The Cancer Caregiver

Do you really not have time to do things for yourself? Or is it because it isn’t important for you to do? Listen to, or read, Episode 84 “Finding Your Caregiving Self-care Style: Part Three” and hear why I think it’s hard for you to do things for yourself (it might surprise you). You’ll also hear about two more self-care tools you can try to use and see if they will be a fit for you. Show Notes You don’t have the time to do things to care for yourself. There’s too much to do and you spend all of your time caring for your loved one. Self-care just isn’t for you. I’ve had a lot of caregivers give me that as the reason why they can’t care for themselves. Let’s talk about making yourself a priority. Over the last two weeks, I’ve shown you how self-care is not only a requirement of every caregiver but also how it benefits the person you care for. Now you might be saying, there's just isn’t any time. However, I think if you’ve listened to that last two episodes you’ll see that self-care doesn’t mean you have to go anywhere and it also doesn’t have to take up a lot of time. It requires as much time as you will give yourself. That might be where the problem lies… making the time for yourself. It is difficult for caregivers to “find time” to care for themselves because, let’s face it, no one really values what you do as much as they should. Society doesn’t value caregiving, business, and the government don't value it. Your social circles probably don’t and your family might want to but don’t really understand what you do. You might not even understand what you do. You just know that at the end of doing it you are exhausted! If your community, your social circles, and family don’t value your role and if you don’t fully understand the value of what you do every day it will be extremely difficult for you to make yourself a priority… unless you are ready to make yourself a priority. As sad as it sounds… if you can’t make time for yourself no one else is really going to do it. They haven’t yet, have they? If, when you became a caregiver, everyone at the doctors’ office flew into action to not only put together a care team for your loved one but also for yourself wouldn’t that have given you the message that you matter and they need you. If when you became a caregiver, your family and friends all banded together and fed your household for months, or came in to manage the house and all of your needs so that you could focus on caregiving, would that have been a signal that they know you matter and are needed? If you would have instantaneously been given time off from work or options to have a hybrid work schedule or better yet paid to be a caregiver to your loved one, would you have realized that they value what you do? There are over 52 million caregivers in the United States. Every one of us provides care for a person that helps keep them alive in one way or another. What you do matters. I know if we lived in a better world, not even a perfect world, it would be easier for you to step into your role as a caregiver. If you were able to do that it would be that much easier for you to take time off for yourself without needing to justify why or explain how or worry that someone would judge you. But we don’t live in that world. So you have a choice. You can continue to fall apart under the stress of caregiving and struggle through life. Or you can wake up and realize how important caregiving is and understand how it is a requirement of that role to be able to show up for it every day as the best person you can be. That can’t happen if you don’t take care of yourself. So if you say you don’t have time… I say that’s an excuse… not a reason. Everyone has a couple of minutes each day. I understand that can be upsetting to hear, but you know that’s true. It’s a struggle for all of us to make ourselves a priority all the time. The difference is, for those of us who have figured out our worth and learned to care for ourselves as well as our loved one, we come back to it as quickly as possible because we know it is our duty. We owe it to ourselves just as much as to the people we live with. Caring for ourselves has to happen. You just have to find what works for you. That’s why we have two last options to try. Over the past two episodes, I covered how to slow down, take a step away from the house, connect with other people and find comfort. Send me an email or post in the FB group and tell me if any of those worked for you or if you have any questions. The link to do that is on the website page for this episode. Self-care tool #5 Thought Have you ever heard the expression “You are what you think?” Or as Mark Twain wrote: “Life consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one's head.” Your perspective on life is forever created by how you think and the story you have of yourself. I find that the more stressed I am and the harder caregiving is for me the grumpier my thoughts get. Well they start out grumpy a

Show Notes Do you stop yourself from doing things that would make you happy or give you a break from caregiving because it makes you feel guilty to even think about it? Does it feel selfish to want or to do something for yourself because you aren’t the one that is sick? Do you reconsider taking a break because you worry that if someone finds out they will judge you? Let’s talk about why it’s in your loved one’s best interest for you to care for yourself. Guilt and shame are a couple of the main reasons caregivers tell me they don’t even consider doing things for themselves. So let’s break this down. Last week I explained what self-care really is. Don’t forget to go back to listen to that if you haven’t already… Self-care is the practice of taking an active role in protecting one’s own well-being and happiness. Last week I spoke about the misconceptions people have when it comes to self-care and explained that it isn’t elaborate vacations and expensive spa days. It is simply finding ways to fit moments of care into your day so you can reduce stress and protect yourself from stress-related illness while finding happiness even if only a minute at a time. Self-care is all based on what is relaxing and fun for you and can be a simple as taking a step outside or simply stopping and doing nothing for a minute like I suggested last week. Today let’s focus on why caring for yourself is important for the person you care for. Making the case You know what it feels like to be overwhelmed with caregiving and you know how awful you feel when you are under a lot of stress. We all react to this differently but in general, it doesn’t feel good, and the way your body reacts to stress affects everyone around you. You may find yourself exhausted, unable to think clearly, crying a lot, irritated, easy to react in anger, and have no motivation to do things. You can feel depressed, suffer from anxiety and overwhelming worry because of it. You feel like crap. I know that when I feel like this I can be a difficult person to be around and it’s hard for me to enjoy the people I’m with. I also find it hard to make decisions or remember what I needed to do next, and all I want to do is sleep. I know that when I find myself feeling this way it’s a sign that I need to take a step back and figure out what is going on. There is no reason for you to feel like you are suffering because of caregiving. It is hard to make the sacrifices that you have to make to care for your loved one. However, that doesn’t mean that you don’t get to enjoy your life. If you can address the caregiver burnout, begin to take some time for yourself, and celebrate the people you live with, everyone wins. When you are under less stress and feel more content with your life it will reflect in the way you live throughout the day. The way you connect with the person you love changes. You have the energy to care more. It might be easier to make time to enjoy them more. The way you care for them probably becomes a little gentler because you probably aren’t as irritated when you do those tasks. If you’re able to find a way to reduce your stress by practicing self-care daily you’ll have a clearer mind when you walk into doctor’s offices with your loved one. You’ll be better able to ask questions and problem solve. Caring for yourself begins to free you up to actually notice the moments when your loved one needs a hug, when they have the energy to play and joke around and when something has changed that might be a cause for concern. Self-care presents the opportunity for you to feel better about caregiving and put more positive energy into the things you do. It also gives you the energy to set boundaries in your life and ask for help. Last week I explained how self-care can help you. This week I’m saying that in helping yourself stay healthy and handle stress in your life you positively affect your loved one’s life as well. Self-care allows you to be a better caregiver. Let’s look at two more types of self-care to choose from. What you are looking for is one thing you can do and will continue to do. If you find more than one thing that interests you, that’s awesome! Write them down and you can add on the second one after you’ve made the first one a habit. Don’t jump in and try to do everything I mention all at the same time. Try each one of them out a couple of times and then pick the one you’d like to work on first. If you try to make a lot of different changes in your life all at once you’ll end up overwhelming and that is the opposite of what you’re trying to do. Let’s get to the next two self-care tools. Self-care tool #3 - Make a connection. Connecting with people other than the ones you live with is a good way to care for yourself. There is one thing I want you to keep in mind… making connections can’t make you feel depleted after you’re done. Meaning, whatever you do can not make you feel like life has been sucked out of you or that it made you feel worse off than befo

I bet your idea of self-care is flawed. Listen to Episode 82 “Finding Your Caregiving Self Care Style: Part One” to find out if it is and learn two ways you can bring self-care into your day. Show Notes If you have listened to any of my episodes that focus on self-care you know that I believe it is required of all caregivers to care for themselves. When I asked caregivers what they needed the most, the answer I got was - learn how to care for themselves. So for the next few episodes, we are going to do just that. Let’s talk about ways caregivers can support themselves. I get it.. you might be skeptical right now but give me just 10 minutes of your time. Don’t worry about writing anything down if you are driving or on a walk. All of this information is on the website so you can always reference that to find everything I talk about on this episode today. Self Care is Essential Self-care is essential for caregivers. If you listened to episodes 13 and episode 43 you know that I feel it is a requirement. Not only is it essential for your own health it also allows you to be the best caregiver you can be. It allows you to release the stress that builds up every day, allows you to become resilient so you find yourself feeling overwhelmed less often and it allows you to love your life while caregiving. There is scientific data that proves chronic stress is linked to Cardiovascular disease, depression and anxiety, and a weakened immune system. Doing things that keep you from chronic stress is essential for keeping you healthy. What is self-care? There are three problems that caregivers have when addressing self-care. 1. They don’t feel that self-care is for people like them. 2. They don’t have any time to do anything for themselves. 3. They don’t know what they would do even if they wanted to. My answer to those objections are We need to work on your definition of self-care The problem isn’t not having the time it’s in how you prioritize your day. Self-care doesn’t have to be complicated. Definition of self-care Let’s start with the actual definition of self-care. According to the dictionary self-care is: The practice of taking action to preserve or improve one's own health. and The practice of taking an active role in protecting one's own well-being and happiness, in particular during periods of stress. Nowhere in this definition do I see any specific events or activities listed. If we use this definition of self-care then it is open to interpretation. It is anything that you could do to protect your own well-being and happiness. The problem is that companies have decided to tell you what self-care should look like. Social media accounts promote what they want you to think self-care is. It can feel like the world is trying to tell you that you need self-care and the thing they are selling or the place they are promoting is the answer and almost always the person they use for their messaging is a young, healthy person wearing beautiful expensive clothing or hardly anything at all. You don’t see yourself in that messaging. That is why I meet so many caregivers that tell me self-care isn’t for them. I get that. If you think self-care is what you buy for yourself or what you go to do it’s going to feel out of reach for you. Now, I’m not saying that taking a trip, getting a massage, or buying that expensive cream aren’t good ways to release caregiver stress but most of those things are not daily forms of self-care. I’d consider them the extra things you do if you can. The problem is, you can’t sell the act of doing nothing. It isn’t glamorous but for some people taking a moment to sit and do absolutely nothing is their form of self-care. The other problem is, no one reaches out to help you learn what self-care means for you. You know you should be caring for yourself because people are always telling you that you should do it… usually when you are at a breaking point. Which is extremely unhelpful. Everyone telling you to take care of yourself but no one to give you ideas of what to do! Keep listening because we are going to get to that. You are the only person that can determine what self-care is for you. No matter what it is, the focus of it should be protecting your own well-being and happiness. Protecting your well-being means protecting your health. For caregivers, one of the most important things that need to be done is to find ways to deal with the stress of caregiving. I am going to give you options over the next three episodes for you to consider so you can find one thing that can be brought into your life consistently. Time for self-care Self-care needs to be a part of your daily life. It needs to become what you do every day, like going to the bathroom or brushing your teeth. It has to be non-negotiable. That means it has to be something you will actually do. I can spend hours talking to you about the benefits of meditation but if you don’t believe you’d find that enjoyable it’ll never work for you. You have to

