Elderly mediation: What, why and how Guest: Sara Barnes

IE: Welcome back to another episode of We Can Find a Way. My name is Idil Elveris. This is the sixth season of this podcast about conflict resolution. We can find a way pioneers a culture change in handling conflict because conflict is everywhere. We can find a way is also the only bilingual podcast that addresses conflict on an international scale. In this episode, I spoke with Sara Barnes who is a mediator in elderly issues. We discussed with her what developments led to this practice; what type of disputes fall under elderly conflicts; and how they practice this craft. Let us now move to the interview that took place on the 30 August 2024 without delay.

Please tell us, what is elderly law, and how did this new area of practice come about?

SB: Our organization as a community mediation center and elder mediation, not law, is an area that we focus on but it isn't our only focus. We do community conflicts. We work in schools. We help the courts. We work with folks who are incarcerated and work with farms. So elder mediation, including working with multigenerational families, not just the elders, but the next generation and sometimes the generation after that and estate, are areas that we are proud of our work.

So, you asked about elder law. I am not an attorney. I'm not a lawyer. I know a bit about law, and we have to train our mediators who work in this area to have a sense about the Massachusetts legal system and how it affects elders. But elderly law is not one specific thing. A criminal matter that involves a person in Massachusetts over the age of 60, I could be wrong, has a higher value in the court. In civil law, I don't think there's much differentiation about your age, as far as I can tell. But in probate, which is where people sort out estates after someone has died, also covers when the elder is alive and there are a need to maybe have a guardianship put in place for them, or there's some abuse that's happening within the family, so it's all over the place. And the issues, conflicts, or the problems that find their way into mediation are just as broad and just as diverse.

So you know that one of the most important things for a mediator is to figure out whether you have folks who are understanding how to negotiate on their own behalf. We're put in the position of having to make an evaluation of someone's cognitive abilities, right? And sometimes…

IE: Right

SB: ..Have to figure out, can you have a support or an advocate or whatever? So that comes up in elder situations at times. And as you and I know, we're both aging, as all people are, things start happening slowly. So what your abilities are at a different stage of life. And so our elder mediators are getting to know the elder, getting to know the family, sometimes getting to know the caretakers, and thinking about what the capacity is of those individuals and whether we could be of help or whether there's another agency or organization that they need more than they need us. We get very desperate, older people calling us, going: “I'm at my wits. And I've had the same argument with my 42 year old son over and over. I don't know what to do. Someone said for me to call you” and maybe mediation isn't the best first remedy. Maybe some support organizations for elders, so, you know, reaching out to them, saying, “why don't you reach out to them, and they could provide you with both advocates in services and support”. Sometimes those are things that solve the issue.

As I know, as I'm aging, you know, I get a little bit less flexible about things. I'm 67, so according to our laws, I'm on the elder side, although here on Martha's Vineyard, where I live. Interesting study in elder aging. And I work with the elderly organizations here. They've got sort of three different groups, right? There's the active working, cognitively, relatively in good shape, folks like me, I've retired once, and now I went back to work. Then there's people who are farther along in their age, and then there are people who are relatively incapacitated. So our generations before didn't have this challenge as much. First of all, in the 1900, people barely …

IE: Weren't getting this old, obviously.

SB: I think if we look at the 20th century and the dramatic changes throughout that hundred years, I think it gives us some clues about this. In the early 20th century, a much higher proportion internationally was agrarian than it is now. So, the agrarian life meant that there was generally extended families taking care of the farm or subsistence farming, whatever was happening. And the family took full responsibility for the elder. And when an elder didn't have family, it was a very tragic situation. Here in the United States, Social Security for elders is not even a 100 years old. Those people went into poor houses, or they died alone at home, or the community took care of them. So I think what we're looking at is a number of dramatic changes that we all are coping with. And thankfully, the law, through precedent setting cases and through lawyers who understand what's important here, has helped to preserve the civil rights of those folks. I don't think that always happened in the past.

And then also seeing that it's society's responsibility for elders and not that it's just the families that shift, at least happens here, then you also hear the consequent loneliness of the aging and so forth. So those kind of things are challenging and how in modern industrial society, they get handled. We're on a small island of 25,000 people year round, but well, more than 30% of the people here could be categorized as aging. And the newspaper has a section that they put in every month of over 55, which is another cutoff. And, from what I understand, more than 50% of the folks on the island fall into that category. So, it's an interesting microcosm to look at and to see how supports can be offered. And I'm very proud to live in a place where there are very robust supports. There's lunches and events and bus rides and transportation and meals on wheels. All those kind of things are great.

