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We all help each other all the time. We’ve always helped each other. You know, neighbors, help neighbors. It’s no different. We’ve, we’ve always done this just because you need help. Doesn’t mean you’re helpless.

 

Caring for aging parents or other loved ones while working, raising Children and trying to live your own life, wondering how to find the time for your personal health and happiness. Well, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the Happy Healthy caregiver podcast to show where real family caregivers share how to be happy and healthy while caring for others. Now, here’s your host, Family Caregiver and Certified Caregiving consultant, Elizabeth Miller.

 

Hello and thanks for tuning in to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast, which is part of the whole care network. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the show. We are a show produced biweekly to help family caregivers integrate self care and caregiving into their lives. Each of our shows has an accompany show notes page so that we can put all of the resources and the products and the topics and everything that we’re talking about in one spot. So just head to the website Happy Healthy caregiver.

 

com underneath the podcast menu, cook the episode number or the image for today’s show. Couple of announcements. One, if you’re not on the email list, I want you to definitely get on it. We curate a lot of fabulous information and push that to your inbox every Tuesday. So join that at Bit dot Lee forward slash hh ce news. And then I wanted to get the message across that it is not too late to think about joining us in October of 224 for the self care at sea cruise.

 

I am doing this along with several co-host in the care economy. This is a test to see if we can do this kind of thing and we want caregivers to show up for the respite and to connect with other caregivers and leave with the community and resources or if you’re just looking for a fabulous deal on a Norwegian cruise that works too. So get that information at Bit dot Lee forward slash HHC self care cruise. I’d like to thank our episode sponsor, Rare Patient Voice. Do you want to earn cash in exchange for your opinion?

 

Rare patient voice or R PV? Helps connect researchers with patients and family caregivers for over 22025 diseases and conditions for patients and caregivers. R PV provides the opportunity to voice their opinions, to improve medical products and services while earning cash rewards, rare patient voice helping patients and caregivers share their voices if you’re interested, join the R PV panel at Rare patient voice. com/happy, healthy caregiver. I read a three book, contemporary romance series that I completely recommend if this genre is something that you enjoy. I flew through the series and I did like each of the individual books, you could read them stand alone.

 

But why not start with book one, learn a little bit about the peripheral characters who then become the primary characters in the next book. The series was written by Abby Jimenez and I have read and enjoyed many of her books. Book one is called the Friend Zone Book Two Happy Ever After playlist. And book three is Life’s too short. I gave them all four out of five stars and maybe even would give a five star if I didn’t feel so weird about a contemporary romance book, getting five stars.

 

So we’ll link to that in the show notes. Favorite thing that I want to share with you is I keep a digital calendar on outlook. But I really like to see my life and my tasks in paper too. It’s just more visual and tangible for me to keep life together with the podcast and the speaking events and the various things that are happening. I’ve been using the same 17 month planners for at least the past three years and I just ordered mine for 2025 since it starts in this August.

 

And it goes throughout the whole year of 2025. The planner is from natural life. They sell way more than the homes than home and office supplies. But you may recognize their branding when, if you’re looking for this type of thing, I like that. They have this vibrant bohemian look to them. They’re spiral bound that lie flat when open, they’ve got a hard back and they’ve got enough room for daily to do s but you can still see your week at a glance on a spread. They have fun stickers that you can splash up the pages.

 

And I believe that you can only get them from their website though. There are likely some great dupes out there that I need to know about. But I’m going to link to the ones that I like.

 

Let’s meet today’s caregiver in the spotlight. After struggling with the demands of caring for her aging mother, Paige Wilson made a bold move, leaving her corporate career and becoming an entrepreneur with a big idea. To help family caregivers. In this episode of the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast, we learn about Paige’s disruptive care solution that utilizes technology and harnesses the strength of community. We also discussed normalizing, asking for help the longevity economy, downsizing possessions and the self care comfort of a mcdonald’s diet, Coke. Enjoy the show.

 

Hi, Paige. Welcome to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast. Oh, thanks, great to be here. So excited to have this conversation with you and we always book end our show with the journal um at the end the lightning round and then a little bit of kind of kick us off in a good mindset or from the Happy Healthy caregiver jar. So I’d love to get your thoughts on how you think this might pertain to caregiving or self care that’s safe.

 

It says most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in our own sunshine and that is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. So bring us back to high school. So most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in our own sunshine. Oh, that’s a very deep one. Um Well, yeah, you know, I think, um when I think particularly as it pertains to caregiving, um, sometimes it feels like the shadows, right? But you do have to step out and take care of yourself first.

 

Um And, and I’m sure we’ll talk about it. You know, caregiving can be daunting and challenging, but at the same time. It’s the greatest blessing you can have is to be there to be able to help, you know, an aging loved one. So, maybe that’s the sunshine piece there. Yeah. Yeah. There’s no wrong answer here. Well, I’d love to hear a little bit about your caregiving story page. Like what, what, what happened that made you become a caregiver in your life. Yeah. Well, I think we’re always, what is it, Roslyn Carter about, you know, you are a caregiver will be a caregiver having a, um, well, you know, in terms of, um, for my parents, my father died when I was pretty young, he had a heart transplant, um, in his fifties and died when I was in college.

 

Um, so I wasn’t really active in that much caregiving for him. A lot of his was heavy medical. My mother was, that was a log on her. Um, and then she was widowed very young in her forties. Um, and was raising my brother and I, but when she hit, um, and she did a great job, um, when she hit her mid seventies and this was a lady that was full of life. I always say she was like Lucille Ball. She was kind of crazy. I couldn’t keep up with her.