Find caregiver support and downloads at www.loveyourcaregivinglife.com Show Transcript Time seems to run super slow and then too fast when we are caregiving. All of a sudden we find ourselves looking back at the year and not know where the time went. Maybe we mourn not being able to remember the moments we know we had with the ones we care for and can’t remember them because the stress and overwhelm were just too much to allow you to hold on to some of the good moments. Let’s talk about how we can remember our time with the one we care for. The other day I was working on last week’s podcast episodes and I decided to look back at my pictures and see what I had taken when my husband was first diagnosed with cancer. I was hoping to find a picture from when we were in the hospital to stir up more memories for episode 80. What I found was upsetting. I realized that I had hardly taken any pictures for that whole entire year and a half and so as I looked back I couldn’t remember much. I know that we did some things together that were fun in spite of cancer. I don’t have pictures of my daughter. I don’t have pictures of my husband right after surgery or, now that I think of it, even before surgery. All of those memories were lost. I have memories in the form of stories some of which I have shared here with you. But the stories are tied to things that happened that were remarkable. I generally take a lot of pictures. Sometimes my family will make fun of me because I take pictures of things like a railing or a flower. But if I look back at any of those pictures, even if they are of random things, I can remember the place that I took it in which then brings on a flood of memories for that day. I’ll remember stupid jokes that I told. Things that we all laughed at and just in general what kind of day I had when that picture was taken. It hurt to realize that I had lost time. I had decided, probably since it was one of the worst times of my life, to not document it. If for some reason things did not go right with my husband‘s health and I were to have lost him I would have also lost memories of the last moments we had together. That is unbearable for me to think about. Now I know that I am not in a place and my family is not in a place where we are talking about loss right now. There isn’t a threat for my husband to become seriously ill and hospice is not part of his care plan. However, nothing is guaranteed in life. So to see that I have a dark hole in my picture feed reminds me that no matter what, I need to remember and document my days. Sometimes the days where I do absolutely nothing that seems important are the days that feel really good. I should have a picture that reminds me that I don’t have to have a big win to have a great day. Pictures don’t have to be just of the trips, car rides or games played. It doesn’t have to be the pictures of the holidays and the birthday cakes and blowing out the candles. I have this need to document my days. I went through a whole pandemic stuck in my house and I could have taken so many pictures just so that I could remember how boring and stressful it was. How else can I relay that information, those experiences, and that time to my grandchildren. I guess what I’m trying to get at is, how do you hold onto the memories that you make throughout the day? That is to say, if you actually make the time to notice the small moments that happen every day. When you look back on your years of caregiving is it all doctor’s visits and surgeries? Are the big wins all theirs or are some of them yours? Are you documenting your life with this person you have sacrificed so much to care for? If you are a little too burnout right now and can’t think of a reason to remember any of your caregiving years then can you be open to the possibility of having a short minute a day that might just be ok and make a mental note of it? This realization that I had a black hole in my picture feed reminded me of a book I had just finished reading a book called Storyworthy by Mathew Dicks. This book is focused on learning how to tell stories. How to craft them and have a focus in telling them - which, to be honest, I can struggle with at times. However, one of the chapters of that book was focused on the practice of writing down a memory each day. That way you can remember back and recall a story from that day. I couldn’t help to connect this to how this could be a useful tool for caregivers. If you continue with this as a daily practice by the end of the year you would be able to look back on any day of the year to see and remember what you had done. I have always tried to do this, not with writing but with taking pictures. I have even used daily picture journaling apps on my phone over the years that reminded me each day to take a picture. I take pictures of things that stand out to me. They could be of my drive to work, my daughter’s smile, a picture of my husband and daughter holding hands while they’re walking,

Show Notes Find more resources and a PDF download at www.loveyourcaregivinglife.com Learning to Listen to the Person You Care For Caregiving is like that gait belt they put around a patient in a hospital to get them up to walk around. It usually happens unexpectedly, causes way too much attention, and is the wake-up call that life continues no matter how you move forward into it. If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the belt in use, I’ll explain. A gait belt will be used when a patient in a hospital is a fall risk and they need to transfer to the bathroom or a chair or even for a walk down the hall. It helps the nurse or therapist steady a person as they walk. The belt they usually bring to my husband’s room has always been pink so we call it the pink belt. From what I understand it comes in different colors it just always is funny for me (in probably a troubled caregiving way) that he has to walk with a pink belt on. My first experience with this belt taught me a couple of lessons. You can’t hide in bed forever. When my husband says he’s not ready for something he probably isn’t Advocate with everything you have. Apologizing to a nurse later is better than having to live with a decision not to say something. My husband’s surgery to remove his thyroid was a lot more complicated and took longer than expected. So it was easy to accept that we would have to stay in the hospital longer than we thought as well. He was in a lot of pain, in the beginning, he just didn’t want to move much. The huge amount of time under anesthesia was difficult for him to deal with after surgery and he just overall didn’t want to get out of bed. Of course, that is what the doctors wanted him to do. For the first few days, I was content to just sit by him while he slept. As time went on it became very clear that he couldn’t do that much longer. Plans were discussed with the surgeon each morning on what his goals should be. He listened and then did his own thing. I simply let things happen. I listened to the doctors and nurses. I listened to him and tried not to insert myself much. Maybe tried is too strong a word. I didn’t insert myself much because I was extremely tired and my brain wasn’t working to help make decisions at all. I didn’t understand, before going into the hospital with my husband, that I needed the strength to be able to think while we were there. I could trust that the Doctors did what they needed to but I also needed to advocate for him, ask questions and try to understand the process since it was our first time. So when staff started to ramp up the efforts to get him out of bed I didn’t take a side either way. I didn’t talk to him about the need for him to start moving and I didn’t explain to the nurses how horrible he was feeling and how much he didn’t want to move. What I did understand, after the second day, is that the sooner he walked the quicker we would get out. As scary as that really felt for me I just wanted to get him home and I wanted to sleep. You Can’t Hide In Bed Forever The day came for him to walk, it was in the plan for the day. The therapist was scheduled to come to help him and he still said that he wasn’t ready to walk. I suggested that he try. Later that day the young woman came to his room to help him walk and she brought the pink belt. Now once we got him set up with the belt around his waist he negotiated to just walk to the door to start. He did that just fine. Then she suggested that he go out into the hall. He agreed but just to the next door. When he got there he said it was time to turn around because he wasn’t feeling well. She suggested he walk to the bench to sit for a bit. It was about 4 doors down the hall. I chimed in… well if he isn’t feeling well maybe we should turn around. She strongly suggested we walk to the bench and probably mostly out of frustration he agreed but added we might regret that decision. The thing is I know and he knows that when he gets dizzy he will lay himself onto any cold surface available. It doesn’t matter if it’s the hallway of a busy hospital floor. I could tell his color had changed and I started talking to him a little more, asking questions to see if he was able to respond. Then I said … I think we need to turn around and when those words came out of my mouth he said “too late” and slowly made his way to the floor while the woman was trying to hold him up with the belt. If I weren’t a part of this experience I probably would have been laughing. As she tried keeping him upright with that pink belt he kept moving himself to the floor and in the end, he had enough leverage with the weight of his body to get him there. I just looked at her and said “You’re just going to have to let him go” and he just laid himself on the floor. Face pressed against the cold tile and me trying not to cry or laugh or react in disgust. When my husband says he’s not ready for something he probably isn’t. Now, to his credit, he warned both of us. He said he wasn’t rea

Please leave a rating or a review. Download the pdf "Top 5 Tools Every Spousal Caregiver Must Have" now. Show Notes: Episode 79 "How Not to Hate Caregiving" You might have woken up today and thought how crappy it is to have to be a caregiver. It could be a difficult week, month, or year for you. I know how it feels. I get having the feeling that caregiving is suffocating you. If you feel like you can’t breathe, like you can’t do this anymore, that caregiving has ruined your life or that you’re getting really close to feeling that way…then maybe we should talk about trying to approach things a little differently. Let’s talk about how not to hate caregiving. Now I’m not an overly positive person. I have met people who have survived cancer and they are full of gratitude for just being able to wake up each day. You’ve met them… the people that when you want to talk about how much life sucks you know they’ll respond with everything you should be happy about right now. There’s nothing wrong with seeing the world this way… I’m just not that person. If you are, I’d love for you to send me an email and let me know what keeps you going with that mindset. In fact, if any of you want to send me an email I’d love to hear from you. If you’re signed up for the newsletter all you have to do is hit reply and I’ll get it. Now even though I’m not a rose-colored glasses type of person I do try to find the good out of a situation and I work hard at holding on to the ability to enjoy my life as much as possible. That isn’t a gift for me it’s a skill that I am continually refining. I have to work at this because oftentimes the best things to do in life are the hardest. I’m sarcastic by nature. I’m quick to respond especially in difficult situations. I’m always reading between the lines and I’m quick to create boundaries. So when I say that caregiving can fuel you. When I tell you that it is possible to feel good inside when you’re a caregiver I am not telling you that because I feel that being a caregiver is easy. I am telling you because caregiving is easily one of the hardest things I will have to do long-term and I refuse to hate my life while I do it. I believe you can do the same. It isn’t easy to figure out how to enjoy life when you first become a caregiver. I didn’t gleefully jump into being a spousal caregiver when my husband was diagnosed with cancer. My beginning experiences with caregiving were horrible. I quickly started to experience caregiver burnout and I was oftentimes miserable but there were some moments of clarity. If you listened to last week’s episode you know I learned a valuable lesson in the hospital with my husband and I went through that first year having many little aha moments but I was just too exhausted to put them all together to see the big picture. A lot of us find ourselves struggling in the beginning. We work hard to get a handle on things and right when we think we know what we’re doing something changes and we have to start all over again. It’s very easy to not even notice how life feels, in general, when you are in this first phase because you don’t have a chance to take a moment to step back. But when you do have that quiet moment it can really bring you down. Do you remember when you had just enough quiet time that something inside you made you look back on the past year or years of caregiving and you realized that you haven’t been happy in a while? Or maybe right now is that moment. Then you just didn’t have the energy to know what to do with that information and you went back to the way things have been. You continued to be unhappy but it was worse because you now knew you were unhappy. Before you didn’t realize it and it wasn’t a thing you thought about but after that moment that fact was always there. Knowing you aren’t happy with your life and being able to make changes are two different things. First, you have to know you aren’t happy with the way things are before you can become open to making a change. Making a change has to then become important enough for you to do it. I understand how hard it is to make changes in your life. I see it every time I work with a caregiver. There’s too much going on for you to make a change and you don’t have an idea of what that change would even be or how to address it if you did. We all become family caregivers for a specific reason. You could have decided on it because there was no question in your mind that you would care for your spouse, child, or loved one. Maybe there was no question in the minds of the people around you that you would be the one to do it and so you did possibly out of obligation. Or it’s possible that you are somewhere in between those two. So let’s move forward on the assumption that you are a caregiver because, at least in the beginning, you at the very least, cared for this person. I know that over time caregiving goes from being something you are doing as a response or reaction to this big pile of crap that was thrown in

