A Masterclass on Navigating Family Relationships with Jane Isay

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From a family of psychologists to a storied career as a book editor for Giants in the Field. Jane, I say, has dedicated her life to understanding the human mind. But it was the arrival of her grandchildren that actually compelled her to become a writer and a mapmaker of the modern family. This week, join us as we talk to Jane about the beautiful messiness of family life, the roots below the surface, the secrets we keep, and the powerful conversations that can heal generational conflict. This is a masterclass in understanding that in the turbulence of ordinary life, imperfection is our lot and so is love.

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Welcome to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Nurturing through Adversity. In this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of childrearing for children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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We'll discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and and struggles.

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This podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.

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Today's guest is someone who has spent her life 89 years immersed in the study of human relationships. A psychologist, daughter, and a celebrated editor of landmark psychology books, she now offers her own profound insights as a writer.

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Jane Isay sees herself as a mapmaker, charting the routes to conflict and acceptance within the family.

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Her journey as a writer has grown alongside her own family, with her books and and her four grandchildren coming into her life around the same time. Today we're talking with someone who not only understands family dynamics from a professional perspective, but lives them every single day. We're so excited to have you here with us, Jane, today, to share with us your incredible story of strength and advocacy. You've been quoted as saying that families are the survival mechanism of the human species.

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Can you expand on what you mean by that? Yes. The history of human survival depends on grownups taking care of children.

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And that's always been the case.

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The families we live in now in 21st century America are a far cry from the prehistoric families.

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We don't know exactly how they were, but there were people together, surviving, not killing each other, having children, raising children, and people who were no longer of an age to have Children had a great responsibility for the family, for the children.

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And without the generations participating, this would have not have worked. First, we were nomads and the children weren't so important because you just had more people to feed and walk with you. Once we become an agricultural species, we need children, we need family, we need people to work, to plant, to reap, to paint the caves, whatever they're doing. And that takes more generations than the people who are actually having the babies.

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And so if you don't have a family, if you didn't have a family, you would not prosper, you would not have children, you would not survive. That really in my, and this is my theory, that really was pretty much the way things were for us Americans until World War II.

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After the war we became this amazingly prosperous country.

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And the house or where we lived, people moved to the suburbs, they traveled for new jobs, and the idea of a three generational house went away. And the old people were put in old folks homes. People were not close to each other because we were a society which moved for a job, moved for school. Teenagers didn't want to go to college in the same town where they lived. They wanted to get away. And so now we're much more fragmented than we were 100 years ago. There was a necessity and a type of resilience that was built because of that.

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Absolutely. And how has that changed our resilience as families?

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I think it makes it harder.

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I have found resilience wherever I go, wherever I look. There are people who are dealing with hard things. It's not easy. So I think that one of the reasons that we're having this conversation is because grandparents and grandchildren are trying and the parents are trying to figure out how to make this work again. Right.

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And you know, grandparents who move to be close to their grandchildren, their children and strange cities, and they don't always prosper because things are not easy among across the three generations. When I started, I thought of myself as a map maker. Yes. Now I think of myself as an architectural critic. And why is that? What generates, it's not flat, it's stories as in a three story house.

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It the family on a good day. I think of the family as an artichoke with the leaves clutching together to protect it. At the bottom is the sweetheart of the family. We have to take care of each other and we have to learn how to deal with each other. And the problems that we have with our grown children, the issues that we're dealing with every day. They had to deal with those issues before World War II.

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Families have always had to deal with these issues, and there has always been. I think one of the reasons it was so easy for people to go into this great American diaspora in the 50s was that it wasn't so easy dealing with crabby Grandma.

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Yeah. What do we do? We know that there's a rising number of these kinship caregivers where parents have dropped out for whatever reason and grandparents are left to raise children, or other family members are. What do we do about this new cycle of family?

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There's a chapter in one of the books about grandparents raising grandchildren. When I did the research, I kept coming across these grandparents who were taking care of their grandchildren. I didn't know anything about it, and I learned a lot from listening. But it's a very, very hard job, and the stresses are immense.

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The joy of having a grandchild be a second generation of your child, the love and all of that is immense.

