life coaching

You are not alone

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.

  1. Exhaustion

  2. Resentment

  3. Worry

  4. Happiness

TEN TIPS FOR FAMILY CAREGIVERS FROM THE NATIONAL FAMILY CAREGIVERS ASSOCIATION

  1. Choose to take charge of your life, and don’t let your loved one’s illness or disability always take centre stage.

  2. 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.

  3. Watch out for signs of depression, and don’t delay in getting professional help when you need it.

  4. When people offer to help, accept the offer and suggest specific things that they can do.

  5. Educate yourself about your loved one’s condition. Information is empowering.

  6. There’s a difference between caring and doing. Be open to technologies and ideas that promote your loved one’s independence.

  7. Trust your instincts. Most of the time they’ll lead you in the right direction.

  8. Grieve for your losses, and then allow yourself to dream new dreams.

  9. Stand up for your rights as a caregiver and a citizen.

  10. Seek support from other caregivers. There is great strength in knowing you are not alone.

    YOU ARE NOT ALONE: there is help for you everywhere just ask for it.

What is Coaching ?

What is Coaching ?

As a coach I focus on you. I hold the space for you to share your story, your thoughts, your feelings and your goals. I am not your friend, or co-worker or family member who is often likely to empathize with your situation, offer advice or try to fix your problems.

I am not going to do that; I am here to help you unburden your mind and gain honest perspective to move forward.

Coaching is not like teaching,

Time Stress

Time Stress

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.

 

 

Conversations with my friend

Conversations with my friend

"Stop applying old busted cranky ass thoughts to make excuses why you can do it right”

Love it!!!

My add; How have those been working out for you so far and are you ready to stop it now and think how amazing it's going to be, to be so in love with myself that I will do everything it takes to have my best interests at heart.

please remind me of this

Planning ahead of time

Planning ahead of time

Planning ahead of time

How often do you hear stories about parents failing health causing falls or worse?

rushes to hospital emergency. The levels of stress and emotional upset these

events create are intense. There is a drop everything call-to-arms and we all rally

around to wait and see what happens next.

Does this sound familiar? Are you having these events happen with alarming frequency? How can you stop the knee jerk reaction when it is so instinctive.

Are you the parent or the child here?

Are you the parent or the child here?

The parent child relationship is a fundamental building block of who we are and how we recognize ourselves as adults, you often hear people saying like “you are just like your mother,” or "you remind me of your father". If these quippy comments so carelessly thrown into a conversation make you cringe, feel like you have been prejudged or worse yet insulted, then it's time to take notice. You can certainly learn to think something else if all your thoughts are negative.

Getting stuff done

Getting stuff done

Do you ever feel like no matter what you start, how excited you were when you started, nothing ever seems to get finished? There's always some interruption, there's always something more important that needs to be done, there's always someone who needs your time and more than you do.  Is it just impossible to find the time to get tasks completed that you started no matter how exciting they are if they're not important to the collective that you belong to?

Our journey with memory loss. Part 3

Our journey with memory loss. Part 3

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. 

Tragedy Strikes, Part 2

Tragedy Strikes, Part 2

Tragedy Strikes, Part 2

Fast forward 4 years, marriage, we welcomed our first child into our lives, it was a magical time, I worked a lot, realizing that babies are super portable, and she was amazingly quiet and happy. We enjoyed our weekends skiing and visiting the in-laws then tragedy struck, my FIL became ill and as any good doctor began eliminating all possible problems until he was sure he could not fixt this himself. He finally reached out for help and after exhaustive tests was sadly unable to fix the grave illness that would eventually take his life before the year was over. In October we witnessed his tragic passing. He had 4 grandchildren by then all of whom he had visits with two of whom were barely 1 year old. We had moved them both into our home just before his passing and in between hospital stays, the home became theirs as well.
Now let me describe our home for you; my mom lived in the main floor she moved in as soon as we bought it with her partner at the time and a couple of dogs, all good. Our young family now tree in total lived on the second floor and my mother in law now became the sole resident in the third-floor suite. 

Fifi - my alter ego

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.

Change is never easy for the elderly

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.

Have some fun with it