Show Notes Family caregivers have a lot they have to deal and cope with, but you already know that don’t you? There are all the doctors’ appointments, treatments, therapies, surgeries, special diets, changing your home to accommodate their needs and the list goes on. It leaves us all exhausted, overwhelmed, and on bad days… hopeless. We give all of ourselves to help a person we love live… but we don’t always stop to enjoy the time we have with them. I have found that there have been times when I became buried in all the responsibility of caregiving and at the same time losing time I could enjoy life with my husband. So today I’m going to talk about connecting with the person you care for. Now you know my frame of view is always that of a spouse. I share what I know and almost all of the time it works… doesn’t it? So today the stories I share of my husband and I can easily be of you and your mother, or your brother or your child. The need for human connection is universal. Before cancer, my husband and I were close. We had fun doing things together and most of our weekends were filled with trips around town, going to movies, museums, and farmers markets and just being out in the world with our daughter. We balanced each other out well. When cancer came to our home that balance was shattered. We both tried, the best we could, to just keep our heads above water. With just a phone call my husband's focus in life was to stay alive and my focus was to keep him alive. So, understandably, things started to fall apart. We didn’t always balance each other out anymore. Oftentimes we were both reacting out of fear and anxiety together. If both of us felt stuck and just wanted to stay in bed all day there wasn’t another person to make us get up. We both needed each other but we were too busy to figure out how to fight cancer to really be there. We both tried to hold back our fear in an effort to be strong for the other person. During stressful times we often became short or bad-tempered. Little things would set us off because there was just only so much our minds could take. In addition, we both had jobs and the same responsibilities we had before. We tried to continue living our life fully as we had before cancer while also working full-time to deal with cancer. An impossible task. We were clearly just trying to hold it together. Before his surgery, he was just trying to do his best to stay positive and I was doing my best to help him do that while setting up support for our daughter and the house during his surgery and have things set up to make his return as seamless as possible. We definitely were trying not to talk about things that were front and center for us. Things like… What if this doesn’t work? What does this mean for us? His surgery was scheduled fairly quickly and before I knew it I found myself sitting next to his hospital bed, waiting for him to wake up. I had spent so much time leading up to that day being overwhelmed by everything I was trying to get done before surgery that it felt weird to just sit. As I watched him rest I realized there was one thing I forgot to do. I forgot to connect with him. Out of all the things I was trying to get done before surgery I lost sight of what has always been one of the most important parts of my life… my husband! All of the things I was doing for him yet I didn’t see that what was actually important for me to do was to just sit with him. Now that that was the only thing I could do I realized it was all that ever really mattered. We spend so much time doing as a caregiver that we lose sight of needing to stop and enjoy the person we are with. I know that we are all caregivers for different reasons. Hopefully, you are a caregiver because you love or care for the person you care for, or at least you used to. There is no denying that it benefits both us and the people we care for when we can simply spend time together. It’s so easy to get sucked into all of the things we need to do as a caregiver that it makes it hard to be their companion. To sit by them as someone who loves them and not someone who is tirelessly working to help them live. I think sometimes staying in caregiving mode makes it easier. If we can distract from the emotions we’re feeling and what they are going through then we can avoid being uncomfortable. In doing that you really are shortchanging yourself. Living life fully isn’t just about all the happy moments… it’s also about experiencing the difficult ones. So when things begin to get emotional and you feel the urge to have to go check the laundry or cook diner or whatever your usually escape route is try this instead. If you are driving or don’t have anything to write them down with no worries every word I’m saying is on my website and if you’re signed up for newsletters you get the link to the transcripts every Thursday. Stay when the person you care for gets emotional and be ok when it becomes uncomfortable. I get it… it isn’t an easy thing to h

Show Notes Do you understand the power you have to change a person's day? Let’s talk about the ripples we create. My nieces came to visit me and my family this summer and one day we were hanging out by a pool. The girls sat at the edge and put their feet in. They were fascinated by the ripples they were making in the water. They played with kicking their feet fast and then slow to see how it changed the ripple pattern in the water. I realized that whenever I see a picture or think of a scenario of ripples in the water it is usually caused by something being thrown into it. So the fact that they were experimenting with the control they had of the water drew me in. Maybe, I was fascinated by it because they are super cute girls but I think what really caught me off guard was the fact that instead of a person throwing something in the water they were physically in the water causing the ripples. As caregivers, we are physically in the water making the changes. You see, when something is thrown in the water and you happen to see the change it makes the change is usually an after effect. But when you are in the water, moving it around, actively changing the speed to adjust the ripples that spread out into the pool you are causing change on purpose. Every decision we make has an effect on the people we care for, on the people we live with, the care our loved ones get, the relationships we have with them, and the life we get to live. Sometimes we may feel like we were pushed into the deep end and we find ourselves thrashing, trying to keep our heads above the water making it a sea of foaming waves as we struggle. Other times we may feel like we are dipping just a toe in and causing very little change at all. No matter what, we are creating change. We are just usually too busy, too stressed out, and too tired to realize it. There are positive and negative ways to make a change. Let’s look at the same scenario in two different ways. If you wake up grateful to have the opportunity to be on earth with the person you care for and spend the day trying your best to make it a good day for not only them but also you, then you have the opportunity to have a positive effect on the world. Just looking at the day as an opportunity will create ways for you to bring positivity and love into your day. That can be a gift to the person you are caring for and the people you come in contact with throughout that day. Maybe you had something delivered to the house and when you met the person at the door you simply said thank you with a smile. That could have been the only positive thing that happened to that person and they could have gone home a little bit happier because of it possibly sharing that good feeling with their family. Or, you actually take a moment to see the person you care for and despite the pain and fear that their health brings… you see THEM and you smile and hold their hand and they feel, for at least that moment, that things can be ok. That is how you positively impact their life at that moment. But let’s flip those two scenarios around. What if you opened the door to accept the delivery and you don’t even look at the person. You just grab the package and slam the door. That translates to the delivery person feeling angry that you didn’t even acknowledge them and they huff back to their truck. They drive away angrily and get home in a mood and yell at someone there to let their frustrations out on them or at least retells the interaction to their family making them angry about it. Or You don’t take a moment to see the person you are caring for and you spend all day busy, in the same house or even in the same room but not connected.. extremely distant because the fear and sadness created by their health challenge are overwhelming. And they lie there feeling lonely and abandoned and full of despair. Maybe they react to you angrily because of it or they withdraw because the cue you are giving them is that they are a burden. Which scenario feels better? Now you might say - I don’t have any control over how people react to what happens to them. That delivery driver made a choice to go home angry or my loved one made the choice to feel hurt when I was just doing everything I can to keep things in the house running for their benefit. Sure, we all have control over how we let things affect us. That’s true. But we can also take responsibility for the change we create in the worlds we live in. When we can bring positivity to our world and the people around us then they don’t have to work to counteract that. In fact, they might not even realize why they felt so happy after being around you but it would effortlessly be passed on just by them being a little bit happier even if they don’t know why. However, if you bring negativity to the people around you… they would have to actively work against that affecting their day. Angry ripples in the water are strong and hard to avoid. They push you around and stir up emotions that are h

Last night I was watching Ted Lasso, one of my favorite series to watch, and it ended up being a Christmas episode. Now usually I don’t watch episodes that are holiday-specific but this time I kept it on. It’s one of those shows that make me feel happy to watch and I always look forward to it when there is a new episode. Now I really like holidays. I’m up to celebrating anything and sometimes we have mini celebrations at home - just because. So watching a Christmas episode in the middle of August made me look forward to winter which is a crazy thing to say because summers in the midwest aren’t very long, to begin with. While I was watching it I started to think of all the traditions I love that really run from Thanksgiving to New Year. A month of decorations, excitement, and anticipation. The movies, the music, the family activities. Then someone on the show had “It’s a wonderful life” on in the background and I thought of how I’ve never watched that movie but always have it on my mental to-do list for December. It’s something that I always say I want to do but never do. Now, that is a movie and, frankly, inconsequential. My life is ok without seeing it. However, it made me wonder… how many things do I put off until later that would actually make a difference to me now? What have you been putting off that would actually change your life in some way if you did it? Do you use caregiving as a reason why you don’t do it? You see… If I don’t do something I love to do for a holiday, during that holiday, then I would probably just wait until next year and hope to remember it then. For example… apparently the last two years I have not dyed easter eggs with my teenage daughter because when I was cleaning out a cabinet recently I found a couple of egg dye sets. We didn’t make the time to do it and kept the kit but then bought another one the next year (probably because I forgot I saved the one from the year before) and still didn’t make them. That means we haven’t dyed eggs together for almost three years. I really like sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving but one year I forgot to make it and waited until the following Thanksgiving to eat it. Meaning I waited two years to eat sweet potato casserole even though it’s something I enjoy. Looking back at this I am alarmed by the fact that - I limit myself to making these things, that bring me happiness, to just one time a year AND I am living as if there will be a next year. Caregivers, out of all people, should have a pretty good understanding that there are no guarantees in life. Once you become a caregiver you find out that life is not actually under your control and it zigs when you think it is going to zag all the time. How can we spend so much time fighting to keep someone alive and not fight to actually live? This isn’t about Easter eggs and Thanksgiving casseroles… This is about the I Love You’s you don’t take the time to say. The hugs you will give next time. This is about not putting the effort in to try to see people that you love. It’s that art class you always wanted to take but you’re waiting for the right time. It’s taking the time to learn how to meditate. Having a romantic meal with your spouse. Spend the day having fun with your child. It’s the Somedays Maybe laters When I have time When she gets better After the cancer is gone When he is able to walk again Type of things What is that thing? Write it down in your phone so you can be reminded of it later. Then think of what it is that’s stopping you? Why are you living as if there is an abundance of time when you know that isn’t guaranteed? Why are you denying yourself joy and happiness now… hoping to have time for it later? Maybe it’s because Joy and Happiness don’t have the same value as busyness and stress do. You know when you meet a person and they seem so interesting because they go on trips and have cool hobbies? The only difference between you and them is they don’t wait. They think of something they’d like to do and they do it. So why not eat dyed eggs any time of the year just because they make your boiled egg a moment of joy? Why not make that casserole in the middle of summer? Why do we put constraints on when we can do things that make us happy? Denying yourself a day with your husband as he’s recovering from surgery doesn’t get you any further in life. It just makes you lose out on a day of connecting with someone you chose to live your life with. Sure trying to do things that are fun can feel awkward. It might have been a while since you last remember laughing. Maybe your body doesn’t know how to giggle anymore. But I swear it’s still deep down in you somewhere and all you have to do is open the door to let it out. Take that trip. Read that book. Live your life seeking ways to fully immerse yourself in it. Be curious. Love deeply. Laugh loudly. Stop putting it off until later Because that opportunity might not ever come and being miserable with life until there’s time for happiness is an