 

Um, she loved life. There is no question about it. Um, she broke her hip and all of a sudden she went from, you know, running circles around me in the shopping mall to, she couldn’t drive for a little bit of time and started looking to me for some backup. Um, it was little stuff and I lived five minutes from my mom. Um, and I was widowed, young. We were both widowed in our forties. So, um, you know, I was there to help her get her to the beauty parlor, maybe set up the bridge table, you know, that was up in the attic, all of those little things, but a couple things, um, you know, I could tell that she didn’t like to ask me for help.

 

You know, I think she didn’t want to feel like a burden. Uh, she knew that I had my demanding career. I was trying to reach the teenage daughter by myself and, you know, she was calling on me. So that was probably the hardest part. Was it stressful for me to do all this? Yes. Um, but I wanted to do it. I wanted to do more and I hated that feeling that she would hesitate to ask because she just didn’t want to put it on me and that was probably the toughest part of it.

 

Was it emotionally and physically challenging? Sure. And it started out little things. Um, and then over time she needed more. Um, and I had a brother who I love dearly, but he probably created more stress than being able to rely on them, you know. Um, and then she eventually had home care nurses and a lady ended up living with her and then she was on hospice for two years. So, um and during that two year period, obviously, she needed a lot of help both from the family and from a professional caregiver.

 

Um But it was kind of a long drawn out period. So it took its toll. Yes, I I you’ve mentioned so many things. Thank you for sharing your story and how perceptive of you to know that you could tell that she was uncomfortable asking for help. Um And yet realizing that she needed it and you know, she sounded like she was a really independent woman for many of her years. And like you said, you couldn’t keep up with her. Like was the transition of going from people helping out to home care?

 

Like more something more intense. Was that an easy transition for y’all? Um By the time she needed it, it was fine because I, I kind of feel like you take what you need when you need it. If in those early days, I had tried to hire an aid or a nurse to help her, it would not have gone well because she still felt too independent. I don’t, I don’t need to take that step yet into care. I just need a hand, you know, a helping hand by the time she needed it.

 

And, and I see this when we talk about neighbor force with our clients by the time you need it, you have a different appreciation for it. Uh It was a different kind of help, but she was very thankful by them to have it. But it is that there’s that stepping off when you really get into pure professionals. That acknowledgement that gosh, yeah, I’m at this age in health that I need care. I know in talking to many of my clients that it is a hard, it can be a hard transition for folks there.

 

You don’t want the people around even like they want the help, but they don’t let these like strangers and other, other people around. And 11 of my tips of advice is to start first with the stuff that’s less personal. Um, so the laundry, the yard work, the pets, walking, the do you know dogs and, um, housekeeping, grocery errands and stuff like that because then they get used to having the people potentially around. Um, and I wanna, I wanna talk to this kind of all is leading up to like asking for help and, and where you, you saw a need, um, you saw this need between like family and home care.

 

How did this big idea come about for you? Well, yeah, I mean, I always say this, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. Well, my mother was the, you know, impetus for this invention, but when I was going through it with my mom, um, I was looking for some backup because I thought she would feel better. She wasn’t always asking me and it was gonna take a little bit off of my plate. But what I found was there really was nothing, um, other than family, friends and maybe neighbors in eighbrs that could do that could step in because when I started looking in the care space one, I think she would have said I don’t need that yet and she didn’t, to be honest, she did not need an aid in her home for 4 to 8 hours a day.

 

We needed somebody to get her to the beauty parlor. That was a 100 hour ordeal. Right? Or all those little things. Um, and I even went on care. com because I thought wait, this is an on-demand marketplace for care helpers. Well, care. com is great but it’s, it’s when you need a care worker and you can make that investment of time because if you say I need somebody on Thursday for two hours, they’re gonna give you 20 different people different rates. You know, you’ve got to negotiate with them and invariably what I found was, I’d find somebody and they’d say, oh, well, I, I am available for two hour window, but only if you commit to 20 hours a week.

 

And by the way, I’m not available this Thursday that, that just didn’t work. Oh, so you’re, now you’re a recruiter and you’ve got to like, ask questions and No, no, no. Yeah, that’s a whole other set of tasks. You had no time I did that when we finally got a care worker and I got her from care. com, by the way, she was amazing and she was with us for two years. But um that didn’t solve my problem. I just kept thinking like I want to push a button and another person like me shows up, you know, the other me, a clone like Uber, like I, this is simple stuff anyway, we got through it.

 

And so after she passed away, I, I moved cities, I had lived in Richmond my whole life and I just needed a little bit of a, a fresh start, you know, now both of my parents are gone. Uh My daughter had gone off to college and so I moved to Washington DC, had this great job in investment banking. Um, but while I was there, I saw my friends starting to do this, you know, and again, it’s not a bad thing, but it’s not an easy thing. Um And there’s no book, what to expect when your parents are aging, you know, until you and there’s no time to read the book. Correct.

 

You know, what do you think? We had nine months while we were making a baby potentially to, they don’t tell you what to do after the baby comes out either. But yeah, so, you know, I saw my friends going through it. Um, a couple of articles that, like, there was one in the Wall Street Journal that piqued my interest in the headline is, I used to have it framed in here. Um, America is running out of family caregivers just when it needs them most and talked about all that demographic shift.