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But you're older, you get tired, and it's really hard. The advantage of raising them without their parents is that you get to do it your way. Because when you get the grandchildren for a weekend. And I used to say, I have to follow my children's rules until the grandchildren can speak, because they would rat on me.

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I had five cookies. Right.

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There's a tremendous importance in following the rules that your grown children set. You know, we can talk about that at length. It's a cardinal law of getting along in the family. Keeping the family together is respecting your grown children's wishes with their children.

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And then sometimes, in my research, the daughter was a drug addict.

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Right. Then she'd come home to visit, and she'd be furious that Grandma had allowed the child to just this or that. The child would be so confused.

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Who's in charge? Who's this person? Who's this stranger? She calls herself my mommy.

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You know all of this? Yes. It's interesting because I did not choose that. They chose that. I told them they could call me whatever they wanted, whatever they needed. And the young one began calling me mom from day one. And the daughter. There was a day she asked me, can you carefully.

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She said, may I call you Mom?

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And I said, yes, you may, whenever you like. I know who your mother is. And we know who your mother is and who your birth mother is. Yes. Now, psychologically, it's very confusing. Yes, rightfully so. And with your background, you have an incredible background in psychology, from Anna Freud to Mary Pifer. Yes. And I never got a degree in it, and I didn't major in college. You Also have an organization for grandparents through the Row Center. Yes, Many of them must be raising or be the primary caregiver.

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My webinar is only about a dozen people. We've been together for five, almost five years. We started when the director of the Roe center program when Covid hit said, how about helping grandparents deal with loss of the company of their grandchildren. The first week we had four or five men and 10 or 15 women. And then we got down to one man.

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And one of us has raised her granddaughter from the age of four. She's now in her 30s. Her mother was died in a car accident. The granddaughter was brain damaged. So the wonderful woman has raised taking care of this granddaughter and now she's turning 80 and she's arranging in the town where they live for the proper services that the granddaughter needs. And it seems to be working out very, very well. Isn't that great? Do you know what does she attribute her success to?

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She wouldn't brag and she had no choice.

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Daughter was divorced and she and her partner decided they'd do it.

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She chose to do it. She done it her heart.

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About six months ago she had a stroke. Her temperament is gorgeous. I said to her at some point, you know, how are you dealing with a stroke? And she said, you know, it's very useful because my granddaughter had brain damage from the car accident. And now I'm beginning to see what it feels like. She represents one in a million. But I think all of the grandmothers who are taking care of those grandchildren are doing this work of saving the species again.

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I find for most of the listeners have a concept of a greater legacy that was left to them or their grandparents. Yes. So what's a common theme with your grandparents or their stories that you've heard this wisdom of the ages? What sorts of things can you share with us? Well, the biggest lesson that I have learned is that you never stop growing even at. And most of my. The women I call us kick ass grandmas. Most of us grandmas are at least over 70. A couple of us are closer to 90 mm. And we meet every other week and we talk about what's happened during the two weeks. I'd like to be a fly on the wall. Well, you're welcome to join and participate.

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I will an example. One of the women had lived in a had moved to the Midwest when her mom was in her 90s and she lived away from where her grown children were for 10 years. Mom died this year. She sold the house. She had to choose between where to live with the daughter or the son. And she chose.

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She chose, I think, more by climate than by emotional climate. And by the time she got to where the son and his family are, he basically stopped talking to her.

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So she was doing a lot. Thank God for zoom. It's the one gift of COVID She was zooming with the grandchildren in the other part of the country. And she'd moved into one of those places where you go assisted living. Assisted living.

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Thank you. Well, she was lonely, so she started taking courses at the university. And then she decided to teach mahjong to the group.

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And by doing and came Valentine's Day. How was your Valentine's Day? She said, well, my mahjong ladies came with flowers. And she has figured out a way to live fully with no regrets.

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Well, she's so glad she's there now because she's got a full life.

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Yeah. She's hoping, you know, we know that when children divorce you, which is another subject about which I have very strong.

