The circle of life
Parenting is a circle. Some days the circle is leisurely. No demands and everyone is well. Then in a flash it’s a full race putting out fires in the circle.
This was an apt description by a beautiful lady who was stretched between two opposing caregiving demands. Her child in hospital and miles away but constantly on the telephone her demanding parent needing reassurance that she was not abandoned.
I truly believe that I can help you right now, no matter where you happen to be in your journey.
I am a lifelong learner and I was certified as a life coach by The Life Coach School,
September of 2018, previously I have spent the past 30 years learning
and embracing different modalities of self-awareness, therapies, and support. All have led me to the present and to launching my business and aligning with my passion to always be helping others.
There is nobody who I have coached that has not been helped or enlightened, I think everyone can learn new tools to help themselves.
I embarked on this journey of becoming a coach because it has
always been my goal to help people and I finally found the best way I can to do
that as a coach.
Every day, you visit, each day you remember the things you love about your parent who is now not able to be independent and living the life you once knew with them.
You are not caring for your loved one in a hands-on way, but still they are top of mind for you.
Then you get a phone call from their senior care residence, totally unexpected always but your thoughts usually run in several directions:
According to the National Family Caregivers Association, more than 50 million Americans provide care for a chronically ill, disabled, or aged family member or friend during any given year, and that number is growing. Adult children are often first in line to care for their aging parents. But what if those adult children are still raising children of their own? This is the burgeoning challenge faced by an entire “Sandwich Generation” of family caregivers.
When added to the many responsibilities of their own daily lives, including work and raising their own family, caring for a loved one with declining health can be quite an undertaking. In addition to the physical and financial strain of “being everywhere at once,” Sandwich Generation caregivers bear a complicated emotional burden. The worry, pain, and sorrow they already feel over a parent’s illness are compounded by the demanding challenges of caregiving. Feelings of powerlessness and guilt are prevalent in family caregivers — for repeatedly having to “choose” one family need over another, for feeling that no choice can ever be the “right” one, and even for feeling they have no choice at all.
The challenges are real and daunting, and more families are facing them every day.
Exhaustion
Resentment
Worry
Happiness
Choose to take charge of your life, and don’t let your loved one’s illness or disability always take centre stage.
Remember to be good to yourself. Love, honour, and value yourself. You’re doing a very hard job, and you deserve some quality time, just for you.
Watch out for signs of depression, and don’t delay in getting professional help when you need it.
When people offer to help, accept the offer and suggest specific things that they can do.
Educate yourself about your loved one’s condition. Information is empowering.
There’s a difference between caring and doing. Be open to technologies and ideas that promote your loved one’s independence.
Trust your instincts. Most of the time they’ll lead you in the right direction.
Grieve for your losses, and then allow yourself to dream new dreams.
Stand up for your rights as a caregiver and a citizen.
Seek support from other caregivers. There is great strength in knowing you are not alone.
As caregivers we almost never reach out for help. I wonder why we continue to believe that just because we are taking care of someone, we cannot take care of ourselves, or that we cannot somehow be take care of at the same time.
Unsurprisingly, over one-third of adults with a parent 65 or older and a dependent child feel constantly rushed, compared to 23% of other adults. This makes sense—if you’re trying to manage your own life and career plus jet between a kid’s soccer game and a parent’s house to make sure the fridge is stocked, sitting down can feel like a luxury.
As with the standard airline warning – when the oxygen max arrives, please put yours on FIRST before helping those around you who cannot help themselves.
“If the cabin air pressure changes dramatically, oxygen masks might fall from the ceiling directly in front of you. Follow the airline's instructions in operating their masks. If a child is seated beside you, put on your own mask before helping to put a mask on the child. “
And yet we forget. All of the time, we believe that being exhausted busy and selfless is the ONLY way we can trust we are doing our best as a caregiver. We take on way more responsibilities for others, we often give up self-care simply because there is no more time for that. We deem ourselves less important, we tell ourselves it’s only for a short time, we decide things like hot meals, haircuts, and visiting with friends is not as important as being on hand to watch over our loved ones when they need us most.
