Comedy saved my, it saved my sensibilities, I guess that’s what I would say. It, it saved my sensibilities. My mother certainly gave me purpose and reason to wake up every morning, but I was, I was in a rut. I was in a rut where I was not, I didn’t have light. Yeah. Comedy gave me light.

Are you caring for others while working and trying to live your own life? Wondering how to find the time for your own health and happiness? Well, you’re in the right place. The Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast, which is part of the whole Care Network, is the show where real family caregivers share how to be happy and healthy while caring for others.

Hello and welcome. I’m your host, Elizabeth Miller. I’m a fellow family caregiver, a care. Advocate, a professional speaker, author, certified caregiving consultant, and certified senior advisor. If this is your first time listening, thank you for being here. This is a show produced biweekly to help family caregivers integrate self-care and caregiving into their lives. Each episode has an accompanying show notes page. If you’d like more detail about the topics, products, and resources. We speak about or you want to see any of the related photos, you’ll find the show notes by going to the website happyhealthy Caregiver.

com, and underneath the podcast menu, click the image or episode number for today’s show. The link for the show notes will also be in your podcast platform’s episode description. Now, let’s get to it. Let’s jump into this episode. Hello there. Thanks for joining. And before we get into this episode that I know you’re going to enjoy with Jay Smiles, she’s a real treat. I have a couple of announcements I want to share. We talk about it a little bit in the episode, but I want to invite you to the cruise.

If you don’t know about the self-care at sea cruise, it’s happening in October. It’s a seven-day Norwegian cruise on a new boat, Aqua. I’m looking forward to going to the US and the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas and the Dominican, whether you are a person who loves. Cruising, you are a caregiver, you are working in the healthcare space, you don’t even know if you like cruising. You are invited on the self-care at Sea cruise. So I’m gonna share the link so that you can check out all the details and see if this is a fit for you.

I wanna thank our episode sponsor Rare Patient Voice. So I have been delighted to work with Rare Patient Voice for the past couple of years. What I like is that they help family caregivers and others earn cash in exchange for their opinion. So, Rare Patient Voice or RPV. He helps connect researchers and with patients and family caregivers for over 700 diseases and conditions. If you want to be a part of their panel and have the opportunity to earn cash for your opinion, you go to rarepatientvoice. com/happyhealthy caregiver.

You enter in your information, you’re a part of their database, and then they will send you um notifications of when there are things that you are qualified to share your opinion for. So check it out. For this episode. of what I have recently read. I have a great audio book recommendation for you. I recently read The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins. I totally judge books by their cover and hers always shine for me. Every family has a past. We know this as caregivers better than anyone. Ruby McTavvish was born rich and she was a victim to a famous kidnapping and then a widow 4 times over.

Her adopted son, Camden, wants nothing to do with. The house or the money. He’d prefer to keep teaching in Colorado and starting his new family with his young wife Jewel. Eventually, they get sucked back into the family fold, and this is where the questions and the truth start to unfold. Lots of secrets and twists and many unlikable characters don’t go into this looking for something believable. It’s purely an escape drama read, and the length of this was perfect for me. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads, and I Link to it in the show notes.

My favorite thing in my house right now that I am using all the time is my air fryer. So my husband and I are empty nesters. Our air fryer gets used, I don’t know, every other day at a minimum. If you don’t have an air fryer yet, I’m wondering what are you waiting for? This kitchen appliance has been a huge time saver for me and my husband, particularly when we’re only cooking for the two of us right now. I just don’t think they make these air fryers big enough yet for Really large family.

You need to have enough space on the bottom of your air fryer where everything basically can touch the bottom and not be stacked on top of each other. Think about things that you would pull out of the freezer like chicken nuggets and french fries and tater tots and so forth, but also things like salmon and shrimp and chicken. Basically anything I have found that you can put in the air fryer. I recently went on Chatchi and I asked for a meal plan and I asked for it to only be using the air fryer.

And I cooked a whole week using just the air fryer. It was amazing. So we make a lot of things. We love the frozen chicken nuggets for some quick protein with a side of rice and a salad, all those frozen apps that you would normally throw on a cookie sheet, they go in the air fryer, and you can also do great yummy roasted vegetables, think like zucchini and Brussels sprouts and carrots. The options are endless. I’m gonna link to the Power XL, which is the air fryer that we have. Again, we have the large one, so check it out.

Jay Smiles has been a caregiver to her mom, living with Alzheimer’s and NPH for over 13 years, an unexpected journey that began after her father’s sudden passing. Once a globe trotting consultant who could barely keep a plant alive, Jay found herself overwhelmed and facing serious. Health issues 18 months into caregiving. A wake up call from her doctor led her to explore self-care through stand-up comedy. In this episode, Jay shares how comedy became her lifeline, helping her cope, advocate for caregivers, and bring joy to others walking a similar path. I hope you enjoy the show.