Show Notes :45 - Intro 1:05 - Cameron shares stories with us about her parents and family. How she came about moving back home and was able to catch changes she saw in her mom. 2:30 - The signs of Alzheimers Cameron began seeing with her mom. 4:07 Her experiences and how she included her mom's Dr and had her tested for Alzheimers. 4:43 Cameron’s mom had a friend that suggested she get tested for Alzheimers that ultimately diagnosed her at 65. 5:08 How it feels, as a caregiver and child, to receive the Alzheimers diagnosis for a parent. 5:31 Cameron describes what legal documents she knew she needed to set up so she could help her mom in the future when she needed it. 6:00 Cameron describes how her mom’s Alzheimers progressed. The support she set up for her mom while she still lived on her own. 7:00 Protecting her mom from financial scams and realizing it was time for her mom to move in with her. 7:40 Cameron sets up services and support for her mom to help her care for her and still be able to parent her children and continue to work. 8:00 Cameron shares how she worked to balance caregiving along with everything else in life she was responsible for. 9:00 Benefits of having mom stay at home with them as well as difficulties. 9:45 The effect of the stress of caregiving and realizing that she couldn’t give her mom the care that she needed. 10:23 Memory care. 11:00 Cameron shares how she prepared herself for the inevitable challenges and outcome of her mother having Alzheimers 12:24 The different phases and change in roles for Cameron and her mother. 14:25 Parental/ child role reversal. Taking care of her parent and the difficulties that role created. 15:30 How memory care allowed Cameron to focus on being her daughter. 16:00 The work Cameron did as a caregiver while her mom was in memory care. 17:20 The benefits of having outside help with a family member who has Alzheimers. 19:00 Different ways of caregiving and how everyone has to make it work the way it should for their family. 20:00 Cameron tells us how great it was to move her mother closer to home and recounts the happy moments her children had with their grandmother. 22:17 Early 2019 Cameron’s mother is diagnosed with cancer. She shares the difficulties of having to help hospital personnel with her mother. 28:00 Cameron gets another call from her mother’s facility. She needs to be checked for recurring cancer but if she leaves she has to quarantine for 10 days before going back to the facility. Cameron found a facility her mom could quarantine in. 29:00 Cameron describes how covid policies created more difficulties for her and in getting her mom to the hospital for a biopsy. 30:00 Cameron finds out her mom’s cancer is back and has spread to a lymph node. She realizes that the treatments available would be impossible due to her mom’s progressed Alzheimers and Demntia. 31:15 Cameron, her family, and Dr decide that treatments would not be beneficial and the Dr gets her mom’s facility to take her back instead of having her quarantine in a different facility due to the fact that she had a negative covid test. 31:45 Cameron realizes that when she drops her mom off at the facility with terminal cancer she wound not be allowed in to visit her. 32:10 Mom’s facility allows visiting in the late summer. Her mother doesn’t realize Cameron came for visits because of masking and distancing. 33:09 Covid causes her facility to close again and in December 2020 covid cases started showing up in her mother’s facility. She is told if her mom tests positive for covid she would have to quarantine in a different facility. 34:00 Cameron starts planning for what she would do if her mom needed to quarantine and coordinated with hospice just in case. 35:25 Cameron’s mom gets her first vaccine and had stopped eating and drinking much and is ready to go into a hospice facility. 35:54 Three days later her mom tested positive for covid and the hospice facility wouldn’t allow her in. 36:23 Cameron makes the difficult decision to bring her mother home with just a few hours to set things up for her mother. 36:50 Hospice brings everything needed over to Cameron’s house. Her family moves to different parts of the house before she brought her mother home. 37:00 Cameron sees her mom for the first time in a couple of months and is surprised at her decline. She shares the difficulties in getting her into the house on her own. 38:32 Cameron cares for her mom while she has covid, in her home with very minimal help. 39:29 Cameron describes the last days with her mom. 40:43 Cameron realizes she needs more help and has her sister come to assist her. 41:00 Caring for her mom during her last days with the limitations caused by covid. 41:47 Cameron shares how she wasn’t prepared to watch her mom struggle with pain and to watch her die. 42:09 You can’t be emotionally prepared for the death of a loved one. 43:00 Cameron's experience with being with her mother when she passed. How she had to deal with th

“Help… I need somebody…” Do you remember the Beetle's song? I read the other day that Lennon wrote the song as an expression of the stress he was feeling due to the group’s quick success as a band. It was a song from his heart. He was overwhelmed and knew his lifestyle, as it was, wasn’t sustainable. John Lennon took a look at his life and knew he needed a change and he couldn’t do it on his own. When was it that you realized you were over your head with caregiving and why is it so hard for you to ask for help? Write that down if you want… take a moment to think about it. When was it that you realized you were over your head with caregiving and why is it so hard for you to ask for help? Let all of that anger and frustration come out first. I know it’s there. I’ve had the same thoughts. I know how it feels to be angry with the world. Asking why this has happened to me? This isn’t the life I thought I would be living. I don’t know if I can keep doing this. No one asks or cares how I am doing. Everyone wants to offer help for my loved one but I actually need help too. Let that all out. Dump all of those words into a journal or record them into your phone. Don’t let them circulate in your mind anymore. You need to read them or hear them. That way you’ll begin to process those emotions in a different way. Then, when you’re done with that, I want you to come to the main questions. When was it that you realized you were over your head with caregiving and why is it so hard for you to ask for help? I know that the moment you become a caregiver everything is turned upside down and you find yourself overwhelmed with all the things you need to do to fight this threat in your life. The threat of cancer, the threat of a traumatic accident, the threat of disease, and disability. Your brain automatically goes into survivor mode and you find yourself unable to concentrate, unable to function in life, or do anything else. All you are focused on at first is what needs to be done in order to figure out what the heck is going on. How do I keep my loved one alive? But at some point, you have a break. You have that moment when for maybe just a second you take a breath and realize you can’t keep doing things like this. Without you having a chance to notice, your life is completely different YOU are completely different. You realize you can’t do this all on your own. That was when you found yourself at a fork in the road. You had the awareness that would allow you to continue on with doing it all on your own or try to figure out how to get some help. There are lyrics in the song “Help” that say “When I was younger, so much younger than today I never needed anybody's help in any way” We all remember those days. When life felt so much easier because looking back at it now … looking back at your pre-caregiving life… whatever you thought was hard then feels like nothing now after all you’ve gone through. If you think about it, Lennon was acknowledging that he’s changed. His life is different and he is different. The second half of that verse is: “But now these days are gone, I'm not so self-assured (but now these days are gone) (And now I find) now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors” Lennon realized that he not only needs help but that he is open to receiving that help. Opening up the doors to receive help That’s the next step. Knowing you need help and being open to being helped are two different things. Being open to having help means you have to let go of some of the control you think you have. You have to be open to people doing things a different way. You have to be open to things not being perfect. It takes energy to ask for help. You need the energy to handle the personal dynamic between you and the person you are getting help from. You need to find the energy to figure out what you need help with. People who care about you might not necessarily know how to help you. That’s why so many times we hear “Let me know how I can help” or “Call me whenever you need something.” To a caregiver, that means nothing because it places the burden on us to figure out what and who to ask for help. We can’t change how people offer help but we are in full control of when and how we ask for it. If you’re a caregiver you should know that things don’t happen when you are passive. Not only do you have to advocate for the person you are caring for you also have to advocate for yourself. Finding the courage to ask The hardest part is… asking for help means you have to be vulnerable. You may feel like you should be able to handle everything. You actually may have not asked for help as an adult before and don’t really know how to do it. Or you could see asking for help as a failure on your part to be able to cope. Let’s just remember that the person you are caring for has a full team of people who are helping and who are specialized at what they do. Not ever did you think - we can handle that surgery on our own, or we can run those blood

When do you know when it’s time for them to start doing things for themselves? That’s a tricky question, isn’t it? We all have different caregiving experiences and the people we care for all have different needs. No matter how different we all are there are two things that are universal People should be allowed, supported, and encouraged to do things for themselves. Everyone needs boundaries to protect the energy they have to live their lives the best way they can. Learn more on today’s episode. Transcript When do you know when it’s time for them to start doing things for themselves? That’s a tricky question, isn’t it? There isn’t a definitive answer either because it all depends. It depends on why they need help. Is this long-term or do they just need help to recover and heal? Our personal caregiving is always going to be different than other caregivers so there’s never a book that we can pick up that tells us how to get through life. However, I do think that we can learn from each other’s experiences, and almost always there is something in another’s caregiver story that helps us see things in a different way. So let’s talk about knowing when they need a little kick in the ass. To do that we need to start at the beginning. When my husband came home from his first cancer surgery I was super attentive. I did everything for him because he was visibly in pain. He spent a lot of time in the hospital and coming home was good for him but we had to work on pain management and getting him to eat and stay hydrated. I did everything I could to keep him as comfortable as possible. I made sure things were very conducive for him to rest. I kept the house quiet. I didn’t wake him up unless it was time for his medication and oftentimes I would stay in the room with him so that when he woke up he would know where he was. My focus was to help him heal by making everything in his life easy for him. This phase has not changed. He’s lived with cancer for years now and every time he comes home from another surgery this is what I do. There is no question in my mind that people need a good deal of support when they come home from surgery, no matter what type of surgery it is. Then we get to the point where they’re awake more. When there is more time in between pain medication and he is up more. This is when he needs to move around. Usually, he comes home from the hospital and his body already hurts from being in bed for so long. So once he’s gone a week sleeping most of the time at home he really needs to move. He sits up more. I have him move to a different part of the house. I have him sit at the table for a little bit each day. It’s difficult, I get it. Coming off of medicine sucks but we both know it needs to be done and that the discomfort of transitioning to just Tylenol is short-lived. This is when there is a little bit of a battle of wills. I feel it is normal for a person to get used to having things done for them, especially when they are going through something difficult. However, there’s a point where a person should start to do things on their own again because it doesn’t do them any good not to, and there isn’t anything stopping them. Let me explain… If my husband is recovering from surgery, he would have no problem letting me do everything for him. In fact, after transitioning to regular activities of daily living he would undoubtedly love it if I still brought him food and made sure he was drinking enough. Who wouldn’t? I think in this caregiving world we live in, not having to do something almost always feels like a treat. When you are under the stress of living with illness or disability, not having to decide what you’re going to eat for lunch is awesome! In fact, it’s a pretty sweet deal for anyone. So I can see why it is so easy for the person we care for to get used to having things done for them. Some of us then will have a hard time trying to figure out when we are doing too much for them. Our experiences are all different. Sometimes we might want to do everything for them all the time always. It’s possible that the person you care for has been disabled and you don’t know how to help them learn to start doing things for themselves. Maybe it’s just easier to do things for them. Or you could possibly feel stuck because you’ve done things for them for so long you have no idea how to transition out of it. The thought of transition is an important one especially if you’ve been doing things for them for an extended period of time and are thinking of finally getting them to start doing things for themselves. If it happened over an extended period of time it will equally take a while to make changes. Also, remember that you’ve had time to process the idea of making changes and they haven’t had that luxury. Helping them too much is not helping them. If let’s say, you bring your loved one a cup of water and their toothbrush in the morning to brush their teeth but they can actually walk to the bathroom… then consider