 

Which I thought. Wow. I, I had no idea. Yeah. Now it’s a business problem. Right. Like, now it’s a societal problem where we’re outnumbered. There’s more people who needs care than, than there are physical people. And, you know, the number of family caregivers, I mean, I have one daughter, I’m the end of the baby boomer generation there. Who’s gonna take care of me. Yeah. So, you know, that was an eye opener and then literally two things happened that all of a sudden, I mean, it was a light bulb.

 

I know the answer to what I needed with my mom. And so I’m living in DC. I wanted to get involved in the community. I’ve lived in Richmond my whole life. I was very active. And so I thought, well, maybe I’ll sign up for meals on wheels. I have a soft spot for older people. Um, and it’s not a big commitment. So that sounds great. And I called them and they said I would love to have you, would you like to do every Wednesday or every Friday?

 

Well, I couldn’t commit to the same day every week because I traveled a lot for work. That was a little disappointing. And I would say about a month later, I was talking to a friend of mine back in Richmond who used to be a lawyer and she mentioned that she was driving for Uber every now and then. And I thought what in the world, I didn’t think she needed the money. And she said, you know, Paige, I left my law practice to finish raising our two teenage boys.

 

They’ve now gone off to college and she said, I don’t want to go back to my law practice. But I wake up in the morning and I feel like I have no purpose. I’m used to taking care of people. I’m used to being needed connected and she said I could get a part time job. But honestly, at 53 I don’t even want to commit to a part time schedule. What I love about Uber is if I have an afternoon free, I can go out and just connect with people.

 

And literally, that was it because I thought, I bet there are a lot of people that are not professional care workers. They’re just compassionate people that if we could tap them when it suits them, they could step in and be kind of that backup daughter that I was looking for and that’s what we’re doing and like amazing. And you and you playing off the word neighbor, your business name is uh neighbor, neighbor. Force our labor force are neighbors. Um, and you know, you talk about asking for help is hard, you know, with your mom and so forth, what we try to get across is we all help each other all the time.

 

We’ve always helped each other. You know, neighbors, help neighbors. It’s no different. Um, and for the adult kids, sometimes they feel guilty and I’ll say, did your parents have help raising? You? Sure? Did they get babysitters? Yes. Why it let the parents take care of themselves as a couple and themselves? Give them some time? It’s the same thing, you know? Or did they have a neighbor down the street? Pick you up from soccer? Sure. You know, we’ve, we’ve always done this just because you need help, doesn’t mean you’re helpless. Right. Right.

 

And we’re in a different, we’re in different age where it’s more common that, um, you know, uh, a two person household or household is both working and to make the same amount and to live the same lifestyle of our, of our parents in the past. So it’s, uh, it’s definitely, definitely more common. Uh, I, I, go ahead. No, I just think it’s such a great thing that, you know, when caregivers the alchemy of, of their situation is like you saw, you, you experience something for yourself, you saw a business opportunity and you’ve invented it and it’s a big idea page.

 

Like, I don’t know if you realize that there was nothing else that I know of that is in between. I mean, for Uber, for transportation, I think there’s some small companies, there’s a woman here in Richmond who has, you know, a band of five or six women that kind of do that. Um But in order to scale it, you need the technology that’s making all this matching and giving the ultimate flexibility to the neighbor. And I mean, I had this, you know, crazy idea that there was this network of neighbors, this neighbor force out there.

 

I’m blown away by the neighbors. They’re, you know, generally college educated, empty nesters and retirees, 72% of them are over age 50. On average, they do it two or three times a week for an hour or two. And they, I mean, we know that for the older adult we’re giving them some autonomy and letting the mage in place if that’s one and we’re taking a lot off of the family caregivers. But I think the neighbors get the most out of it. They love it and they’re making new friends and it’s helping them.

 

So, and to your point, it’s like a win, win for everybody because they get to set their own schedule, put in the labor where the, where and when they want and at the same time on the recipient. And, um, do you still have the one hour minimum? Like that’s, that’s, you have to commit to anything, you know, um, most of our clients. I mean, we’ll have people that use us, you know, once a year for a doctor’s appointment and we have some people that we see every day for an hour or two, maybe we’re making lunch, maybe take them to the museum to the beauty parlor, you know, cleaning out the back bedroom because the grandkids are coming to visit.

 

You name it, little bits of stuff. But our average client uses us twice a week, but they’re not, you know, there’s no requirement. Um, yeah, if it’s like, if you’re, if you’re a person who’s just feeling like you’re strapped and stressed with all of the action items, this is a great opportunity that you can kind of hand off pieces that doesn’t require a lot of personal, um, personal stuff in it or like it didn’t have to be me. It could be anybody necessarily that’s doing that thing.

 

You’ve done the background checks, you’ve checked them out and so forth. So amazing. Where, where is Neighbor Force available right now? Paige. So we’re mostly available, um, on the southeast from Maryland down through Georgia and Texas. Ok. It’s continuing to grow. Uh, Texas has time. Yeah, somebody in Charlotte, North Carolina might hear about Neighbor Force, but their parents live in ST Louis. Right. So, um, but we don’t want to move too quickly because we need to make sure that we maintain this caliber of our neighbor and early on because we’ve had to raise outside capital, really to fund the building and the technology.