But what happens in the family when somebody in 1940 purchased a small piece of land to create a fishing cottage, and now here we are in 2024, and that thing is worth multimillions of dollars, and there's three generations of family sort of trying to sort out what to do with the middle generation saying “I'm not sure we could pay the taxes on this” and the younger generation saying “oh, you've got to preserve this for us. We love coming to go to the beach at grandma's house”. So that's one profile of cases that end up coming to us. And, I really love doing those cases myself because it's a very multimodality case. You're dealing with family.

IE: And I think the issue is pertinent in every place. Just like a little hut turning into a beach house and then turning into something really like precious. But then what about the taxes? What about the maintenance? Oh, we love coming here. Yeah, you love coming here for two weeks. What about the rest of the year?

SB: Exactly. Who’s going to pay for the maintenance, right? So that's one profile, another very important profile: Mom is failing health wise. We are at difference of opinion about how to handle that. The economics of how to maintain her lifestyle are challenging for her children, or if she has a spouse that still is alive, and we're all at odds and we need help outside. That's another very strong profile. And then third one is just unresolved conflicts within the family that end up getting harder to deal with over time. And sometimes these are decades long conflicts over…

IE: You love my sister more than me kind of..?

SB: Yeah. Or over lifestyle choices or over identity issues or some horrible incident that may have happened in the past that people see

IE: Accidents?

SB: Yeah…as a real issue that they can't get past. So that's sort of the three buckets that our work tend traumatic, unresolved conflict sometimes can be not seemingly traumatic, but some kind of… Maybe dad has died, but there was abuse happening in the familyobserved, and people are trying to sort through it and talk to each other without blaming each other. So… And some people would hear all of that and say, well, shouldn't therapists be doing this work? I have a belief in our perspective from a conflict resolution theoretical basis and not from a psychological. Although we all train in psychology, we all are comfortable with emotions and feelings, but our work is future focused: planning, coming up with an agreement within the family or within,sometimes the neighborhood. Sometimes there's a community of elders, but generally families, and sort of putting to the side some of the psychological patterns and syndromes that a psychologist might focus on, sort of saying, “Okay, that's good. Are you shared? Do you feel understood? Do you think that you understand where your sister is coming from? Have we given mom enough time to explain where she's thinking? What's the plan?” Being a neutral in the family, walking into a family, trying to solve these things is a gift that many people don't know is available, and they don't know to call upon it early on in the conflict. So that's just sort of a broad strokes kind of, approach.

IE: How can mediation help for their resolution? You have mentioned you don't have the skills of a therapist, obviously, but you use your mediation skills in these type of cases. But it can't be only your skills.

SB: No. There's a process and procedure that our organization has developed over the years. We always meet with each individual involved, and it's usually more than two people individually with the mediation team. We always work with a team. Once in a while, I end up with cases alone for various reasons but we would prefer to have two mediators working. We try to match them up based on what we're getting in our intake process about who would be best matched.

IE: With the needs of this family?

SB: Right. And also the profile of the family as well. You know, there are gender issues. Some, genders prefer talking to genders alike, sort of background information. Also, we're on a small island, so conflict of interest for us is a real challenge. Making sure that nobody has contact or an ongoing relationship with any member of the family. And then we will have met with each individual at least for half an hour. Sometimes it's longer than that.

In general, our protocol is we start with the siblings and not the elder. The children of the elder, the next generation down. Not always true, right? Mediators don't have to follow that as a strict protocol, but over our years of experience, we found that that's the place that needs to get started, because for many times, the sisters and brothers have never spoken with each other about what is happening for them, the next generation down, the children, the elder, because we find that having a first meeting, a facilitated mediation session, or just “air your grievances” meeting with that group first means that there'll be a much more productive work when their parent is present. You can imagine that somebody who has had three or four children and has watched them grow over decades has a lot of sort of ideas, and vice versa. We find that if the first group meeting that we pull involves the elder parent, it sometimes ends up being a place where, you know, “you loved my sister more kind of stuff happens”. It's not our purpose. Right?

IE: Yeah. But it. Is natural that those things come out.

SB: It is. And so..

IE: You paid for her school more.