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I'm not happy with the advice many therapists are giving these days. I think it's harsh anyway. She has the belief, and I don't know, but I don't disagree, that at some point they'll get together again. People do that. Do you think being a positivist is an important aspect of humans that want to continue growth? I don't know, because everybody in my webinar, they may be all positive people to maybe have selected themselves, but everybody is growing, even if you don't want to grow, even if you really feel, I've had enough. You know, there's a daughter in law in the family.

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I just can't stand her. And I'm not dealing with her anymore. If I see her, I'll say hello, but I'm not well. But then they have a conversation at a birthday party. The thing about life is that it keeps coming at you. Mm. And you have experiences and you really. You're not.

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You really are growing. You're taking in your own feelings.

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You're taking in their feelings. You're observing.

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You're thinking. Another woman in the webinar.

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She's a sheep farmer. Her husband died 10 years ago and she lives in a mountainous part of North America. So she has to go up the mountain to get to the sheep. And there are bear.

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Fortunately, her dog is trained to bark when it smells bear. So she could do her sheep herding thanks to the dog.

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Complicated family. She was really, really worried about how she was going to deal with this difficult relative. And she's a reader Brilliant woman. And she found a text in some Quaker book that said, how can I be a loving factor?

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And she went to the gathering with this idea in her head. I am going to represent love in this family.

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It was great. Don't you think that's an important element of being a person who is willing to find growth?

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Absolutely. Absolutely. And the big deterrent to any of this is, well, what about me? Ego. You know, if you.

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If everything that happens is a reflection of you, it's going to be very hard to grow, to be happy and to accept, you know, and it's true, for instance, when the grown children say, don't give them presents with lots of pieces. This is one of the cardinal sins. The grandparents do. And you say to yourself, well, I picked up the Lego pieces from my children. Why can't they? Right. The answer is they don't want to.

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Why can't I listen to them? Why can't I? Yes.

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And it stands out in the way of relationships. I'm really curious why you originally called yourself a map maker of family relationships and why you now call yourself an architect of family relationships. Because it's been 20 years. I've learned a thing or two. Yes, and what have you learned, Janet? What I've learned is that the family is not a flat map.

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It's a structure. Dimensional. It's dimensional.

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And sometimes it's easier to imagine it as a great big house, either an old fashioned house with stairs that go up the four flights. And sometimes it's a sprawling house with relatives and with offices, you know, suburban houses, whatever. And then you have the garage above which the grandparents live. I mean, you can do this and do this and do this. It's a way of imagining who's equal, who's. Who's special, who's having a hard time.

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Climbing and what's important to you. That's right. And where the boundaries are. I'm a big boundary person. If we were all to explain what each other's houses look like, we might understand a lot more about each other and about. Certainly we'd understand more about our families. Yes, because the closeness, the boundaries, the stairs, the walls. You know, a house architecture really does lend itself to the metaphors of complicated families.

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I agree. You write about grown children, the parents of the beloveds, that they experience both gratitude and resentment. Now, I think we want to think of our families, we want to think of the perfect family as coexisting so well. We. Why do you think these two emotions are necessary to exist?

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Nobody's perfect. I'VE had this with my grown sons in their 40s.

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They said to me, mom, why didn't you put me on a diet when I was chubby?

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And my answer would be, it's impossible to put a kid on a diet without terrific conflict. And I figured you'd grow. He did. Why didn't you put me in therapy? Well, I thought you were great. Mom. Why didn't you? These are my. Mom, why didn't you give me lessons?

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Well, you went to a Jewish day school and it was a very long day, and you had a half hour car ride back and forth, and I thought you should have some time off. So that imperfection, as you say, is our lot. It's our lot. And the joy of these conversations, which could make you very annoyed.

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Again, here's the ego part. What are you giving me? I suffered for you. I sacrificed for you. Don't complain. Right.

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On the other hand, when you talk, you learn something.

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And don't you think our parents, many of our parents told us that.

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Absolutely. That we were not to speak and to be spoken to.

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Right. That was the saying that my grandfather would say to me all the time.

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Absolutely. But. But those generations had lived through a degree of suffering.

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They had dealt with issues that we did not.

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So my parents were born in the early 20th century. They had two wars. They had the depression. They had wa wa wa wa. They had poverty, tremendous poverty and discrimination and whatever else. By the time they got to have my brother and me, they thought they knew everything. He was a psychiatrist and she was a psychologist. This is not good for humility about what you know.