Do you worry about things all the time? I mean to the point that you can’t stop worrying about them and then feel stuck in that worry? I was there for a while and it wasn’t a good place to be. Right after my husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2013 I jumped into the deep end of trying to find ways to cope with the loss of control of the things that were happening in my life. My world wasn’t just being turned upside down… it was taken from me, thrown in a blender, and then thrown back at me to try to make something of it. I tried holding on to something by researching everything I could about his cancer trying to prepare myself and learn as much as I could. As much as I tried to keep myself busy, I couldn’t stop worrying about things.Worry about getting him into scans and the competency of his doctors. Worry about how long he would live, his surgery, and the treatments after. Worry about if cancer would change him, his personality, his ability to love, and how he saw the world. Worry about our relationship and if it could hold strong under the stress it would be put under. Worry that I would miss an important phone call. Worry that I couldn’t be as good a mom as I wanted to be. Worry that I couldn’t be a caregiver. Worry about what my life would be like as a widow, how I could find the strength and how I could afford to live on my own with my daughter and where home would be. Worry that if I told anyone that I worried about these things they would judge me. The effects of this worry started to show up slowly in unexpected places but it always involved me crying. It started with sappy commercials, tv shows, and movies. That didn’t feel too alarming. That could happen on a good day. So I wasn’t too worried about it. I figured it was a cathartic way for me to let go of some stress. Then it started happening any time things didn’t go right. Break an egg yolk? tears. Forget to do something inconsequential - I’d cry. It started to show up in the morning and at night and I started to become alarmed. I would drive to work and cry. I’d have a quiet moment while teaching a yoga class and have to stop myself from crying. It was everywhere and it started to worry me. So finally I talked to my doctor and after asking me a couple of questions she said. Charlotte, this is unproductive worry. You have to stop worrying about the things you have no control over. It made me happy to know there was a term for what I was going through but then I asked her what I could do she told me to start meditating and I got pissed! Not because she told me to meditate but because I was creating and teaching meditation classes during this time. I was so stuck in the middle of all this worry while trying to piece together my life and work to help other people through my classes that I didn’t realize I had the tools to help myself all along. It was like believing I was going to drown when I was actually only in 2 feet of water. I needed someone to tell me to Just Stand UP Once I had a way to name what was going on and a tool to use that I already owned I had something different to focus on - myself! Even though I had meditated before, this time it felt harder. Meditating to work on my worry was difficult to do and I had to be prepared to be uncomfortable. When I found myself worrying about something I would stop myself when I noticed it. I would ask myself if I could control what I worried about and then I would sit and breathe without answering that question. After 5-10 minutes of just deep breathing, I would resist what I was worried about and asked myself again if I could control it. Most often the answer was no. Then I would remind myself that worrying about something I had no control over was taking energy I could give to myself and my family. I would try to do my best to distract myself from that worrisome thought instead of fueling it and as hard and uncomfortable that was… it started to work. After a while, I could spend some time during the day to check in to see if there was a worry I needed to address. Other times, when a worry surfaced I could simply ask myself if it was productive to worry about it or not. Did I have control over what was happening or no? That’s not to say I didn’t have moments when I found myself crying but it showed up less frequently. I could have a bad moment in a day and then come back to being functional again much quicker. The meditation made me more resilient and allowed me to respond to my worries instead of reacting. We all have the ability to help ourselves, to change our perspective, and to learn how to respond instead of react. Sometimes when we feel like we are drowning we need someone to tell us to just stand up Find more caregiver support and download your "Top 5 Tools for Caregivers" guide at www.loveyourcaregivinglife.com

Today I am sharing with you a caregiver conversation with Robert Pardi. Robert was the caregiver for his wife who had breast cancer. He is now a certified life coach, adjunct professor, international guest speaker, and the author of Chasing Life - The remarkable true story of love, joy, and achievement against all odds. In this episode Robert shares the important lessons he learned while navigating the role of caregiver for his wife and how they both held on to living their lives fully no matter what challenges they faced along the way. Show Notes 00:00 Intro 01:09 Robert shares what his life with his wife was like before her cancer diagnosis and how they came about finding out about his wife Desiree’s cancer. 2:16 The role Robert took on as a caregiver for his wife and how he came to become the information holder and gatekeeper of her information. 2:54 Fighting together. All of her treatments. In a state of doing. 3:13 Remission …. Maybe? 3:31 When Robert really felt he became the caregiver and what he felt when he realized he couldn’t fix things. 4:30 Robert realizes that he had to surrender. Not focus on the end result but only on today. 5:50 How to identify what your best actually is each day. 6:22 Nine more years of chemo and life continued for both Robert and his wife. 6:50 Fixing has nothing to do with caregiving. It is about holding space for the person to be a human and help them live the best quality of life possible. 7:25 Friends and connection during chemo 8:20 People should not be defined by their disease. 8:50 Charlotte shares how she and her husband live with cancer without letting it dictate and define who they are and what they do. 10:05 First trying to figure out what their life looks like with breast cancer. 10:40 Robert realizes that he needed to let his wife live a life of purpose and not let cancer define them. 11:40 Watching his wife live and succeed made caregiving fulfilling. 12:00 How they navigated being a couple with cancer. 12:30 Caregiving was the most purposeful thing he could have done. 12:51 Changing the way he views his life, the purpose of life, and what they could get rid of in order to remove the clutter. 13:46 Living a full life vs a long life 14:20 Source of the title of his book. 15:00 “It is only when we value the ordinary moments that we live an extraordinary life” 15:42 You don’t extend death - knowing when life comes to an end. 16:36 How they chased life - lived as fully as they could. 16:53 Parenting as an act of caregiving vs a caregiver of a person who is ill and where hope can be found. 17:15 How they brought hope into their day. 17:44 Charlotte talks about hope and how caregiving is difficult but are still able to enjoy moments of their life. How she and her husband can find levity at the most serious times of their lives. 19:00 How to hold on to your connection and your why. 19:40 Charlotte’s hope for caregivers to find a way to live a life they love. 20:11 Obligation or Opportunity - how you can see your life as a caregiver. 21:00 Possibility to adapt to caregiving and re-evaluating your role in life when you become a caregiver. 21:50 “Beautifully scarred.” 22:54 Remembering to laugh love and enjoy life despite the difficulties of life. 23:00 Charlotte talks about the importance of understanding and redefining your roles in life - what type of caregiver you will be and create your own team of people who will help you in order to be able to enjoy life. 24:15 Asking for help and the stigma it carries. 25:00 Robert shares his difficulties as a man and a caregiver. He shares how he finally learned he needed to ask for help he actually felt people saw this as a source of strength from the people around him and that it was his perception that being vulnerable as showing weakness was coming from him. 26:43 Not feeling like the people around him could understand him as a caregiver. The alienation he felt. 27:50 Vulnerability and surrender as badges of honor. 28:53 How Robert came to the realization that he needed to be able to ask for help. 29:53 Charlotte and Robert talk about how a person’s tribe shifts once they fully step into caregiving. How caregiving changes you as a person and affects your relationship with people in your life. 32:30 Robert shares how he realizes “I need to shine my light and if the people need sunglasses they’re not the right people for me” 33:00 Becoming a caregiver has a ripple effect on your life and of those around you. Finding out that people you planned on supporting you might leave. 33:00 Charlotte shares about having to set new boundaries when her husband was diagnosed and only allowing positivity in the house. 36:00 Robert shares his ideas on being conscious in the way you live your life. 37:10 Difficulty to make choices when it disrupts the community. Choosing the way you want to live your life. 37:45 Caregiving is a boot camp for living life lessons that we should wield as a tool while crafting our lives. 38:00 Charlotte shares

Have you noticed when you or someone you know buys a new car you start seeing that care everywhere? Or maybe that color care shows up everywhere and even though you know that car or color existed before you never noticed it until then? That’s how it was with cancer after my husband was diagnosed. Once we found out he had cancer everything around us had to do with cancer. It was as if the universe said - oh, now they know - so now their life feed will be 100% cancer messaging. It was everywhere we went to try to relax! Every time we watched TV it felt like every commercial was about cancer. Cancer treatments Cancer studies Cancer marathons Cancer telethons. It was cancer season on tv. Characters on tv shows we liked watching got cancer. Famous people seemed to be getting cancer diagnoses left and right. It felt like it was all around us! I’m sure it wasn’t any more than it had been before but it was like buying a white car and then only noticing white cars. I remember going to an action movie, which felt safe to do, there was no mention of cancer so we didn’t even think about that being part of the story but of course it was there. What I feel was a pivotal moment was when we went to a comedy club and the comedian started telling cancer jokes. There were maybe two jokes but they stung. My husband was sitting across from me and we both looked at each other and that was when we could have decided to go into so many directions at that moment. We could have just started to cry and break down right there. Finally succumbing to what felt like the universe just continuing to throw cancer in our faces. We could have gotten indignant and mad and left in the middle of the set in a huff. OR worse yet taken it out on the comedian and heckle him. We could have not looked at each other and ignored it altogether. We didn’t do any of that though. We looked at each other and we laughed. Not at the comedian. Not at the joke but at the fact that we just couldn’t get away from it. It was a shared connection between the two of us. We both communicated through the look on our faces and were just so connected in that moment that we both knew what we needed to do. Out of all the emotions I could have thought back at, this the one that has stayed with me is how warm and loved it makes me feel. I don’t remember how loud it was or the people we were sitting next to. I vaguely remember the club we were at or who the comedian was. What I remember is how good it feels to recollect the connection we had. The look we gave each other that said it all without saying it. The shared experience while coming to the topic from two different angles. At that moment we were in it together equally. It was us against the world that apparently wanted to throw cancer in our faces until something happened. And it did. We decided that it wasn’t going to break us. That we were going to do this together and somehow we were going to get through to the other side of it. Things didn’t get easier after that but it was as if that moment planted a seed of strength in both of us that helped us get through the next phase of his cancer treatment. We both chose to be positive that night. There are so many different ways to respond to the world but we knew that at that moment the best way for us to move forward was to find a way through together. And after that, cancer stopped showing up everywhere. For caregiving support and to download your "Top 5 Tools for Caregivers" Guide go to www.loveyourcaregivinglife.com

Those that we care for are people and sometimes we lose sight of that. No, I get it… you know they’re a person. But do you always see them for the actual person they are? I’ve talked about turning off the caregiver switch so you can connect with the person you are caring for. Let’s take that one step further to how we regard that person. How do you think of them now that you’ve been caring for them for a while? Do you still do things with compassion and empathy? Or do you just do them? Can you still do things with love when the fatigue sets in? If not then that is a good thing to know. You can do something with that. I know that after my husband comes home from surgery I start out his recovery period with a sense of purpose. I might be tired after being away from home and from the stress of him having to have another surgery but I jump right into gear and make sure he has what he needs. Let’s keep it simple. Out of all the things he needs help with one of the things I always make sure of is that he keeps hydrated. I don’t worry too much about his appetite, especially in the beginning, but I know he needs to drink. I do a variety of different things for him throughout the day bringing up different types of beverages each with a different purpose. One to make sure his electrolytes stay balanced, one that includes a specific type of honey to help his immunity. Cold drinks and hot drinks and everything in between. Just to make sure he is getting what his body needs. I’m exhausted while I do this but I just do it without a thought and take it to him. However, a week later I might start getting cranky about it. I might start wishing that I didn’t care so much about if he had something to drink. That turns into - why can’t he just come down and get it himself? Which later turns into a - Here! Make sure you drink it. And then turns into - He didn’t freaking drink that! Why do I even go through the trouble! That can dangerously edge towards - screw it… I’m done… I don’t care if he drinks anything today. Let him get dehydrated I don’t care. I say dangerously because once you get to that point it’s a slippery slope. This is the point where it really isn’t about the drink. It’s about the fact that you are tired and overwhelmed and it should be concerning because this is when you’ve already begun to see them more as a person you have to take care of instead of a person you love that needs your help. I’m not saying that you have to flit around the house cheery and singing and float into the bedroom to deliver to them what they need. But your thoughts - as good as you think you are in hiding them - come out in your actions. The person you care for knows when you are irritated. It shows in how we speak to them. How we do things. Even the expression on our faces. There are so many subconscious ways we communicate what is going on inside of us that they might not even notice how they know but they get the feeling that something isn’t right. The problem is, if we don’t notice what is happening and realize the path we are taking as a caregiver and as a person who loves the one we are caring for, then we don’t course correct. If we can’t course-correct then our relationship with them starts to suffer. We start to suffer and no one is happy. I don’t know what your relationship was and is with the person you care for, but I care for my husband because I love him. That is my why. When I start to feel like I am doing things because I have to, when I start procrastinating when I find myself weeping over a pot of tea… I know I need a break, I need to reset. I’ve neglected myself because all I had the energy to do was to take care of him. I get it. I should always be on top of my self-care because that is what I tell you you need. I could very easily come on here and tell you I don’t have any problem with being on top of my self-care 100% of the time but that would be a load of crap. I often struggle with self-care because I am a caregiver. It’s as simple as that and it’s important for you to know. What is equally important is - because of my self-care I am resilient… I don’t break down as often as I could and I can see the cracks early enough to be able to self-correct and readjust. When I know I need to reset I do just that. I’ll get out of the house and take a drive to a coffee shop or just around town and back - mostly because at this point I don’t want to interact with other human beings. I’ll take a nap in a different part of the house where it’ll be quiet and I can be alone. I’ll get on the phone with a friend because I probably haven’t talked to anyone in a few days. Or I’ll take a nice long hot shower or bath. And while I’m doing these things I plan on what I’ll do next for myself and when. That way I don’t keep slipping back into that place of resentment and overwhelm. Because this isn’t about tea. This is about staying connected with the person I care for because they are a person with feelings too. You don’t have to unders