 

Some people question if there were enough neighbors. And I would say you don’t think there are that many nice people in the world. And by the way, it’s a growing demographic because our neighbors are Gen X and Boomers. Um But you know, I look at meals on wheels, which is probably the closest proxy to what a neighbor is. Same kind of people we share. We do have joint events here in Richmond. They had 2 million volunteers last year. Wow. And they’re not getting paid, they’re volunteered. You’re paying your name, you have to commit to the same day.

 

It’s great. I mean, they’re a wonderful, my mom used to volunteer for Meals on Wheels as well, but this is a step further because you do get to start making connections and we’re not matching neighbor, one specific neighbor to a client. Now, a lot of times organically that will happen, will they change their schedule so that they can always see Mr Smith? But it’s ok because every neighbor brings a little something different to the table and variety spice of life. Love that. And you, you know, you worked in the corporate roles, you know, what was that shift like from you for you?

 

And you know, working caregiver too to entrepreneurship was that um you know, how, how is that transition? So they said it’s hard. I had no idea. It is hard. Um, and for us it’s hard too because it is, like you said, it’s this white space, don’t even know to look for this because they think there’s nothing out there. But, um, you know, I think some of the, the skills that I had in a large corporate world help with the infrastructure and, you know, I think we’re probably over, over engineered on infrastructure but it’s so important.

 

So that part’s good. I’m not a scrappy. I don’t, you know, I’m not a serial founder, so a lot of that has been new. Yeah. And the fundraising I imagine I’ve, I’ve dabbled in a piece of that with another company and it’s exhausting. I see my husband doing it with his, he’s got a, I, I’m involved in the start up community in Richmond and I tell young entrepreneurs all the time and now I’ve heard famous people say kind of the same thing. So maybe I didn’t make it up.

 

But like if you, if you don’t have a driving passion to solve the problem that your company is addressing, don’t do it. It, it just will get too hard. You know, if you’re just doing it because you want to, you know, make money and go public or whatever it is, you won’t make it, you so driven to, to solve this problem. And even then, like, you can, you know, I know for me, I’ve had the drive but I’ve also realistically thought about quitting and flipping the table.

 

You know, so many times in the past. So we, I say all the time now around the company, this is my poor English grammar on purpose. Now that we see how it’s impacted many lives. We can’t not succeed. Yeah. Can’t not do it. Is what I say. I can’t do it. Yeah, we, we have no choice. We’ve got to make this work and it’s hard. It’s hard. They were easy. I have a sign on my wall so easy. Everyone would do it. So it’s not that easy.

 

But you also, you know, I love that you’ve got the the financial background and um want the proof kind of that. There’s, there’s more opportunity for people who want to get into this. And you had mentioned to me like a book that helped you in this. Um Do you want to talk about that at all? Oh, maybe it was the longevity economy. Yeah, I read this early on. It’s written by um Joe Coughlin, Joe Coughlin. Um He’s a professor at MIT in their age tech lab. Um But in it, he talks about kind of this age wave and how we’re going to solve this going forward.

 

And he makes three points that literally to me are the case for neighbor force. Um because he says one that boomers, today’s boomers don’t want senior living in the past one size fits all. What they want to do is piece together different needs when they need it. So if you give up driving, oh in the gig economy, then maybe you get Uber if you don’t want to go grocery shopping, Instacart, all of those pieces because everybody ages in different fits and starts. That’s kind of neighbor force.

 

And then he says that um women solving care, giving strate um challenges are gonna be the innovators. Well, that’s clearly me. And then thirdly, he says it’s really got to be solved at the community level, which is what Neighbor Force is doing. We say we’re bringing back the neighborhood. Um And he talks about the village to village network that was started in Beacon Hill in Boston, which is kind of the not for profit version of Neighbor Force. And it is kind of um small grassroots groups, uh volunteers that get to help people age in place.

 

We actually work with the villages. Um So we’re not free, but there’s, we can do a lot more and be a lot more um receptive than say, you know, the village can be responsive sometimes in the villages can be and a lot of theirs is social based. Um So, yeah, but I, I appreciate that I’m learning about that longevity economy. And also, you know, that you are kind of focused on the growth in the community aspect, which is not easy. I have, you know, worked for two nonprofits, one daughter where we did, you know, local daughter circles, we did them in person for many years.

 

But then we felt like that could, we could really strive to do what we were doing virtually and, and potentially have not quite the same the connection but more scale. So we went that route, you know, of course, the pandemic kind of prompted that but still working with a, with them virtually doing one event a month. Uh and then helping a community group called AC A P adult Children of aging parents. Um We’ve got different chapters here in the Atlanta area. Those are in person as well.

 

And it’s, it’s, those are hard to scale like at the program level. You know, there’s a whole team of people but you’re really kind of going out and getting you, you have a wonderful pool of potential laborers, which is really what I think is making it um successful. Yeah. Our, our neighbors, most of our neighbors are referred by another neighbor. You know, they’re talking about, oh, I did this, you know, had this greatest visit with this little man yesterday and da da da. And then their friends say one of my friends in my book club is a, is a neighbor.

 

So I, that’s awesome. You get to hear some of her stories. Yes. Uh So, and you know, made the connection for her with what I know about neighbor force. So that’s amazing. Well, I want to switch gears and talk a bit about self care and, you know, you were in the sandwich generation, um, widower, caring for your mom and, and your, um, daughter at the same time, like, working full time. Like, what, how did you like looking back? Like, how did you survive it? How did you infuse little moments for yourself?