SB: Exactly. That's a conflict that we've done at least twice. So, the pulling together of the siblings in a sort of business like mediation meeting, right. Which isn't always so “business life”. But that's the purpose of pulling -let's say there's three siblings- hearing each of them say what they think mom's situation is, without mom there and having them hear each other and: “Oh, I didn't see that when I talked to her. She seems perfectly fine”. Oh, well, I see her.

IE: Yeah, but you live in Hawaii. Probably.

SB: Exactly. So, that discussion is crucial as a foundation. And then the last section of the mediation, at least if you're meeting once or twice, but before we include mom, is to say, what's the plan for including your mother? “Oh, she doesn't like talking to people after four in the afternoon”. Great. Two siblings hear that for the first time, and so does the mediator. “Oh, I think we shouldn't focus at all on the accident 20 years ago. It's going to bring up a lot of problems. Oh”. The sibling: “Wait, I really think we need to talk about that. Well” is that the first thing on the list, or is that going to come later? Once we've established trust in the process? So this gives the mediator a chance to really plan the process with the people who know the mother the best or better than them. And also for them to have a game plan for when the meeting happens so that it's not this sort of freewheeling, uncomfortable kind of a thing back and forth.

IE: So what are we discussing here then, like, time wise? Are we talking about, like, a months long process?

SB: Yeah, many months. It needs to unfold in time and not be seen

IE: rushed?

SB: Commercial mediators put aside an entire day. Almost never can it happen like that. People need to wrap their heads around the themes. They need to think with each other outside of the mediation, like pick up the phone and talk to sibling Sally. Also, the mediators have to be ready for the fact that a whole bunch of stuff is going to happen between mediations. And so the mediator is often catching up on: “oh, we've already decided that assisted living is where mom's going to go, and she loves the idea”. “Oh, when we left a month ago, you weren't sure”. “what she didn't like…That was. But now, wow, great. Amazing that you have come up with that”. What else is still in flux now that you think mediation could help with?

A very dynamic process, and often commercial mediators in particular, do “they prep, prep, prep, prep, prep”. Well, we do prep by talking to people, but we also have to think on our feet a lot. And also, then let's say we're at that second meeting where mom has now been invited. Right? We've made up a story here where mom is alone, there's no spouse, there's three siblings. They've had different opinions about how things are going. They've decided they're going to talk about both her health, the house. So they've decided the house comes m first because health is going to be touchy for them, and the mediator is following along with them. And in the meantime, they've had the house appraised, and they actually know what it's worth. And then, before that meeting, the mediator has spent at least one hour, maybe over two sessions, talking to the elder, getting to know them, making sure they can use Zoom, or if they feel more comfortable in person, figuring out all the transportation. Or sometimes we go to people's homes. It's the only mediation where..

IE: If they can't walk or something?

SB: Or if they don't feel comfortable inviting a new person in or coming to a new person somewhere new. So this area of “I don't feel comfortable” is a big theme for all of us, but particularly for people who are more frail and elderly. Right? They may have their caretaker in the next room, and they know that they can sit in their comfortable chair. They know if they…

IE: Is it because of accidents, health issues, or because they can be subject to a crime? Because I was reading a report in preparation of this interview, and at least in Turkey, elderly people are involved disproportionately in accidents, in suspicious death, abuse, and all sorts of things. So they are probably concerned for their safety, and not only in terms of crime, but also like a, slip and fall type of accidents or, you know, public transportation or lack of it sometimes, or being scared to go out when it is dark kind of things. Issues that come with age, basically.

SB: Absolutely. And all of those things factor in. But the primary thing that's factoring in is fear of the unknown person. And for elders who haven't ever experienced mediation, they are entirely confused about what this is all about. They think the judge is coming to their house. They think you're going to be telling them what to do or finding fault with their lives. Until they build a trust relationship with the mediation team, there's a lot of fear operating. And so wherever they would feel most comfortable. And then you have to take your time to help people see that we are impartial and work toward neutrality and that we don't take sides and judge, and that we really want to find out what they're trying to accomplish, which could be entirely different than what their children wanted to accomplish. So you've done all this work with the next generation to get them together and to sort of clear the air of a bunch of stuff, and now you're hearing from mom. Health is not her concern. The house is not her concern because she's written a will that she never told her children about, and it sort of settled. But the biggest concern is the way that their children talk to her when they come and visit the two weeks of the year. So all of a sudden, we have a whole new theme.