You can do this… I know you feel like you just want to run away… You want to hide from the world…. You want to wake up and have it all be a bad dream. But you realize you’re living it. Like a bad groundhogs day loop where every morning you forget and after stepping out of bed you remember and it brings you to your knees. All you want to do is Cry Yell Lash out Get a second opinion…. But you know down deep inside - this is it! You can’t change it. You can’t un-hear that diagnosis. The I’m sorries. Maybe if you don’t tell anyone it won’t be real. Maybe if the words never leave your mouth your brain won’t have to hear it because saying it will only snap you out of the FOG You can’t adjust to the fact that yesterday you didn’t even notice how good your life was. No one warned you that yesterday was the last day of who you were. Yesterday you might have worries about soothing but now you can’t even remember what it was because it doesn’t mean shit! Your mind hasn’t had the time to adjust and it keeps wanting to go to yesterday. Today hurts too much to think about and tomorrow is unthinkable. You tell them that they can’t do this to you. They are supposed to be here for forever. Life isn’t fair why can’t it be you instead? You’re going to fight this. They have to be wrong… But when you look into their eyes you know you’re wrong. They know this is real. So you shut down… Maybe for an hour or for days. You shut down and you roll yourself into a little ball and hope that the longer you stay there… The longer you don’t have to deal with your world… The longer you don’t have to look into their eyes… The more of a chance there is that you’ll wake up from this bad dream and find out it isn’t real and you can go back to worrying about the things that are insignificant. While you’re there you tell yourself that you can’t do this… It’s as if you are standing at the edge of a cliff and you’ve been told to jump. To have faith that somehow you will make it to the ground alive. Maybe a little bruised and scratched up - but alive. But you don’t believe it. You don’t believe that you can do this. There’s no way you can watch them suffer through treatments and surgeries. There’s no way you can take care of them. You just can’t! You can’t be strong for them because you aren’t strong enough. You aren’t the one in the relationship who holds it all together. You can’t…. I’m here to tell you that you can. You are stronger than you know. No, this isn’t fair. Yes… your life is now changed forever. It doesn’t matter because you’ve dealt with changes before - maybe a lot smaller - but you’ve adapted. You can because you love them. You don’t have to like it. Accepting that they need you doesn’t mean you are saying this is ok… You’re saying I refuse to give up on life. I refuse to give up on you I refuse to give up on us. Sure you may feel weak right now. This may feel way too big for you. You aren’t prepared for this. Remember that the big things that happen in life are usually a surprise - good or bad - and we aren’t usually prepared for them. So… Take one last moment to Cry… and Yell And then tell yourself I CAN DO THIS! I WILL DO THIS! Because I love them. Because they need me. Because ... I would want the same for myself and I am able to be there. You can do this… I know you can. I believe in you… Find more caregiving support at www.loveyourcaregivinglife.com and download your "Top 5 Tools for Caregivers" PDF

The phone call. You know, the call from the Dr that you are waiting for. You have no idea when it will come and you definitely don’t want to miss it because that means the process would start all over again. Today let’s talk about waiting for the call. I remember when my husband was first diagnosed with thyroid cancer. There were a lot of tests that needed to be coordinated. Phone calls put into the oncologist and endocrinologist that were to be returned at their earliest convenience. There was a lot of anxiety and anticipation waiting for those phone calls. I’ve jumped out of bathrooms, run down hallways, leaped out of exercises classes, bolted out of movie theaters and jammed my finger in my ear trying to quiet everything going on around so I can hear those important words. It is unimaginable the power of the spoken word when your family member has cancer. You strain to hear every word and then at some point - especially if it’s bad news- your ability to hear what is being said stops. Or the thought spiral starts to become too loud and it makes it difficult to hear the person speaking. Or maybe you actually hear the words but don’t want to accept what you heard so you ask them to repeat it only to hear the same thing. Then there is the question you wanted to ask but couldn’t remember what it was until you hung up the phone! A phone call can make or break your day, your week, your year. It can set off a cascade of events and change your life. Or it can continue to leave you in suspense. You could find out that there are more tests that need to be done. A different doctor needs to look at the results. A team needs to be consulted. Your insurance has gotten back to them to tell them if a treatment plan is accepted. Maybe you do remember the question while on the phone and once you ask it you realize you don’t really get the type of answer you were looking for and since both your brain and that of the doctor are on two different wavelengths you keep asking the same question but in a different way until you both understand the question and answer. The dreaded phone call that causes you to frantically search for your cell phone because they could call right now..now..they could call right now and you run all around the house to find it when you had it in your pocket the whole time. I don’t know how many times I’ve checked a phone to make sure the ringer was turned all the way up. Worried that the one time I needed to hear it I wouldn’t. Maybe that call takes an hour or day longer than you expect it would. The frustration and anxiety that causes can be all-consuming. Suddenly all you can think about is the phone call you are waiting for. That’s when your thoughts and emotions start to take you away. If there is any trigger for negative self-talk this would be one. Thinking, it has to be bad that why they haven’t called. Or already telling yourself the news is bad or going down the thought spiral of nothing going good for you EVER! At some point, you realize you are one of a hundred other patients this Dr may be treating or the scheduler is trying to fit in. Everyone feeling their case is more important because cancer can make you self-centered - it’s a normal human reaction in life or death situations and cancer is one of them. Really the person you are waiting to have call is doing their best to get to everyone. Then there is always the possibility that the news is good. You built this phone call up in your head to be this big event and good news can feel like a cause to celebrate or you have yourself so worn out with the waiting that it’s just anticlimactic. The power of a phone call. How quickly we forget how this feels after we are done waiting. Every time we have to wait for a phone call it feels torturous but then we don’t remember how that felt until we have to experience it again. You know what? We always get the phone call. Sure we’ve missed one here and there over the past 6 years. But we always get the information. The appointments always end up being scheduled and we get the bad news and good news no matter what. Maybe we don’t always have to put our lives on high alert for that call as much as we have in the past. Thanks for Listening!

00:00 Introduction and background information on Cameron Huddleston. Wrote her book “Mom and Dad We Need To Talk: How to Have Essential Conversations With Your Parents About Their Finances” in 2019. She wrote from her own experiences with her mom as she aged. Also a Family Finance Expert with Getcarefull.com 02:30 Information about Get Carefull 05:33 Financial Education and information on getcareful.com 06:27 Red Flags - scams and aging 09:45 Starting to have the financial conversations early 10:40 Cameron shares her experiences with her mom as she aged. 13:00 Legal Documents families need to protect their parents health wishes and finances. 14:55 How Cameron’s work applies to all caregivers. 17:49 Cameron’s advice on how to have conversations with parents. 21:00 Different strategies to use to ease into conversations. 24:00 What not to expect to do. How to nurture the financial relationship with your parents 26:24 Understanding that your parents are allowed to make mistakes. 27:25 Power of attorney and banks. 28:35 Protecting your family from scams. 29:50 Offering to help your parents where you see they need help and how to be empathetic. 30:29 Helping with healthcare and speaking with parents about their quality of life. Getting to know what they want their later years to look like. Get them to help make that plan while they can help. 33:20 Couples and protections/access to each other's accounts, medical decisions, etc 35:43 Having spousal protections in place. 39:13 Setting up beneficiaries and the importance of wills. 41:32 The use of storytelling to help find ways to have conversations with your loved ones about difficult subjects. 45:06 Importance of Cameron’s work in a caregiver's life. 46:13 Cameron’s advice if you are just realizing you need to start having these conversations with your parents. Woking with your siblings to put together a plan. 48:03 Easing into the conversations. 50:32 Having real conversations with our parents. Tips and solutions on how to prepare to speak with them. 52:15 Close Links mentioned in the podcast Cameron’s book “Mom and Dad We Need To Talk: How to Have Essential Conversations With Your Parents About Their Finances” Get Careful Download Get Carefull’s Financial Caregiving Roadmap

You’re a caregiver… so you know that nothing stays the same for too long. Everything shifts and changes and once you feel like you have a handle on things it changes again. I know how unsettling that can feel. When I think of change the song “Seasons Change” by Exposé always pops into my head because … well … I was in seventh grade back then and sometimes music always seems better from when you were younger. Just like my younger self, I am figuring myself out here in front of all of you. How do I tell my story about my experience as a caregiver and also provide not only a way to let you know we all have so much in common and share some of the same thoughts and feelings AND share things I have learned that have allowed me to enjoy my life as a caregiver. Over the past year of putting this podcast together episode by episode, I learned so much more about myself simply because I’ve had to process things I might not have ever said to anyone else as I’m speaking them to you. I also realized that I can help by providing more support for you through interviews with other caregivers and people who specialize in things you would benefit from knowing. I want you to have all the information I didn’t have. I want you to know that I’ve been where you are … I know the: Fear Doubt Worry Anxiety Stress Caregiving brings with it. I know how it feels to have your life changed with one phone call. How lonely it is to be a caregiver. How much of ourselves we give to care for a person and how bad we feel when we’ve become burnout and resentful. I know how horrible it is to feel unseen, unsupported, and undervalued. There’s nothing good about being in that place and I know it’s hard to even think there is an alternative. But I believe there is … and I hope that going forward I can help you find things that will work for you by simply bringing on the guests, continuing to tell you my caregiving stories, and supporting you in any way I can so that you can find a way to love your caregiving life. To communicate that goal I am making a change. I know… it’s been hard for me to finally decide on this but it is a simple change that you won’t really notice. It won’t change the format of this podcast. It won’t change the content I put on. All that is changing is the name so that it can better reflect my focus and what I hope to help you get to. This podcast, starting next week, will be called … Love Your Caregiving Life. The colors of the art will change a little and over time I’ll get things like the FB group banner and the Newsletter art changed to reflect that. I’m so excited about the rest of the year and the things I have lined up for this podcast. I’d love to hear from you to learn what you felt resonated, what made you stop what you were doing while you were listening and what really didn’t hit the same way for you. I would love to hear what your questions and concerns are. What do you want to hear more of? What types of interviews or topics are you interested in? All of the ways you’ve kept in touch and engaged will continue. The FB group will stay the same and if you are in the group you know if a request, call for help, or question is put out there I’ll do everything I can to find the answer, ways to support that person, and the group as a whole. So that is a great place to go to have conversations about topics covered here in the podcast or whenever you just want to interact with other caregivers. IF you’d like to join you can find that information on the podcast website. The website will start to change over time in a good way. There will be more on there for you. More blog posts, more guides you can download, transcripts for the podcast in case you’d like to read instead of listen or you heard something you’d like to revisit. That will all be one there. Signing up for the newsletter is the perfect way to get information, news, and support for caregivers as well as information on that week’s podcast episode. That will continue to go out every Thursday. You can sign up for it through the website by downloading the PDF Guide Top 5 Tools Every Caregiver Must Have. So anything that changes will be for the better and, I hope, provide more support for you. The easiest way to find me is at the website. www.loveyourcaregivinglife.com Oh, and if you want to listen to that Exposé song here is their YouTube video. Thank you for listening today!