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But all parents at that time, they wanted us to do what they thought was best for us. And now in this time, we don't. First of all, we have no idea.

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And second of all, if we do that, we'll lose them.

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So it's a survival strategy. So what are we as grandparents having to teach our grandchildren to be loved? To be loved. When I was in therapy, I used to say to my therapist, I just want to be a pet rock in the sun.

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I don't want to have to master things. I don't want to have to do things that my parents will be proud of. I just want to be loved for who I am. Great message.

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And that's what we do. My great message to grandparents is you don't have to take them to the ballet. What you need to do is when you see a kid looking a little sad, you sit down next to them and you put your arm around the kid and Say, you okay, honey? That's all. I can't think of a better message to pass on. I know your goal is to bring the turbulence of families. And definitely grandparents raising grandchildren have a lot of turbulence.

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Turbulence. And you want to help us make that a little bit easier to manage. So your single most powerful tool to manage turbulence is love. Love and take a long walk. Okay. When you get.

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And I do plenty of this, you know, when something from what your kids or the grandchildren really upsets you, you take a deep breath, put on your big girl pants and take a walk. And let the anger, let the anxiety just turn around in your brain until you feel a little peace. Because that's the reaction to conflict.

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And the question is, to what extent can we overcome that instant reaction so that we are more like a grown up and less like a child? Yep.

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Being. I mean, I am a flamboyant personality and my grandchildren laugh at me a lot. Oh, there goes grandma. Yeah. And I think to myself, well, maybe I should calm down. And then I say to myself, why would I calm down? There are plenty of calm people in the family. They may be a little like me. Do it. I agree.

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And you know, I heard another grandparent say that their parent became more like a child as they grew older. And as I'm doing this job that I'm doing right now, I think maybe I should do the same thing. Well, you know, it's just letting your feelings rule. And so long as your feelings are not. If your feelings are anger, put on your pants and take a walk. One of the things I taught, I write in the first book, Walking on Eggshells, which is about the three generational family altogether. There's a chapter on holidays, how to deal with Thanksgiving weekend at your parents house. And I recommend if you own a car, drive the car there. So when you're really ready to kill them, you can say, I think I'll take a ride. Get out of Dodge. Well, Jean, your work is a powerful reminder that parents and families and all of their messiness can be a source of strength. Yes. Let us know. Where do we find your books online? They're all up.

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They're all on any online distributor. And you have a website? I have a website.

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Janeisay.com I shall put those in the show notes. And I thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom with us today. My pleasure. And the other thing is this. Look down the dining room table. When your family's together, look down and imagine your legacy going on for generations. Because everything that they have experienced from you, your children and your grandchildren is in their hearts. They may not remember, but an attitude, a moment, and if they can carry the best of you into the future, that's a pretty good legacy. I want them to remember me as a silly, funny lady. Goofy lady.

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Yeah. Thanks, Jane. My pleasure.

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And thank you.

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Jane's given us four key takeaways from this conversation.

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Conversation, she says, is a powerful remedy. Misunderstandings are avoidable, but an honest conversation can be the most effective way to heal. Imperfect is enough.

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Striving for a perfect family is a myth. Accepting imperfection is the key to embracing and nurturing love.

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Grandparents are hinges of history. You have a unique and vital role in connecting the past to the future for your grandchildren. And last but not least, embrace change. Adapting to the constant motion of family relationships keeps us and our families alive.

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Join our online community if you haven't already on Facebook or on our website at grandparents raising grandchildren.org let's continue to support each other and learn from our shared experiences as we navigate the beautiful and complex architecture of our own families.

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Next week on our show. What if you are actually creating a legacy together as a family? Well, you're going to meet that family, the Bryant family, next week on our show. They're a homeschooling family that co wrote and illustrated an award winning children's book about honesty. They're going to share their real world blueprint for how your family can turn its core values into a creative adventure that builds a foundation of true identity and in your children and grandchildren. Thank you for tuning in to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren. Nurturing through Adversity.

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Remember, you are not alone. Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity.

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Peace be with you. And I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.