IE: Yeah…The relationship issues, basically.

SB: Right. So it's a lot of just taking your time, letting the process unfold, watching to see what's happening in the family and not rushing the process. And that's what I'm very proud of, that we are careful to do that, but also nothing to belabor it, if they don't need us and if we can come up with an agreement. We had one recently where someone was in from Ohio, someone was in from Boston, it was in mom's house. And they were able, over the course of two and a half hours, to sort, you know, relatively small issue out and leave and say, “good luck. Call us if you need us”. So these are wide ranging setups, and it's hard to predict at the beginning of a case how long it's going to.

IE: Yeah, I was just going to say, how do you know what you're going to charge even and, not only, like, money wise, but also setting aside your timetable or scheduling according to the needs of this case? You may not know. It may start easy, and then it gets complicated. So it's really hard to assess. How does these issues work?

SB: Low and steady, one step at a time. I mean, really, that's the only way to do it. Now, we're a community mediation center and our choices that we've made about our fee schedule are important in this because it frees us up a bit. We don't charge hourly and we don't charge for the office work that we do. The funding that we get in grants and in fundraising that we do supports all of that. So our mediators are never sitting there looking at their paycheck. For every time they meet with a group, they're getting paid one set amount, which is a much less than what they're worth, and that the family is charging one set amount. If they stay together for an hour and talk, if they stay together for 2 hours and the mediators decide to stick with it, it's the same price. So that resolves that issue.

IE: The initiative to engage. Yeah.

SB: And we raise money and to be able to do that and to be community serving in that way. So it does resolve that problem a little bit. Although some of our families are quite challenged economically, and even the small amounts that we would charge are difficult. And then we try to figure out what we can do about that, because, we have a motto, we don't turn anyone away for financial reasons. So we try to make that a real. And then we have a roster of mediators who, if they decide to take elder mediation on, they are scheduling it and they are taking it seriously. It's rare that I have a, mediator who's saying, “I've got to drop this case”. Sometimes they're meeting with people on Zoom, sometimes they're in their home. Sometimes they're here in our conference room. But not to belabor it, but also to leave people better than they came, something we noticed that people come way too late. It would be so much easier to get these cases earlier.

IE: We can find a way is sponsored by Koc attorneys at law, the Istanbul and Antalya based boutique law firm. Founding partners of Koc attorneys at law, are staunch believers of using dialogue and, finding common ground to resolve conflicts. They're very happy to be supporting We can find a way in the hope that it will help advance the much needed discussion on de-escalation and reduction of polarization in conflict situations within the legal practice as well as in the public discourse.

How do you deal with the consent? Let's say this elder person has four children and three of them want to come, one dosen’y. Do you separate that person and handle it accordingly? How does that work?

SB: I have a case like that right now and it hasn't resolved. So in that particular case, we follow the same protocol that I described, reached out to each of the mother's children. One very open, had reached out to us for her mom, the other challenging, but open and willing. And the other who had originally been the one who had reached out to us, who was very against mediation at the stage that he was at.

IE: You also had to market mediation once somebody applies to you for the others, right? I mean, if I understand you correctly.

SB: Exactly. Explain it to them, answer their questions, clear up their misunderstandings. One of the daughters had reached out to me on behalf of her mom, but before that, the son had reached out to me on behalf of himself. I met with each and my colleague met with each. Finally, mom, son, “no, I'm not going to be involved”. Continued to include to cc him and all. We do everything by email. It sort of keeps a paper record, for them and for us. Had a meeting of the two daughters and mom, sorted a bunch of things out, cleared the air, you know, they explained what had happened because they were making lots of assumptions about what each other had done and were very angry at each other. Sorted out a plan going forward and talked about how to include their son/brother in the next round. The son with a very benign, “we had a good, productive mediation, and your mother and sisters are anxious to have you included in the next one”. I'm looking to schedule after mediation, then some back and forth. People are not careful when they write emails, but we just always ignore whatever with like. “Thank you so much for communicating. We're looking forward to what you say next”. So it is an art form about how the written communication doesn't reveal confidential information; doesn't make things worse; doesn't make assumptions. And then we're at a standstill right now. Mom herself now is emailing and cc'ing us.

IE: Are they all digitally literate? I mean, we're talking about elder people who might never have written an email or Zoom or they left it at fax, maybe.