My husband went in for surgery three months ago and I was concerned because I felt waaaaaaayyyyyy too calm. It wasn’t anything like the way things were for past surgeries. I thought maybe I should take this as a win. But….. it made me a little uneasy to do that this time around. You see this surgery wasn’t as complicated as the last few. Just six months before it he had surgery to remove lymph nodes in his chest and ended up with almost a complete sternotomy. So now he has a long scar down the center of his chest. This wasn’t going to be that type of surgery but it was still an impatient procedure to fix the damage that happened 6 months before that made his diaphragm stop working. So there were some real risks involved. There could have been damage to his stomach or kidney and lung. Even knowing that didn’t make me any more nervous about it. We were leaving my teenage daughter home alone for the first time in our lives. Because of covid, she couldn’t come to the hospital with us and she would prefer to do her distance learning at home instead of feeling cooped up in a hotel room for a couple of days. She’ll be going off to college in just a little over a year so it felt like an age-appropriate thing to do. But I wasn’t worried at all about that either. I didn’t think things should've been feeling right. I felt that I should have been stressing out about things. I should have been packed and ready to go days before leaving and I hadn’t even done that. Being calm should be a good thing but since I know that isn’t how I usually operate, it worried me. The good thing is I did slow down enough to notice how I was feeling. That’s a plus. I’ve learned how to manage stress and anxiety on normal caregiving days. But when preparing for surgery there has always been an underlying amount of anxiety that I could always keep under control, but not fully. Now I was finding that I was taking everything in stride and it weirded me out. I didn’t think it was necessary to try to think of all the worst-case scenarios just so I made sure that I was understanding the situation completely. I also didn’t want to have an all-out breakdown at the most inconvenient time possible. I’d been sleeping well. Eating fine. I cleaned the house, with my husband, to prepare for that week but also spent time hanging out and relaxing. So I wasn’t even telling myself that I was too calm but then acting like I was stressed out. I had things set up so I didn’t have to worry about much the next couple of weeks. I had podcasts recorded and ready for you to listen to. I canceled Yoga classes for a week so I could make sure I wasn’t over-extending myself when we got back home. I did have things in place to look forward to… I had some shows that I looked forward to watching and some reading I wanted to do. But those are things I always do. I knew that I still had to be my husband’s advocate in the hospital. I still needed to be prepared to help him recover at home. I knew that I would be exhausted for at least a couple of weeks. I didn’t think the progression of things would be any different with this surgery. So I decided to be cautiously calm. Let the doubt, worry, and stress show when they wanted to peek out. I figured maybe after years of knowing how I would feel and the emotions I would have, as we went through the process of preparing, going into and recovery from surgery, was allowing me to simply be prepared for it all. Maybe I knew that I would cry at some point and I would be ok with it … so I stopped and decided to just wait until it happened and not worry about it happening. I felt like I was calm because I knew that there are only certain things I can actually do and control and they are were taken care of. It was like the first time something went right that you’d been working on and it caught you off guard. Like a baby finally sleeping through the night and you find yourself constantly checking to make sure it is ok. It was just something new for me and I rode it out to see where it would take me. You know what…. Things went ok and not all as they were supposed to. My daughter faired well at home. I wove such an intense support net of friends and family members that there was no moment that I was worried about her much at all. The surgery actually took about 6 hours longer than it was supposed to and a week’s stay in the hospital instead of just overnight. But I was already prepared for that and it didn’t stress me out when I knew we had to stay longer. Did I cry? Of course and then felt better? Did I feel exhausted? Yes, and I went to sleep as soon as I got back to the hotel room instead of watching tv or getting on my phone. I made sure I found good food choices because I know that fast food makes me feel like crap after a day or two and hospital food just always feels like an attempt for doctors to have job security. Luckily there are a lot of really good food options in Rochester on Mayo Clinic’s campus and off. Did I read or watch a

There’s so many different levels of stress right? But I find that the higher up we go on that stress spectrum my body reacts to it differently.Then there is caregivers stress that just is it’s own beast, right? I feel that as a caregiver there is always the potential that big things can happen quickly. I can walk into a doctor’s office with my husband living one life and walk out into a new life. Meaning, I can walk in feeling pretty good about things, thinking my husband’s cancer is controlled, and there is always the potential that I can leave that office knowing that it isn’t controlled and his care plan needs to change. Or maybe you walked in thinking your loved one’s cancer was in remission and left into a world where it wasn’t, or that everything had been done that is available and there is nothing left to do. Or, you stepped out into a world where things are much better than you thought they would be and life feels good for that moment. The point is that we don’t ever really know what is going to happen next. As much as we try to do things a certain way in the hopes that it will help the disease or condition your loved one has, there really isn’t much under our control. So we survive on hope. I always have that underlying stress. Life for us changed in 2013 and to tell you the truth, it doesn’t matter if we have good cancer years or bad cancer years it is always there right under the surface. For me, stress gets amped up when I know when there has to be surgery or we need more testing because the result from the normal tests showed something that needs to be explored. I walk out that door or away from that phone conversation and I can feel it happening. So my question for you today is - do you notice what stress looks like for you? Do you know how it feels? When I know there will be a surgery I am not necessarily worried about the actual surgery. We have doctors and surgeons that we trust and I hope that you trust your medical team too. If not then you need to re-evaluate why you don’t and if they are the right team for your family. So let’s say I know surgery is coming up. There are so many things that start to go through my head. Lists begin to be written that I hope I can remember until I have a chance to write things down. I start to think of all the things that need to happen in a certain order. Try to figure out how the house needs to be set up in order for my husband to be able to recover comfortably. What my daughter needs during this time. I start to write grocery lists for when we come back from the hospital and a million other things. My husband knows this happens and I know he tries to pull me out of it. However, thinking of all of these things and coordinating the dog, and the house, and where we will stay while he’s in the hospital because it’s two hours away from home. That all exhausts me. These are the signs I look for to know I’m under too much stress. Stress makes me exhausted. The first sign that I always have to be aware of. It makes me tired as if I haven’t slept for a week. Not just a little tired but the kind of tired that sleeping at night doesn’t satisfy. This is not a good place to be because that means that my mind isn’t shutting down at night and my body isn’t getting it’s chance to reset, restore and repair. When I have all of these things going on in my head it also means that I need to communicate an important message to a lot of people. Part of the steps that need to be taken is giving notice to family and friends and I have to make realistic decisions about my own work. As I communicate more and tell the story over and over again I feel like I reach the limit of words that can come from me and I grow silent. I start to shut down a little. I can’t work what’s going on in my head, talk to people about what’s going on and live fully with my family while exhausted without feeling like I need to shut down a little. The second sign is I stop talking. I don’t just stop talking. I talk.. I don’t go around the house not answer questions or speaking to my family. I answer the phone calls and texts as they come in, however, in between those times I’m totally in my head. That isn’t fair for the people that live with me because it is very clear that I am not engaged with life. It isn’t that I am mad or upset with anyone but my mind just automatically goes into hyper drive. Any room I walk through I see something that reminds me of another to do that should go on my list. It’s as if subconsciously I am running through every scenario so I can make sure things are set up appropriately. It happens all the time and a lot of times completely randomly. For example - I’ll cut into a piece of fruit and realize my husband will have a wound that will need to be cared for. I’ll wonder if I have gauze and the appropriate first aid supplies. The problem is I don’t always go check for these things and I’ll just order them just to check them off the list. That is why I have 5 boxes of gauze and

Deep down there is a little part of you that knows you need therapy. If you are a caregiver you can find a million reasons why you don't have the time/can't go. This episode is for everyone who wants to know... * What happens in that first therapy session * How therapy is different than a FB Group or an App. * How to navigate the fear of being judged by friends and family. * The benefits of therapy for caregivers. * How therapy can help you become a more effective caregiver. * Learning how to set boundaries. Listen to my conversation with Kayla Estenson Williams (@kaylaestensonwellness), Minnesota based Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist here, and find the links Kayla mentions in the show notes below! Show Notes 2:30 How to know if therapy is right for you. 3:11 Benefits of Therapy. 4:00 Reasons therapy is beneficial for caregivers 4:25 Expectations for your first therapy session. 7:30 Vulnerability and feeling uncomfortable is ok. 8:41 Worries about being judged by family and friends 10:00 The Therapist has a plan. No need to worry about having things to talk about. 11:30 Finding a therapist you’re comfortable with. 14:40 Making the decision to finally go to therapy. 15:15 The difference between therapy and Facebook groups and phone apps. 23:00 Your own personal cheerleader. 24:00 Knowing you need therapy but living around people who stigmatize therapy. 25:00 Honoring your needs and processing boundaries with your therapist. 28:00 Therapy is more that talk. The tools and skills you can learn with your therapist. 30:00 How therapy can help you become a more effective caregiver. 33:00 Problem solving and processing emotions. 36:00 Therapy is what you need for it to be. 38:03 You don’t need to know what you need help with when you go to therapy. Your therapist will help you figure that out. 39:36 Crying 40:00 Therapy is there for YOU. 42:19 Things to think of if you are still hesitating. 44:00How to find a therapist. Links mentioned. Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us Therapy Den: https://www.therapyden.com/ Open Path Collective: https://openpathcollective.org/ 46:00 Charlotte relates her experiences with therapy. 48:00 Realizing, once you go to therapy, that you should have started a long time ago. Find Kayla : www.kaylaestenson.com www.facebook.com/kaylaestensonwellness/ www.instagram.com/kaylaestensonwellness/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kayla-estenson-wellness-podcast/id1488846404

Do you understand how important caregiving is? I know you’re doing it but do you understand how critical your role is for the person you are caring for? Have you taken time to actually write out everything you do as a caregiver? In today’s episode, you will be reminded of how important you are and how proud you should be of yourself. Not sure how to do that? Listen and then head over to www.caregiverconnectionpodcst.com for more caregiving support.

