Episodes

It's Pride Month and we are taking a second look at the LGBTQ+ community. We have two guests. The first is Linda K. Reeves, a licensed marriage and family therapist certified as a gender specialist by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. She is the founder of Linda K. Reeves Therapy. Her therapy utilizes her clinical skills in the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender non-binary, questioning, and queer identified individuals. Her recent article in Good ...

Welcome back to THE most downloaded episode of Season 2. Our guest today, one of the foremost experts who studies how individuals and families develop and change throughout their lives, tells us that as we age, we regret not reconciling with family members we may be estranged or distant from. Today we welcome Dr. Karl Pillemer, Professor of Human Development at Cornell University, where he is also a faculty member in Cornell’s medical school. He is the author of the book: “Fault Lines, Fractured...

Happy Mother’s Day! Today we are joined by two amazing moms with great advice for keeping our relationships with our adult children healthy, fun and spirited. Also listen for some special Mother’s Day messages of support and advice from some young adults! This will be an episode that will get you thinking, make you smile and lift you up. We hope you enjoy it! Thanks so much to Connie Gorant Fisher, our audio engineer. Support us P L E A S E! Buy us a coffee: LINK HERE Buy a mug: LINK HERE G...

Street Interviews with Young Adults and Parents from Around the World! As the old saying goes, “the best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.” That is exactly what happened. Denise's plan to visit Ellen in Prague took a turn when Ellen, then in Boston, tested positive for COVID just a few days before her planned trip to Prague for Denise's arrival. She thought she might join a few days later if she tested negative, but her mother, who lives in Wisconsin, took a fall and Ellen went to take...

This episode digs deep. Today we interview Daniel Maté, who, with his father Dr. Gabor Maté has been holding highly engaging and popular workshops called “Hello Again - A Fresh Start for Parents and Their Adult Children." He points out that they do not call their workshops "a happy ending," instead it is a "fresh start." Everyone's fresh start will look different and he talks about how to get there. Dr. Maté, Daniel's father is a renowned speaker and author who, as his website says: "weaves to...

Disrespect. We've all been there with our grown children. The rolling of the eyes, the under the breath grunt and sometimes just complete disrespect. Is it normal? How do we react and handle it? Today we speak with Jennifer Williams who is the founder of Heartmanity and the Heartmanity Center, located in Bozeman, Montana. Her passion is to help people create thriving relationships. She wrote a blog titled “How to Deal with a Disrespectful Grown Child” and we thought well that’s a topic we’d al...

Today we talk to Dr. Jefferey Berstien. He is a licensed clinical psychologist who has been helping children, teens, couples and families for over thirty years. He is the author of several books including his latest - now coming out in its third edition called 10-days to a Less Defiant Child. The articles he has written are numerous covering many subjects. Because of his breadth of experience we thought we’d use this episode to ask Dr. Bernstein many of our listener questions. We talk about dis...

Today we speak with Tracy Hargen who tells us about her journey to becoming a featured writer on so many topics for the popular website Grown and Flown. She helps us, with real ideas, for starting conversations with our adult children that are not just about their jobs and relationships, but work to build our relationship with them as adults. We talk about this article “We Absolutely Made the Right Choice to be Friends with Our Children.” and why this matters so much. And even if you are starti...

Before we get into this episode I want to remind listeners to sign up for this FREE "Graceful Empty-Nester" Virtual Conference. It begins on February 19 and runs through Feb 28. There are featured experts with strategies to reconnect with your children, heal relationships and inspire a future of connectivity! You can listen to one two or all of them! Denise is one of the guests and shares some of the bests pieces of advice from all of our 40+ episodes. Link her to grab your front seat! Today we...

Don't underestimate how much the people who come after you are going to know about you! Today, our guest is Erik Vance. He is an award-winning story-teller and New York Times editor based in Boulder, Colorado. (lucky guy). We came upon an article he wrote called: "How I Time-Travel to Parent My Adult Son." When we started to read it really had nothing to do with adult kids, but then it did. Backstory: Vance says: “Once a year I record a brutally honest conversation for my little boy. " He say...

This is the most requested topic by our listeners! We talk to Dr. Mark McConville,a Clinical Psychologist and author of the book - “Failure to Launch,” Why Your Twentysomething Hasn’t Grown Up….What to Do About It. Dr. McConville is an expert in adolescent psychology and his groundbreaking book comes at a time when 2.2 million young adults in America are struggling to find their way in the world. We talk about the root cause of the problem, why modern young adults are failing to launch in reco...

Listener requested! The wedding is over. Grandchildren have arrived, but now there is trouble in paradise. Your Adult Child is Getting a Divorce. When to bite our tongues? How or when to offer advice? The wedding was such an exciting time and now the heartache begins. This episode will help you navigate the toughest situations. Also, we are going to explore narcissism and how to identify this characteristic in your adult children or significant others. We talk to two therapists in this episode...