SB: So this is the part back to the very beginning about how we're all aging in different ways and at different stages. Right? So in this case, mom is having some physical issues. She's also having a few memory issues, but she feels that she's able to handle her situation. She's gotten a little support and a little aid and she's going to be moving back. She was in her summer place and now she's going to move back home and she has more support there. But her daughter has been given the password to her email. All her daughter does is monitors her email and texts her to go to the email and see the email from Sara and Aisha. So that's what's happened here. So now one of the daughters says, go find. Then she is sending an email and she has sent the same email now three times to all three of her children. “Are we ready for this?” They may not be cc'ing us back. They may be communicating outside. We're just waiting to hear somebody say, could we set up another session? This is the thing about being included in all of this. It was so easy to make assumptions and decide what's happening. I work very hard to refrain from that and not set up myself thinking, “oh, this is what's happening”. Or getting alarmed. Like, I'm waiting for them to say they want another mediation session, and I'm going to be asking them, what are we talking about? Because otherwise I would be reading these little emails with cc's and the whole range of what people are talking about, coming to all kinds of conclusions, and that could send us off in the wrong direction.

And in the meantime, the brother, he's going to change his mind or not, it's up to him. Because it's a voluntary process. So. And I've explained that to the mother and her daughters who get frustrated with that. They're like, “well, can't you just tell him that he should come?” I was like, no, I can't. You're not our client. He has not signed an agreement to participate. I'm, cc'ing him. He's your brother and you can talk to him about anything you want. But I am neutral. I believe in him. I believe in you. I'm here for you. And I have to maintain, and Aisha has to maintain her impartiality because once he comes, we want to have an open mind about his perspective and we want him to not feel that we're your mediators against him. People don't understand this immediately. They misunderstand the whole thing and they're frustrated, of course. So those people have a right to have good mediation and to plan for the future. And if we can get them all together, I think there could be something good that comes out of it. But it may be months in the future.

IE: So you're often saying, “mom”. Are women more likely to participate in these type of processes? Is it like mom and dad situations? Do we have that too? And what about attorneys in elder issues? Does the elder have an attorney?

SB: So the one scenario that is more common is that the woman is the survivor and the male has died earlier. Women do tend to live longer, but we have done many cases with the couple. One of them is diagnosed with dementia. So the father is here, and the mother is not cognitively capable to participate in mediation. But I have done a number with both who are still in great shape and pulled together. So it could be any number of things. And whether men tend to go to mediation less or more, I don't have enough experience to make any conclusions about that. But gender expectations and gender cultural differences also, the generation's understanding of gender can impact anything, and particularly in this case, where you could sometimes, I have worked with three generations where you may have people who were born in the twenties and thirties and have expectations for female behavior and male behavior, and then you could have 20 year olds who are like, gender is fluid, and the mediator has to sort of negotiate all that and not let that get in the way of resolving things and helping people to talk to each other which is mostly what we end up doing a lot of in all of this.

As far as attorneys go, all of my recent cases had attorneys or had access to attorneys, and the ones where they do that is great, because what you can say in mediation is, even if I were an attorney, I'm not allowed to give you any legal advice. Attorneys are there to advocate for you and you and you and you. When we hear that people have an attorney, it's often in mediation we're like, “okay, that's something that you have homework on between this session and the next, and you're going to be consulting with your attorney about that and bring back the conclusions”. Once in a while but it's really rare because attorneys don't want two hours sitting in mediation, but generally, and also their billing for their time. Once in a while, we have an attorney who wants to get involved. Then we have to be very careful about our own neutrality and the, implication that we're collaborating with the attorney.

IE: I just wanted to pick up on about this issue of elder abuse and elder fraud, especially phone calls, emails, etcetera, connected with the next question. You have also mentioned it like, it's kind of late when you're sometimes involved in these issues as a mediator. What can be done to prevent some of the conflicts from happening, like digital literacy or?

SB: Yeah, there's an awful lot to say about that. But the big picture answer I would give is that if we can get the family all talking and we can stop the isolation that has happened or, you know, everybody's operating in different spheres, once that topic gets put on the table with the younger generation, the younger generation has a much stronger understanding of what needs to happen to avoid that. “Mum, ff you get a call from someone who says there's Social Security, hang up the phone and then call me and ask me about it before you do anything”. Right? And sometimes it takes a few times to hear that comes out at the strangest time. Right? You're in the middle of talking about a whole nother topic. And then, mom, “oh, yeah, I got this call today”, and it's sort of random and not linear, but we want to pick up on that because we hope that the family can be helpful or other services.