Welcome, Jay, to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast, fellow Atlanta. I’m excited to have you on the show and to chat about all of the things. Thank you for being here. It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Well, we kick off our shows with, you know, some mindset type of stuff to kind of get us in a good, good space. This is stuff that I have put together in the happy healthy caregiver jar. So I’d love to get your thoughts on this before we kind of roll into our regularly scheduled programming here.

So it says, I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something, but I can’t accept not trying. And that is from basketball superstar Michael Jordan said that. So I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something, but I can’t accept not trying. OK. I can roll with that. Yeah, you know what, and to be quite honest, I’m proud of him for saying he could accept failure because I tell you what, when he was on the court, it didn’t look like he could accept failure there, but I guess life in general, he can accept failure, right?

He’s showing us that he is human and even though in basketball he was considered uh God by many in life, just regular everyday things, he can accept failure, but he cannot. I got to admit I, I can swallow that pill. I’ll take that medicine. Yeah. Well, and I mean, listen, we all fail at stuff, right? Life is messy, you know, but I do think, and I just heard something the other day about learning new things and trying new things is a way to ward off dementia and Alzheimer’s.

So we’ve got to kind of use our brains in different ways and learn new things. And so if we think we’re going to be good at everything, we’re never going to try anything. That’s correct. I have failed at more things than I’ve succeeded at. That is the God’s honest truth, but I will admit that I didn’t know probably until my that I really had a a penchant and a fancy for perfectionism. I didn’t know it. I’m sure those around me knew it and could have called it.

Beforehand, but I, I, you know, I wasn’t a person who was like, oh my goodness, I have to get a 10 out of 103 on the math quiz or the spelling bee, or every hair has to be in place before I go on a date, or my shoelaces have to be tied just so before I leave the house. So because I didn’t have those. Yeah I sequences, I guess I didn’t see this perfection thing, but I’m gonna tell you where it was holding me back in parts of life.

It was, I didn’t want my ideas or my new business ventures, or this new thing I wanted to do, or maybe this new project I wanted to show my boss, it wasn’t quite ready yet. I was queen of the it’s OK, I’m gonna show you in a minute. I’m gonna tell you in a minute. It’s not quite ready and dude, the amount of things that never launched out of my brain because it’s not. Quite ready yet in my 30s. I have said, you know what, girl, first of all, how the hell do you know if it’s ready or not?

Right. You don’t even know. Maybe it’s already done. Or what if someone has something that they could add to it that could make it enrich it and elevate it. Even more in, in some way. Hey, I, I hear what you’re saying, and I too have that where I, especially if I’m gonna put my name on something, my brand on something, like I want it to be well thought out and done. But I also spent my career in IT and we had this philosophy that we were trained on to test and learn and test and learn and iterate on things.

Honestly, I think, you know, I too have failed in many, many areas of this happy, healthy caregiver. For business. Uh, and I think part of that though was just putting it out there and testing and learning. And it’s like, well, just get it out there, and then you can kind of tweak it. And so maybe, and I think the same thing is true with, with caregiving, with parenting, with so many different things that a lot of our listeners are, are faced with. So, yeah, we’re going to keep it real here today.

Well, let’s talk, Jay, about your care. Giving story. So share a little bit about your caregiving story with us and all of the, all of the people’s lives who you are enriching and testing and learning a lot, probably. OK. How long do you not have my caregiving story? I, I’d like to start, Elizabeth, with for those who are Christian, I am the Jonah of caregiving. I could not have wanted it less. Now, and I say that because Yeah, of course, none of us would like a person that we love to have a disease or ailment or a spinal cord injury that makes them.

Not able to be independent, that goes without saying. Honey baby sweetie pies, anybody who is listening or watching this, I didn’t want to take care of nothing. I spent decades making sure I wouldn’t be anybody’s mama, OK? I didn’t have a pet, a plant, or property on purpose. I was real good with renting. I could afford to own something palatial and my credit was good, my debt to income. The ratio was spectacular. I didn’t like the notion that something alive was going to depend on me, because that meant I was going to be accountable and I had to show up somewhere every day.

I like that. I am a free bird, a free spirit. Now, I wouldn’t call myself a classic hippie or a wanderer because I like really, I have a thing. Creature comforts. I want a certain kind of thread count on my sheets, you know, and I, I do want a room service and things like that. So I, yeah, I was in corporate America and did all those things, but you’d have to know my life before becoming a caregiver for people laugh and say, what? Jay has lived in one place for more than a decade, one house and driving the same car and eating the same kind of food.