 

Like, what did that look like? Yeah, it was hard. And we’re, now we do a webinar about this. Um, we’ve started and, you know, I think the first step and I, when I look back, I didn’t do that is to even identify as a caregiver. Yeah, I think particularly for women, we’re just, we’re taught you just get, get everything done. How do we change that on how to change it? Well, one of the things that we’re finding is that the Children of that adult daughter can see it and you know what mom, there are resources for you.

 

You don’t have to do this all. And then, you know, so it’s a little bit of a wake up call like, oh, I just, I’m just getting it done. This is what we do. Um And so I did, you know, there was a point where I, I don’t remember what, but I did realize that and um I ended up taking family medical leave for six weeks. I worked for a big bank at the time. So that was the benefit that not a lot of people have. And when I did it, I didn’t tell my mother, she thought I was still going to work every day.

 

Um, but I gave you some breathing room, which was good, gave me a little bit of breathing room. It was hard. I was in a production type job but something had to give. And so I was very fortunate that I could do that. You know. Now we talk about all the time and it’s kind of like put your oxy oxygen mask on before helping somebody else. You know, you can’t pour from an empty cup and it’s, it’s hard. Yeah, it catches up with you, especially if it’s, you know, the average caregiver is a caregiver for 4.5 years and that’s just, you know, the average, like there’s different scenarios, we don’t have a crystal ball of what it’s going to take.

 

And so making our care team bigger and putting some habits, some healthy and happiness habits in place, I think um can, can be critical, I mean, emotionally, physically and, and you’re seeing that your loved one health declining and you know, the realization there is hard as well. Yeah. Yeah. The knowing that you’re not alone and you know that it’s ok to ask for help is so important. Yeah, it’s critical, it’s critical to make it sustainable for sure and asking for help potential clients. I’m telling you, you know, we say that our um team is kind of there, you know, shrinks but you know what they’re looking for is validation that, yeah, it’s ok.

 

You know, you shouldn’t feel guilty. Um, you know, your great daughter or great son doesn’t mean just because you’re looking for a little outside help. And I remember my husband and I getting, uh, marriage counseling years ago, life was just very stressful. My daughter was young and we both had these demanding jobs and this guy was great because we listed all the things that created stress in our life. And he said, which one of these can you outsource? So it was like cutting the grass. My husband loved to cut the grass, but it’s something that every week, you know, took up a couple of hours.

 

And so, you know, I kind of view neighbor force a little bit that way, you know. Yeah, you might enjoy taking your mom to the beauty parlor or doing these things. But if somebody else can do that, then that gives you a little bit of a break and then when you’re together you’ve got more, you know, quality time. Yeah. It’s not so rushed. Yeah. Go and enjoy the lunch or, or do those things. And I feel like sometimes too, like when the, you know, the housekeepers comes or the lawn people, like, it’s almost like the cavalry is coming and, yeah, my husband recently had to mow the grass.

 

Um, and I just was like looking out the window and thinking that’s so nice that he doesn’t have to do this that much anymore. It’s been many, many years. Um, so, yeah, it’s, we’ve got to kind of figure that out. I, I consider what you’re talking about here of asking for help, one of the eight categories of self care. Like when I was really focused on self care initially, with my foot, with my caring for my mom, I was really honed in on physical self care as I think that many caregivers are kind of thinking about, oh, I need to eat better.

 

I need to exercise and even maybe sleep comes a little bit later of how important that is. But it’s so much more for that than that, for caregivers and asking for help is a practical self care and emotional social. Like it wraps up a lot of different things. It really does. And ultimately, I think it improves your relationship, you know, with your loved one and your family, you know, um my family was small but a lot of times I think, you know, we’ll see that the caregiver is spending so much time with the parent that they’re kind of forsaking the relationship with the rest of their family, you know, and that’s hard.

 

That was somebody, you know, there’s certain kind of conversations in my past that kind of clicked for me as far as setting up some sustainable practices in place. And one of them was like a guy at work giving me the boundaries book and saying like, you should check this out. You might need some boundaries in your life. And then another one saying like, hey, just, I don’t even remember who said it. You just remember what was said in saying your parents have already lived this part of their life.

 

And you get to also, you know, enjoy this chapter of your life, which you know, your kids are only going to be the age that they are, you’re in peak earning years of your job. Like all of those things are essential for your future. Yeah. And you know, it just made me think because we keep talking about kids, but a lot of our clients are also the spouse, you know, and I remember COVID was devastating for everybody for so many reasons. And we basically shut down for a couple of months and thought about providing virtual visits.

 

But what we decided was our true value is that in person, human connection. Um, you know, you can’t make a grilled cheese sandwich at resume. Um And we had a woman call right when we kind of started back up in tears and she said my husband has um Parkinson’s and I haven’t left his side for three months and I’ve got to get a little bit of life for myself. Um And so we started going once a week so she could go volunteer, her daughter taught her to preschool and she would go read at the preschool with her daughter and she, it made such a difference in her life, um, that she started finding more and all we were doing is making grilled grilled cheese with her with Tom.

 

Right, or something like that. And she even got to the point that they might have a family birthday party, let’s say on a Saturday night and she never knew his health was kind of up and down. And so she would book a neighbor for Saturday night and she said, you know, it may turn out that 15 minutes ahead of time that he’s fine and I’ll get to take him. But this is kind of this little insurance piece that he’s not, I’ve got someone there and it’s worth it for me to pay for that two hours even if I don’t need him.