The whole thing of “I have to take care of it myself” is such a strong muscle that many people have built over their lives. And then as we get older, we all have to begin to realize we need help from outside the home, outside the family, outside of my own capability. And so, yeah, I agree with that. We do have to keep an ear out for criminality, and we were. I am a mandated reporter in Massachusetts, and if I were to hear evidence of elder abuse, I'd be required to report that we have a reporting system. But some of those cases, they've been so simple to figure out. So it's keeping your ear open and then figuring out, has it crossed the line, and what do I have to do? And then how do I inform the family about how to do that so that they wouldn't dismiss mediation forever in the future, which is the real danger.

IE: You're talking about so many procedures that are established by experience. So how many years are we talking about that you're dealing with these type of issues? Or, like, how long does it take to get these things established?

SB: So, I've been mediating for 40 years, but not in the elder world. I was working in the school system for most of my career. Career. And then now I work with courts and so forth. I went for a, four day training on top of my mediation training. One benefit of being an organization and not working individually is that we all call upon each other to weigh in.

IE: Peer support kind of thing.

SB: Yeah. And also, I'm the supervisor of all cases, so every one of our mediators is so great. Nobody holds to ego, or they all, at the end of a session, they're like, “Sara, I need a half an hour meeting. I have to talk to you about this thing that happened. We need to sort out for the next time how we're going to handle it”. It's like we're one hive mind now, where all of our experiences and our thoughts are coming together to follow these procedures. My responsibility to make sure, oh, we have no policy about this. When the recent family asked, “could we come and do the mediation in their living room” we had had the policy from COVID that we did not do that, but we changed it because we thought that it was the right thing to do and safe and more chance to help the family. So it's an, ever evolving practice. We read everything we can about elder mediation and try to keep in touch with our colleagues here in the US, the place that is really doing the most work, elder decisions, happens to be in Massachusetts, and they happen to have a close relationship with our organization. So if we have a problem or we're looking for a referral, I think the biggest issue is if families are trying to put one of their parents into guardianship, which means that they need to be looked out for, and then a lawyer is the guardian. We always send them to elder decisions so that they could get a good referral to a good elder guardianship lawyer.

IE: Is there anything you would like to add?

SB: Diversity, and, particularly in the US, but racial and ethnic diversity. It's been interesting as we've looked at multigenerational expectations, and particularly for people who are marginalized by their race or their advantages have been curtailed by racism or by ethnic prejudice. It's another area that impacts elder and also making sure that we match our mediators up, or at least and trained in multicultural understanding as much as any of us can ever be. All of what I've just talked about is so complicated and multidimensional. It's a whole other dimension that is really important to keep your eye on and not make assumptions about. And as you know, mediators are trained to put aside their assumptions about what's the normal way of doing something, what's right, and immerse themselves in the culture of the family that exists. And every family is different, and every elder is different. And as we grow, we change. So it is fun. I really enjoy doing the work. We also feel really heartened that we leave people every time, even if we don't have a great agreement or everything hasn't been sorted out, we leave them better than we found them. It's such a great reason to do this work, and I wish more community mediation centers would do more work in this area because there's a lot of work left there that mediation could help.

IE: Thank you. This was really, like, encouraging and sad, but also, like, hopeful.

SB: We're all getting older and we all need help.

IE: Sara Barnes is a mediator whose work spanned multiple decades and settings not only as a mediator, but also as a trainer and curriculum developer. In her roles as teacher, school administrator, and professor, she participated in the New York City school and court mediation communities. Then she moved to Massachusetts and is now the executive director and lead mediator at Martha's Vineyards mediation program. Sara is qualified to provide mediation and conflict coaching in many settings. She is involved in all aspects of, Martha's Vineyard mediation program, including grand trial case management, the youth program, workplace conflict, and, court services.

So that's it for this episode. If you like this episode, please follow this podcast. It's website that usually has a transcription of the episode. Like it. Share it, and also please like the excerpts I share in my YouTube channel or in the Instagram account of We Can Find a Way.

I like to close by thanking my sponsor, Koc attorneys at law, my marketing manager Julia Nelson, and musician Imre Hadi and artist Zeren Goktan who allowed me to use their music and photograph, in the podcast. Thank you and hope to meet you in the next episode.