that way when they're shopping. Right? Because it is a personalized product. So that's why make sure... It feels like almost like buying a house. And I know everything's going virtual. So this is an interesting question too. But would you feel comfortable living there [crosstalk 00:19:35]

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (19:35)
The energy, the feeling of enthusiasm, do people enjoy living there? Another reason to do some phone research is to see how responsive they are on the phone. They should be so responsive when you first call because you mentioned prospect. You're interested in living there. That's a great thing. And, of course, when we call your community, right there, helpful, friendly, all that stuff.

Dawneen Lorance: (19:54)
And just, don't be afraid to ask anything. If you or your parents are going to live there, you got to feel comfortable with it. And I think one look is not enough. I encourage people to shop and look at all kinds of communities. And then when you narrow it down to two, three, whatever, where that number is for you, go back and meet residents. You can talk to people like me all day long. I don't sleep here. You want to know what is that process like? What was it like to downsize? Do I need to work with Clear Home Solutions? Somebody like Marty? Some people do, others say, "Oh I got five kids and they just need a mover, a truck," but just keep asking questions and figure out if this is the right culture for you.

Dawneen Lorance: (20:37)
Because here's an example. Villa Gardens was started by retired teachers in the 1930s. Somehow this culture of lifelong learning continues at Villa Gardens. That's who our residents are. We remodeled, we were going to move the library to the big beautiful fifth floor with the mountain view. And they were like, "Nope, it's got to stay right here in the lobby. When you walk into Villa Gardens and you see a library, that's who we are."

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (21:02)
I could attest to that. You see it as soon as you walk in and it's beautiful and welcoming.

Dawneen Lorance: (21:06)
So, culture of a community, is this a good fit for you? Does this feel like your people? There's about a 30 person committee of residents who volunteer their time to help new residents move in. They're the mentors. So if somebody's looking and they say, "I want to come back and I want to meet some of the residents," I can call the mentor committee and say, "Hey, got couple people who would want to have lunch next week." And they can meet that person and you can ask them those questions. What was it like to move?

Dawneen Lorance: (21:34)
And if it's your parents, really dig down a little bit on what the fears are. Sometimes we hear them say, "nah," but sometimes it is the actual move. Moving out of that house you've been in for 50 years. If that's the biggest hindrance, or is it, I'm shy and how am I ever going to meet people in the dining room? Then you got to ask those questions. How do new people meet people in the dining room? What does that look like in this community? And really listen. My answer is you get a resident mentor, but every community's got it a little different. How do people transition into this community lifestyle? Which can be a little intimidating even if you're the most outgoing person.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (22:15)
You had mentioned to me at one point, even eat there when you're not with your mentor and just see if people approach you, if they're friendly, and above all, if you like the food. Because that is one of life's great choice. It is. It is. Every day it sustains us. So you can tell it's important to me. That's for sure.

Dawneen Lorance: (22:31)
Yeah. Great. And you can still go out. Still live your life, whatever you do, live in the community. And yes, there's so much to be engaged in. But if you're volunteering at the hospital, there's no reason those things should stop because you move to a community. You still are who you are. Continue being who you are. How can you do that at this community? Those are the kind of questions that I think people don't think about asking.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (23:00)
As you're saying that, anybody who's moving should visit the neighborhood, so to speak, eat at a couple of restaurants, see if people are friendly and open. There's a kind of a-

Dawneen Lorance: (23:12)
Crossover.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (23:13)
Crossover. Yeah, from regular real estate. It has been such joy to sit down and talk with you, Dawneen. Thank you for sharing all your knowledge. I really appreciate it.

Dawneen Lorance: (23:23)
Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you for having me on as your guest. What a great podcast. What a great service you're giving to the community.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (23:32)
Thank you so much for listening to, How to Move Your Mom and still be on speaking terms afterward. Please visit, howtomoveyourmom.com for more information about this episode and for additional podcast episodes featuring other extraordinary guests and conversations. Until next time, this is your very grateful host, Marty Stevens-Heebner.