 

Now, that’s pretty extreme. But, you know, that’s how important it was to her to have, have a backup plan we need sometimes the ABC and, and so forth and I totally get the volatile behavior, the cognitive things that can um weigh into how um how even mobility like on a rainy day can be really tough for people. So, so glad that you pointed out the spousal that the help for them too because I noticed, you know, I live in Atlanta, my folks lived in Florida at the time when they were um in our spiral year we call it.

 

Uh but, you know, initially, maybe even a couple of years before that, it came into like my dad needing more help for my mom in particular. And we went, we didn’t have a neighbor for us. We didn’t have, you know, even a care. com I don’t think didn’t exist back then. So we went to Craigslist, remember Craigslist? And we found some amazing people through Craigslist that became like family members for us to do all of those things. Like it was these simple things like, you know, buying a watermelon and cutting it up into portions so that my parents could easily grab and go, you know, take it out of the refrigerator or cooking a ham or a soup for the week or something like that.

 

And following the family recipe to, to make that happen. So I grow in the grocery store like we, we definitely could have used neighbor force back in. Um It makes a big difference, makes a huge difference, especially for a remote caregiver. Like if somebody’s got somebody living in the Southeast or Texas that lives even states away or, you know, but knows somebody that needs help. Like that’s peace of mind for somebody to put physical eyeballs, mind can take a lot of emotional toll off for sure, for sure.

 

Well, hopefully we’re normalizing in this conversation page like asking for help. Like it is hard, it is hard for, you know, like you said, the caregivers to self identify to hard to, I feel like they wait until the crisis happens. Um, so much like if we’re, if we’re talking to you, if you don’t have anybody, like in a, in a backup plan or an expanded care team and it’s all on you. Like, that is not sustainable. And I’ve never seen that work. So, um, it’s funny we work with home care companies a lot.

 

We refer because our clients are aging every day and there’s one in Richmond who is the best we think. Um, but you know what they told you want to shut them out because people are like, sure commonwealth, they’re common wise. Excuse me? They’re amazing. They’re also in a couple of other markets. But, you know, it’s interesting what they said. And so we, and they refer to us when people don’t really need what they offer and we refer to or need you for an hour, you know, less than the four hour minimum. Right.

 

And he’ll say, you know, and we do and we recommend a lot of different ones but they’re the top one, in Richmond. Um, he’ll say it’s great to be the best and they are. But for home care companies, you really want to be the first because what happens is it’s always a crisis and when people, it’s the first one they call, ok, I gotta get this solved. Let’s move on. Right. You wanna be that first call? Right. And I would tell people like, whether it’s home care or neighbor force or whatever, like, just get the paperwork going, like, fill it out, like, dip your foot in and test it out.

 

Like when it’s something that’s not in the, in the heat of the moment in the crisis. So that, then you’re like, it feels again, that peace of mind, like, oh, this was, this worked out? Ok? Or maybe next time I’ll, I’ll mention that this and this thing need to happen and fine tune it a little bit. But like you’re never gonna know if you don’t kind of dip your toe in. Exactly. No, it’s, it’s always better to have a plan all the way through into senior living. Yeah.

 

What, what is self care? Like, how do you prioritize your health and happiness? Now you’re busy entrepreneur, you know what’s working for you? Right? Asked that question of, I’m not practicing what I preach. I bet you are like, I bet there are some ta da in there if we look for that, like, not necessarily the eating but like socialization, financial self care. Well, obviously, you know, I have some friends that are starting to retire. Um So the fact that I’m going full tilt this, this energizes me even though it’s hard.

 

So that’s good. But, you know, here’s a great example. It’s a lot of stress and a lot of unknowns um at this point in the company’s, you know, sure journey. And so I lived on 100 and 15 year old home, which I absolutely adored, but it was a constant source of stress. What’s gonna break today and we’re not talking about little things. So I sold my house and last week I moved, um, and right now I’m in a very small apartment about the fourth, the size of my home and I’m so happy.

 

But that’s something, you know what, that’s something I could control. How did you go through the processes? Like, people are doing this with, you know, they’re dealing with generational clutter where like things have, you’ve been passed down from people who have passed away, which I know you’ve had, like now you’re going from this home to this place. Like what was the process? You used to figure out what to keep and what couldn’t or where to go, you know, and I did a pretty good job when my mom passed away um of really going through the key things that we wanted to keep.

 

Um And so that part was easier and I’m not a huge clutter person, but it’s still shocking how much stuff we accumulate. So, unfortunately, much of that is now in a storage unit. My goal is to get through that. So my daughter doesn’t have to one day. But yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s a motivator for sure. Like once we’ve lived it as a family caregiver, like not reproducing this for us when my folks moved from a uh their large home to a three bedroom condo in Florida.

 

I’m one of six kids and it was kind of a unique way that we dealt with it. It was really kind of fun. Um, we had one of those post it things with the different colored flags, like the little bitty ones like in, in one set. And they had marked the things that were available that they weren’t going to keep, you know, the, the paintings, the furniture rugs, whatever. Uh And then we went in as kids and my, my one brother was like, I don’t want to do that.

 

I don’t want anything. I’m sure he regretted that. Um one that was kind of living with them. So didn’t. So there was really kind of four of us. Uh and we went in and we had assigned colors and we put our colors on the things that we wanted to. Um, if we had an interest in them and sometimes there was things that we, we all, you know, the Victrola, we all wanted it. I’m kind of glad I don’t have it now, but the Victrola is super cool.