Today we are rewinding and sharing a holiday episode we loved. We interview Jane Isay. She is the author of the book Walking on Eggshells, Navigating the Delicate Relationships between Adult Children and Parents. She is a New Yorker from birth and gets right to the point. Have you had enough togetherness during the holidays? "Shut the door," she says. How about when the kids come home, how to make them happy? "Give them the keys!" And, wait until you hear what she said about her son who was C...

Don't Bite Your Tongue -- that is what today's guest says! "Silence does not build intimacy." Today Denise and Ellen interview Dr. Ruth Nemzoff, the author of the book "Don't Bite Your Tongue: How to Foster Rewarding Relationships with your Adult Family." Dr. Nemzoff claims it is better not to bite your tongue. Bringing up important topics builds intimacy, but there is a right and a wrong way to do it. And she gives us the scoop. We discuss how to feel confident raising issues of importance, a...

Today Ellen and Denise are talking to Ellie and Carrie Monahan. They are sisters and as some of you might know they are the daughters of Katie Couric, an American journalist and author. They just started a podcast and I listen to every Friday when they drop episodes. The title is: “All Each Other Has.” We love listening to the voices of these young adults - Ellie (a millennial ) and Carrie (on the Gen Z cusp). The first SIBLING RELATIONSHIPS. They explain that the podcast is titled - “All Each...

Adult step children -- today you will hear from a step-parenting author and expert and -- to round things out -- some adult step children. Our guest says: "I think being a step-parent is one of the hardest jobs in the world and it is also one of the biggest challenges to personal growth." Denise speaks with Nancy Landrum, the author of the book “STEPPING TWOGETHER.” Stepping TwoGether is part instruction, part information, part stories and part workbook. In addition to having an MA in Psychol...

What is the biggest regret of most parents today? Our guest today, one of the foremost experts who studies how individuals and families develop and change throughout their lives, tells us that as we age, we regret not reconciling with family members we may be estranged or distant from. Today we welcome Dr. Karl Pillemer, Professor of Human Development at Cornell University, where he is also a faculty member in Cornell’s medical school. He is the author of the book: “Fault Lines, Fractured Famil...

We made you wait for this one! Why you may have trouble sleeping as you age and what you can do about. Do you happen to know what the "on-off" switch for sleep is in your brain? We did not. But now we do. Listen now to learn more about your sleep and how to make it better! As you know in our last episode we interviewed a young researcher Mark Czeisler who was part of the COPE Initiative dealing with young adults and COVID. If you missed this episode, here is a link. While doing research on Ma...

This is such an important episode and one that we hope all listeners will enjoy this second time around. For parents of adult children, mental health disease is one of our most frightening thoughts. We are hoping this episode will help us understand, support and accept this disease. This is a fabulous episode. Today we speak with Dr. Elizabeth Cookson (Beth) a psychiatrist who has over 35 years of experience. A former president of the Colorado Psychiatric Society, she is Board Certified in Gen...

Another listener favorite. So many listeners wrote about how they put Dr. Heitler's suggestions to good use! Join us for a conversation with Dr. Susan Heitler, a renowned relationship therapist. She is best known for clarifying the basics of collaborative dialogue and provides wonderful techniques to use - not only with your adult children but for all of the relationships in your life you value. You will take away real tools, words and actions to develop meaningful relationships. This is a mus...

This is the episode we've gotten the most mail about! Listeners loved it! Today Ellen and Denise welcome Tess Brigham, a licensed psychotherapist, life coach and former twenty-something. In a recent article from CNBC Tess says: “Over a decade ago, when I first became a therapist, I never expected that five years later, my practice would consist of nearly 90% millennials, with the rest of my patients being parents of millennials.” So she’s got both sides of the story for us. Tess has been featu...

This is one funny episode. That's why we are doing a special EPISODE REWIND. Today we interview Susan Engel, a professor of psychology at Williams College and the author of the New York Times Article: When They're Grown, The Real Pain Begins. Joining Denise as co-host is a dear friend Val Haller. Val is the mother of four boys, very similar to the ages of Susan's boys when she wrote this article so she is our perfect co-host. (more about Val at the end) Susan tells us that this article still ...

The emerging adult - now recognized as “the third stage of life.” Our guest today says that studying the emerging adult years (about age 19-29) is much like studying the preschool years — the preschool years set the stage for the teen years, and the emerging adult years set the stage for the future adulthood. Today we talk with Dr. Larry Nelson, one of the world’s leading researchers on the emerging adult years. Dr. Nelson is the president of the Study of Emerging Adulthood (SSEA) and examines...

Today we talk about the COVID-19 Outbreak and the rise of anxiety and depression in young adults. We know we are all tired of hearing and reading about COVID-19. But this article in the New York Times caught our attention: Young Adults Report Rising Levels of Anxiety and Depression in Pandemic We reached out to the lead author of the study, Mark Czeisler, to talk more about it. Mark is actually younger than many of our adult children, but at 25 years old, he's an accomplished researcher and prov...