How to Ask for the Caregiving Help You Need
How to define and ask for the caregiving help you need from family, friends, neighbors, and professionals.
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asking for help
How Can I Help? A well meaning question which usually leaves a caregiver speechless
a guest post written by Cristina Sarria “How can I help?” After my father-in-law became ill in 2017, I can’t even guess how many times I must have asked my husband and sister-in-law this open-ended question. It wasn’t surprising that many others were also asking them the same question. ”How can I help?” seems to
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Sharing the Care – How Our Family Has Approached Caregiving
Last November, my sister Susie and I presented at the National Caregiving Conference in Chicago. Our topic was “Sharing the Care – How One Family Approaches Caregiving”. Our session description: Caregiving often cannot be a one person job. It often takes a team of people to help provide the companionship and personal care for a
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My BIG takeaway from my first family caregiver support meeting
I’m not my mom and my mom isn’t me.
Profound, right? I thought so. This simple statement slapped me upside the head when I heard this from Dawn, the owner and creator of a nonprofit organization called ALOHA (A Life Of Healthy Aging). Dawn’s organization visits my mom’s new assisted living community monthly to offer support to resident’s families.
Dawn followed this statement with a question: ‘who is your mom?’ and challenged me to find out. I definitely know who I want her to be – I want her to be me! But, even though she has been my mom for 44 years, I still have some detective work to do in order to answer this question.
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How to minimize holiday stress and maximize holiday blessings
While I’m appreciative of my holiday pasts, I also know that in this season of life that I’m in as a working family caregiver, I can’t expect to pull this off for my family. Perhaps some of you do, but I know the price is probably your own health and sanity. While my mom worked tirelessly to create a Waltons-like family holiday, I recognize that my family paid a price for this eventually.
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5 tips for supporting the caregiver in your life (which may be you!)
A guest post written by Sona Mehring, founder & CEO of Caringbridge.org
In 1998, my mother Bonnie was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer….
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Work Hard to be Dispensable!
No, this isn’t a typo. I don’t mean indispensable. I truly mean dispensable and here’s why.
If you are indispensable then you are a roadblock in your own life. Everyone is counting on you to help them, they essentially can’t survive without you, or at least think they can’t. No one else can do it the way you do, right?
I’m like you…often feeling squeezed among layers of responsibilities and usually pressed for time. I have felt like I can’t focus attention on any one thing well since I’m just doing a quick once over on many competing items. Life can look like a nest of hungry baby robins depending on mama to be fed. You want to help everyone but you are just one person and there are only so many worms.
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I’m unpacking my bags and refusing to take the guilt trip
I’m tough on myself and I hate to let others down. Guilt is a common emotion for me – truly probably a daily occurrence. You see, it’s impossible to make everyone happy in a world with so many competing priorities. Just like an overstuffed sandwich, some wonderful initially desired ingredient is going to slip out and get left behind on the plate or the wrapper. We can just fit only so much into our mouths or into our day.
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