 

And um so then we would draw cards and it was like whoever had the highest card in the deck. And then afterwards there was some kind of trading, but we call it the show showcase showdown. It was really quite fun actually. Yeah. Well, my mother tried to get my brother and I to do it and it was kind of, we were like, neither one of us want that. Yeah. Well, tell her that, you know, luckily they had kind of reduced down to that because then after my dad passed away we had to move my mom and my brother, my mom’s mobility was an issue.

 

And so we would have to bring the things to her and say, you know, what, what do you want to do with these and, like take action. It was exhausting. It was exhausting. Well, I’ll tell you one of the things that my mother, I don’t wanna say hoarded because she used it, but she was obsessed with Christmas. It was the biggest holiday in her home, obsessed with her Christmas tree. So I have all of her ornaments and wrapping packages. She would not buy Hallmark wrapping paper at the, you know, drug store.

 

She would buy the stuff from the big department stores at the end of the year that were these giant rolls and all of the fancy ribbons and so forth. And she died in 2014 and I still have some of that paper I’m using and I have moved four times since she died and I keep hauling it with me. She absolutely. And you know, my daughter’s like everybody else has, you know, snow snowmen all over their Christmas packages. But ours are always this beautiful paper with these fancy ribbons.

 

Oh, that’s sweet. How you kind of carry on that the tradition too of that. And yet I know you’ll be glad when the big rolls are gone. And then you’re like, what kind of paper do I wanna get? We’re nearing the end. But the movers like, wait, we’re moving. I was like, yes, we’re moving that. Well, a fine in between I find is like, not quite drugstore and not what you’re talking about. Costco. Costco has wrapping paper and I love their ribbons, um, their wide ribbon. Like I don’t have to know how to do a bow.

 

I just tie a knot that somehow looks pretty good. Exactly. And then you crinkle it. Yes. Yeah, I learn all that. Well, I love it. Let’s let’s get your thoughts on some of the questions in the just for you daily self care journal page. So, um if you could have only one self care product on a desert island, what would you pick? Not music? OK. Are you as like, do you have a playlist somewhere or do you, are you bringing a CD? That’s, it depends on the mood.

 

Um But yeah, I think for me that can really speak to me. Yeah. Um I love music. Yes, me too. And I, I’m gonna, I made a note to share the every now and then I mentioned the Caregiver anthem playlist. I’ve created, I created a playlist with like where I hear songs and I’m like, this relates to caregiving in some way. It encourages caregivers. So I’ll have to like the Rolling Stones, which is not probably, although they do have a song called First. There you go. Like, play it at your next, uh, your next gather in your next conference.

 

But, yeah, it could be things like, um, you know, uh, roll in with the, with the deeper, um, all of the different things. Like I’m like, oh, I don’t know what I will survive exactly. Like when you kind of go down this path, you’re like, oh, these are all kind of making sense. Uh What are two of your go to healthy snacks? Hmm Apples is definitely one of them. I don’t eat a lot of healthy things. So that’s hard. That’s good. Uh Yeah. Um I’m a big protein person so, you know, uh low fat protein.

 

I eat a lot of that. I get my energy. But um, what are some examples of that? Oh, tomatoes? Um, we have these things in Virginia called Hanover tomatoes. We’re famous for, not for protein, but just to have them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they’re, they’re very healthy. So, yeah. What, what, what’s your source of protein? I um, I always, I am trying to kind of get more protein in my diet. Um, nothing very fancy, you know, it’s uh chicken dish, although not salmon usually. Um, I love tuna and I love a good steak.

 

So. Yes. Sounds yummy. You’re making me hungry? Ok. Um, last one, I’m not known for my healthy eating habits. So I drink diet Coke every morning from mcdonald’s. Oh, yeah, I hear about these people and I’ve met these people. What is it, what is it about the diet? Listen, that’s self care if that makes you feel some kind of sense of joy day off and then, you know, I move to decaf coffee but, um, it’s something about getting in the car and going there And, um, in fact, the lady at my little local mcdonald’s just told me last week that she’s getting a job as a caregiver with a local care agency. Nice.

 

I mean, it’s social self care. It’s like you’re not having, like, deep conversations but they know you, they rely on, you know, it, it kind of gives you that boost and for some reason, like, people always mention mcdonald’s like, has having the right mix of carbonation, I guess. Or the ice. What is that? Yes. And the, the circumference of the straw, I don’t know. Huh? Well, I hope they never change taste buds at the same time or something like that. But, yeah, way to go mcdonald’s. Ok. Well, and, and how do you go there and not get the biscuit?

 

That’s my other question. Don’t need the biscuit, like some eggs. Yes. Yeah. What makes you feel nurtured pampered or just plain good? Maybe it is your diet coke? Yeah. But do you have anything else? Yeah. Um, I don’t feel very pampered these days. But, you know, I think, um, getting to spend time with my daughter is definitely one of them. What do you all like to do together in Manhattan? So, um, we do like to sneak in a little bit of travel every now and then. But the next thing we have planned to see to see the Eagles at the sphere in Las Vegas.

 

So very cool. The Eagles, not at first my went to sports team but no, the Eagles Eagles, the band, which is one of my husband’s favorite. So, um, well, that will be amazing and I can relate. My daughter is um 24 lives in Chicago. So we, you know, try to do some travel or kind of at least have something sprinkled throughout the year. So I know I’m going to see her because uh I just like her having things like that to look forward to even not being there, but having something on the books is very calming.