Right now we own the messaging. There aren’t any caregiving PSA’s being produced anytime soon so the only way people will begin to notice our worth is if we communicate that to them. Listen to how caregivers can control their own messaging and let me know what you think. www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

I think it isn’t being misunderstood as a caregiver that causes us to feel lonely and unsupported. I feel that we feel this way because caregiving is undervalued. Listen to this episode and then please let me know what you think. Maybe there is a point you feel I am missing. I'd love to have a conversation about this. www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

Listen to today’s episode to hear more about : How having a plan in place for long-term care is important to do long before it needs to happen. How powerful it is to involve the person who will need care in the planning when they are still able to make choices. Things to think about in planning for long-term care and understanding how some things you do now can affect eligibility for programs and aid in the future. His book “Paying For Long Term Care” is a roadmap to help you plan for the care your loved one needs now or might need in the future. Find more information about the podcast and caregiving tools and support at www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

No one told you that you wouldn’t be able to do everything when you became a caregiver. There was a care plan put in place for your husband, Dr’s visits lined up, surgeries schedule, timelines for recovery, and what to expect from it all. No one sat you down to tell you how to expect your life to change, how hard things would get, the need for your own care plan and support group, or at the very least that you wouldn’t be able to do it all! Listen to today’s episode and listen to how you may have been led to believe that you should be able to do everything, all the time, all on your own. Find more caregiver support at www.caregiverconnectionpodcact.com

I love watching movies…don’t you? I especially like to see people overcome their challenges and win in the end. You know the type of movie that for a part of it you start to question how anyone could get through that and then you are super happy to see them do it? The best part for me is if they have a power statement or catchphrase. You know that thing they say that makes you say Ohhhhhhh crap! Here we go!!! Don’t you think you deserve a power statement of your own? Listen to today’s episode and when you’re done come over to the website for more caregiver support. www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

I find that happiness can be a tough subject for caregivers. I used to base my happiness on how well my husband was feeling or thought if something would change in my life it would make me happy. Caregiving is a struggle and some days it's really difficult to even think happiness is an option. The thing that has to happen for you to find happiness as a caregiver is - accept your caregiving role. It’s easy to say you are a caregiver but have you accepted that you are. Or are you still trying to live life as a non-caregiver who just happens to care for another person? Over time I realized that I had to decide what type of caregiver I was going to be. I had to figure out what that role looked like and then I had to work on accepting that role. Otherwise, I would just continue to feel stressed out and overwhelmed. List to today’s episode to learn how you can start to bring happiness and positivity back to your life. Go to www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com for more caregiver support.

Listen to my conversation with the caregiver and author Rachel Engstrom. We talk about her book and her journey through caregiving for her husband who had LSS. Rachel will talk about her experience as a caregiver and a widow. She shares some of the important lessons she learned, the hardships she experienced and how she can come out of it as a positive person. You can find Rachel’s book “Wife, Widow, Now What” wherever books are sold. Find more info at www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

I thought today I’d let you into my world a little. Listen today to learn how: How caregiving impacts me the most What it hurts me to see in the caregiving world My hopes for caregivers for this year. How impactful we can all be to create a better world for caregivers. Find more support at www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

Want to hear about the five things I learned about caregiving these past 12 months? Listen to today’s episode and then come to the website www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com to let me know if you have things you've learned this past year and download the Top 5 Tools Every Spousal Caregiver Must Have.

When you resist the changes in your life as a caregiver it makes things much more difficult and life just really starts to suck more for you. It took me years to figure that out! In today’s episode you’ll hear more on learning how to anticipate the things you’ll need when things get more serious for your loved one and how to find things to look forward to during these times. Find more caregiving support at www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

Caregiving isn’t usually magical. But, we do have the ability to decide not to do some things. Think about one or two caregiving tasks that you really hate to do. Maybe you don’t like cooking all the time. OR possibly your spouse is bed bound and it’s really hard for you to give them a bath. Find the thing that makes you feel like crying when you know you have to do it soon. It’s ok. We all have that thing. And it’s ok to not do it all. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t mean that you are giving up or weak if you ask for help!! Listen and learn how to figuring out what you won’t be doing again as a caregiver. Once you’re done leave me a comment telling me what you decided to let go of in the review. There's lots more support on the website www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

Emma is from Victoria Australia and the author of "The Blind Side of Caregivers". She became a full-time caregiver for a close friend who had terminal liver cancer. He passed away in August 2019. When he passed she became the primary caregiver to his mother who also had terminal liver cancer who passed in December 2020. You can find more about Emma and her book at https://emmacrooke-author.godaddysites.com. Listen to how she coped with caring for someone with terminal cancer.

Managing your loved one’s medication can be a royal pain in the butt! No matter if you do it all the time or only after surgeries it’s a big responsibility when you’re already overloaded with responsibilities. I’ve done it all. I’ve taped labels to the pill bottles to check off when they were given. I’ve listed everything out on a pad of paper to make sure I have a way to verify that I gave the right medicine at the right time. I’ve made it overly complicated and way too simple. SO I think I have it all figured out for now. Listen to today’s episode to hear how I manage. I would love to hear your tips and tricks. Send them by simply leaving a message for me at the website www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

It’s difficult, as a caregiver, to find someone you can talk to about the things you feel while caregiving. Someone who won’t judge you and if you don’t have that person you feel lonely and misunderstood. There are a lot of different issues that we come across that really can’t be fully understood if the other person hasn’t experienced them. But if I have someone who cares for me or loves me enough to want to support me and understand that they might not always get what I’m talking about but will be there to listen and try not to judge that is a really good start. Listen to today’s Episode and hear more on how to find people to confide in.

Caregivers and resentment. It’s there but we never talk about it. You experience it but never say anything because you don’t want to be judged. You've given up so much… A job, Sanity Sleep That carefree life you used to have. It’s ok. It’s a normal thing for you to feel. Listen to this episode to hear how every caregiver can handle resentment. While you're listening come over to www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com to download more caregiver tools and resources.

“When you start to reconsider your assumptions about your life and start to look at caregiving differently you start to find the rewards of caregiving.” Today’s podcast episode is the second of a two part conversation with Dr Aaron Blight. Dr Blight is the author of the new book, When Caregiving Calls: Guidance as You Care for a Parent, Spouse or Aging Relative. Today Dr Blight and I continue our conversation on caregiving. In this episode we talk about accepting the role of caregiver and how to make it fit in with all the other roles you hold. We also discuss being present with our loved one and taking care of ourselves. Listen more on fully stepping into your caregiver role. You can find Dr Blight at https://caregivingkinetics.com More podcast episodes can be found at www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

“The wife may start to ask herself, Who am I now? Am I more of a caregiver than a wife? Today’s podcast episode is the first of a two part conversation with Dr Aaron Blight Dr Blight is the author of the new book, When Caregiving Calls: Guidance as You Care for a Parent, Spouse or Aging Relative. In this episode Dr Blight speaks with me on the issues we have in identifying as caregivers. Usually we are thrust into helping a loved one and we become a caregiver without even realizing it. Once we realize we are caregivers, we have some decisions to make on how we will go forward into that role. Listen more on how we create an identity as a caregiver and how that process is one of the most important things to do in order to accept the life we live. You can find Dr Blight at https://caregivingkinetics.com More podcast episodes can be found at www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

Does it ever surprise you when you realize the amount of time and energy you put into taking care of your spouse? All of these things you do for them. All the time. All the energy it takes to be you right now so that you can be there for them. Does it surprise you that you can do all of this for one human being? Does it ever surprise you when you realize the amount of time and energy you NEVER give yourself? Listen now and then head over to www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

I know it might not feel like a time to celebrate for you. As a caregiver the beginning of the year can be annoying. Everyone talking about resolutions and how they are going to change their lives. While you’re just trying to keep up with how to get your spouse to doctors appointments during covid. But, even if for just a quick second, congratulate yourself for making it through. Take a moment to look back at what you survived, fought for and learned. Want this year to feel better? Where do you start? Listen more on today’s podcast. After listening, head over to the podcast website to find support, downloads and other episodes. www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

Hope. Sometimes it fuels you and other times it’s a four letter word. I know how it feels to really have hope and the crushing feeling when you realize it isn’t going to happen. Life may feel like it’s harder for us but it isn’t impossible and if we can find a way to hope we can stay connected with what fuels us and helps us to continue as caregivers in this world. Find more caregiver resources as www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

Have you been able to let go of the person you were right before you became a caregiver? Of course parts of you are the same but if you look back you know you aren't the same person. When we grieve the loss of another person were have rituals and ceremonies that we follow to help us process the loss. What have you done to process the loss of the old you and the life you lived before caregiving? Listen to Episode 40 and hear more about letting go of yourself. Then head over to www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

I love looking at pictures! I can sit and look through photo albums and photo feeds all day. When we take pictures it's usually to record a happy moment, a beautiful landscape or something weird someone is doing. We don't usually take pictures of the dirty hair, tear streaked faces or moments filled with sadness. In episode 39 I talk about missed moments, the power of a picture and capturing the moment no matter what. Listen now and then come over to www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

Holidays are hard when you aren't a caregiver! Adding on the additional stress of going through a time you feel pressure to be happy when someone you care for is seriously ill is a difficult task to take on. The hardest part is being available to experience the moments with your loved one. Maybe things aren't extremely bad and your loved one had the energy to enjoy the season. During those happy moments you find yourself pulled away by sadness, stress, exhaustion or maybe your brain just won't stop winding through all the things and you can't just be there. Listen more to not being able to let go over the holidays in Episode 38 and then head over the www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com.

When you feel sad is it also followed by shame? When being sad around someone have they told you that there is nothing to be sad about because you aren't the one who is sick? Were you the one that told yourself that? No one should tell you if you deserve to feel sad or not. Especially yourself. Feeling any emotion is valid and you have a lot of them coming through at any time, don't you? Trying to care for a loved one while handling the crazy world you live in plus the holidays? Listen to Episode 37 and hear more about owning your feelings and allowing yourself to feel them and then find more at www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

Listen to Kyle Woody, Executive Director of Jack’s Caregiver Coalition, and Charlotte Bayala talk about what it means to be a male caregiver on the Caregiver Connection Podcast Episode 36. Kyle explains what Jack’s Caregiver Coalition is, as well as how they help create a space for caregivers to connect. Kyle and Charlotte also talk about things that are universal to all caregivers especially how they should seriously consider creating a care team for themselves. Find Jack's at https://www.jackscaregiverco.org Find more support from Charlotte at www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com

You're too tired to care about decorating for the holidays let alone celebrate them. So many reasons not to celebrate this year and if you are in the thick of caregiving maybe lack energy is one of them. I completely get it. But celebrating doesn't have to be big. Find that one thing that will light up your light for at least that day. Find a way to let go and enjoy the time with your loved one. If they can't get out of bed take the celebration to them. Decorate around the room they are in most of the time and enjoy just being beside them. Watch that movie you used to always watch together this time of year. Order the food you usually ate and listen to the songs you both love. Sure it's different. Of course it's emotional but a lot can change in a year. Find a way to celebrate life, love, hope, and miracles. Listen and then go to www.caregiverconnection.com to share how you celebrate.