In life, things keep going along in a straight line and nothing really changes much until there is an interruption, so it was in our story. The progressing mental decline of my MIL and her advanced age of 94 along with the inherent loss of visual acuity, strength, and balance all converged in one mighty crash. On a chilly Friday afternoon just before dinner, while we were relaxing and getting ready for a weekend, there came a huge bang from above. My daughter and I heard it, without thinking, we raced upstairs. We found my MIL where she had fallen getting up from her easy chair. She was aware and in considerable pain.
Thank goodness that in that moment everyone was home, we called 911 and the paramedics came in about five minutes. Hauling her tiny broken body down three flights of stairs was another matter entirely, it was done on an old-fashioned cloth and pole stretcher.
The surgery was thankfully scheduled for Saturday, it could be performed without general anesthesia to which she reacted badly. The family rallied and sat with her around the clock. For a month we watched her recover physically and battled the administration to find her an appropriate placement in a memory care facility.
Over 20 years ago a series of interesting circumstances led me to become the scrap-booker I am now. The first was when I was in my 30’s and visiting my grandparents in Eastern Europe, I had an opportunity to ask my grandfather what one regret he had in his long and interesting life. His response quite surprised me, he regretted he did not value and save his family’s photographs when war forced him from his home as a young man.
The second occurred after the birth of our daughter and the beginning of my dearest friend’s home-based business with the MLM Creative Memories, a paper and album based scrapbooking company. At first, I wanted to support her success and after my first finished album I was hooked. I knew I was fulfilling my artistic passions in a way that was creative as well as archival. It reminded me of my grandfather’s words and his regrets.
It was pretty soon evident that my MIL was losing much of her short-term memory and any slight change in the well-established routine of years was not good. We managed to keep our lives as normal as possible for our girls, include the whole family in events and enjoy our time together. Soon it became more and more difficult to leave the house for any length of time for fear of not being on hand if needed. We installed a nana cam so that we could watch her in her living and dining room from anywhere. We had family members also keep tabs especially when they were about to phone her in case she was napping so they would not wake her abruptly.
This system worked for quite a while, and we all managed to maintain our freedom and sanity to a limited degree. The shifts in memory decline were often very subtle and like expecting a baby, it was a gradual change over months and months. I know for some people who only visited infrequently the change was more dramatic, but we all survived in this bubble.
When elderly family members become dependent on caregivers for personal grooming and care.
After my mother in law (MIL) moved in with us and became a permanent part of our daily life, it became evident that there were things that would change for our entire household. One of these was grooming. It became a job to drive my MIL to her monthly sessions at her old hairdresser in the next city a 45 minute drive away. We took turns taking her for these sessions, we tried to combine them with lunches with old friends, or appointments with other local caregivers like dentists. In time it became evident that driving so far for services would be frustrating, time consuming and tiring for everyone. Fortunately these outings lasted for only a few years until her stylist retired.
We attempted to find a replacement stylist locally but never found anyone who was just right for frequent visits. I remember thinking that she was never going to be happy with anyone new and did not much care how her hair looked anyway. I cared, I felt that how she looked reflected on how I cared for her. Eventually, I decided we could all win here. It did not take long to throw a few curlers into Nana’s hair and with her perm it held up well until her next hair wash. I learned to do a pretty good job and thus was born my alter ego Fifi. We now took bi-annual trips for perms only and the rest was done at home. Fifi was the resident hairstylist, she kept her hair looking lovely. It became a fun event at the house with friends and other family getting in on the action if they were around on a Fifi day. Out of necessity was born a latent passion and a lot of fun.
What I learned is that no matter what, taking those 15 minutes to simply do a small grooming task had the lasting and cumulative ripple effect that could not be measured but everyone got the benefits. I felt like a good caregiver and DIL, My MIL looked and felt great, her family loved that she was so happy and looked lovely and our children learned to be conscious of personal grooming and the overall benefits or caring for others. Everyone’s levels of frustration diminished considerably. As time went on, Fifi eventually retired, but not before being replaced by Leona, who kindly came to our home and did everyone’s hair professionally, it’s still a fun family time and friends still come by for a Leona day.
What used to be an hours long ordeal that I resented and eventually became a hassle for everyone, become a time of bonding, fun, and long term pleasure for my entire family. I challenge you to pick one place that you can find a way to change an ordeal into a win for everyone by simply making a shift in how you think and feel about it and change how it is executed.