 

Well, we’re planning, I don’t know if you saw in anything that I’ve shared about the self care at sea cruise, but it’s not this year. But October 2025 we sealed a good deal for caregivers and um and we’re looking for sponsorships, of course, for the different things. What could be the Lanyards or the different things that we have there. Uh But I’m excited because my daughter is coming with me and she’s got, you know, she’s a nurse so she can kind of plan. So her, her life gets, gets chunk of time off there.

 

Uh But self care cease cruise, we’re gonna do it with a bunch of different uh co co hosts of mine that are also in this care space. And what I love about it is that people can come for the respite but leave with the community and the resources and that jazzes me up. That’s tremendous. So we’ll see how it goes. It’s a little bit of an experiment. I hope it’s amazing. We can plan other trips of respite and kind of bring caregivers together. Like that would be a fabulous thing.

 

The addressable market of potential attendees is limitless as we know. I mean, even if you want to be just if you’re a cruiser, like you love cruises, we still got a good deal for you. We’re not gonna like kick you out. So, um and you don’t have to come to all the caregiving stuff. It’s completely, completely optional. We don’t have the whole boat. That’s of course, it’s a Norwegian cruise line. There’s lots of other people on there as well. Yeah. Well, amazing. Well, this has been great.

 

Is there anything that you wish that we would talk about Paige or something that you’re like, we can’t leave without mentioning this. And then of course, how do people connect with Neighbor Force and learn more? I can’t think of anything you’ve asked lots of great questions. Um And you know, that caregiver, I guess I need to be caring for myself now. Right? I mean, if you need to put that behind me, you know, with my mom gone, but even just in little micro minutes, like it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing, but I will definitely be your cheerleader of saying like, well, and I tried to let my daughter know that, you know, it’s coming, but she doesn’t want to acknowledge that.

 

And so, um yeah, in terms of reaching neighbor force, uh we’ve got a website obviously and it’s spelled like labor force, but with an m our neighbors, our neighbors, they’re your neighbors. Um and it gives you lots of good information there but that neighbor force. com dot com. OK, perfect. Um But you know, if people have questions, you, you can sign up and what people think is it’s, you’re taking some big step, there’s no step, you know, um you set up an account and it takes about three minutes and really all we need is your name who we might be helping if it’s not yourself.

 

Um And then we put a little field in there, that’s optional, but it’s kind of nice. So if you were signing up for a family member, you could have and we say client notes and any neighbor that would visit, say if your mother would see this to know about your mom. Now, we have some people that write a lot. But, um I might be one of those kind of people. Yeah, if this were, if I were setting up an account for my mom, Joy, which we didn’t talk about that, we say we’re inspired by joy.

 

Her name was Joy. And that’s what we’re doing every day is bring joy to seniors. But if she were, if I were setting up her account, it would say don’t let the crazy cat run out the front door and make sure her coffee is hot because I, I spent years microwaving her already hot coffee for it to be piping hot. I’m pretty sure my, our moms would have hung out because, and my mom didn’t like a full cup. She liked it like three quarters and then like you needed to kind of, you know, top her off and, and make it warm it up again.

 

They gave me this thing at the office called the ember that you can set the temperature of your coffee and it keeps it hot for you. So is it a mug? Uh huh. And how do you spell that? I gotta find that emb er m ok, I’m gonna find that. That’s a great for a coffee lover. That’s a great, a terrific. It’s increased my productivity because I don’t have to keep microwaving. Amazing Paige. Thank you so much for just having a beautiful brain and being a terrific, you know, support for your family that then kind of blended all of this together.

 

That’s now a great terrific resource for people who need help and everybody needs help. I mean, every day can I walk you? I saw Steven walked when he was starting his, hold on. Ok. I like to see your office anyway. It’s horrible. Um, you know, we’ve got thousands of neighbors. Um, but this is such a great turn on the light gives you a great idea. Great way to end. Look at these. I love that. And as you can see, it’s, you know, just people, all kinds of men, women, different ages, different ethnicities.

 

Yes, perfect. Yeah. Uh Thank you so much, Paige for sharing your story and being a part of our podcast episode today. It was great. I appreciate it. Thanks for everything you do.

 

If you are a fan of this Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast, then you’re gonna love confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver podcast, which is also part of the whole care network family. Join sisters JJ and Natalie who offer a candid unfiltered space to confess the good the best and the ugly of being a caregiver from heartfelt confessions to insightful guest interviews. They’ve got it covered. You’ll laugh, cry and everything in between. Tune into the confessions of a reluctant podcast on your favorite podcast platform or visit confessions of a reluctant caregiver.com.

 

Thanks for joining us today on the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast on the whole care network. As always show notes that a company today’s episode can be found on my website Happy Healthy caregiver.com. Just look under the podcast menu for today’s episode image and that will take you to the page with the links and information we spoke about today.

 

You’ll also find other resources on the website along with links to purchase the just for you daily self care journal. When you purchase from my website, you’ll get a signed copy and for a limited time free shipping. If you’ve enjoyed what you heard today, consider subscribing to the show on your podcast platform, it really helps other family caregivers find the podcast and you’ll automatically receive our biweekly shows in your podcast listening queue. Maybe while you’re subscribing, consider leaving a five star rating and review or just simply talk it up on your social channels. Let’s stay connected. I’m on Instagram and Facebook as happy healthy caregiver. And until we meet again, please take care of you.

 

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