So I was gonna ask. you because I think you’ve been caregiving like for 13 years, right? 13 and counting now with 13 and I was gonna ask you like how you’ve changed, but it’s clear how you’ve changed like every, not how, what didn’t change is probably an easier answer is what didn’t change. So just the the 92nd thing that occurred was I’m, I’m an only child. Unmarried on purpose, so I don’t want anybody feeling sorry for me. I have had a very fruitful and loving dating journey. I have met, um, I don’t want to sound like a whore, but I’ve had very meaningful relationships with men throughout my life and, you know, got to know the mamas, but it just, it went as far as it was supposed to go and so.

My father had a very abrupt massive heart attack and died on the couch watching a football game. Um, he was healthy. He was in his early 60s, he was still working. He was a very nationally known, prominent, uh, acclaimed trial lawyer. He founded the National Coking firm with the lauded Johnnie Cochran Jr. Uh. And my mother was home watching the football game with him. My parents were still quirky enough to snuggle and watch football games after, I don’t know how many decades of marriage. It was chilly cause it was uh January.

My mother goes to their bedroom to get a throw. She comes back and my father. is no longer breathing. The wonderful thing for my dad is he suffered not one second according to medical reports, and that’s what he always wanted. Excuse. Is it OK if I say an expletive? Yeah, we’ll just mark it as, I can’t even say the word. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, well, I’m just saying what he said. He always said, baby, I just wanna, I want an f and drop dead. I just wanna, he’s from New York.

I just want an F and drop dead. Just wanna, I don’t want nobody wiping my butt, and I don’t wanna be on a cane. I don’t wanna be drooling. That was my dad. And so he did get his wish and in my moments of despair, I am grateful that he did get what he wanted, but so dad passed. And that left a lot of moving parts because he wasn’t winding down, he wasn’t about to retire, uh, you know, there were no signs, right? And so he was actually the president and of all the Cochran firms, so there was like 20 plus offices all around the country, so. Wow.

And as a lawyer, I’m looking around, so I need to assist in that in some way and but within 90. Days, the shock and the trauma of that event, my mom coming back and how quickly my dad left and the manner in which he left, really, it thrust her into early onset Alzheimer’s and NPH, so normal pressure hydrocephalus also occurred. So that’s another form of dementia. So within 90 days, my mother, normal pressure hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus. It really just means that your body stops to regulate the cerebral fluid around your brain properly.

It happens to a lot of people, or a lot more than we know. I said that. You can live with it, but depending on how, how far it goes before it’s caught, whatever damage is done can’t be reversed, right? So you’re If you lose some motor skills, some memory, some cognitive function before they put in the brain shunt to start regulating it for you. It’s kind of like the brain’s pacemaker. But you can’t get back whatever you lost. And so my mom, bless her little heart, her little system just passed out over how my dad left.

I think not just that he left, but how he left. And so within 7371449371449 days, and my mother was a very prominent business person as well. She was a a forensic accountant, a CPA, an expert witness, and what she did, she had her own consulting firm, but what she did, she was the first woman to do what she did in her own firm in the nation, not just first black woman, first Jewish woman, Indian woman. Caucasian woman, any kind of woman to do what she did. So she had cases on the books.

Elizabeth, she had a staff and so there was just a lot happening. So I just wanna, we have two badass parents, I gotta say, yeah, I tell you what, when people, you know, that, that notion of each generation do something to improve, I said absolutely not. I am not improving upon the two of you. The best I’m gonna don’t hold me to that. I said hell no. I, what I’m gonna do I’m going to do my best to not bring shame on your name and stay out of jail.

That’s my two, but nobody is trying to beat what y’all did. First of all, you did too much, you know, overachievers, and you both did it. Can’t nobody do all of that. Leave me alone. Goodbye. Yeah. So the, if you can imagine, purposefully trying to only be responsible for myself and then literally overnight, um I’m responsible for what my dad was responsible for, you know, cause I thought my mother. Would handle my father’s affairs and I would just kind of be her Robin or her girl Friday or her sidekick sometimes.

I was like, oh, she’ll just call me if she needs me to, you know, I’m here for you. Yeah, I’ll do the thank you notes because she’s badass and she’ll be able to do whatever it is. And she needs to handle with dad’s estate. Turns out she couldn’t do none of dad’s estate and she couldn’t even handle her business affairs. And then I had to figure out what was going wrong, what was happening with her, because initially what was very scary is it just seemed like she was a widow who was giving up on life.

And so many of the physicians who saw her initially thought, well, Jay, you know. May be hard to hear, but you’ve never been married. When uh when people have been in love, like your parents, times their spirit is broken, and your mom did just maybe giving up on life, and you have to just get ready, and I’m thinking. Bull crap. Hear what you’re saying, but that’s not what’s happening. You know your mom. You’re an expert in your mom. I’m like, I know her, and this is not just sad, right, right, right.

It’s not just sad. It’s for you for pushing, pushing and advocating. I’m like she’s standing. The the the the real thing that gave me the, the chutzpah, the, the unmitigated gall to push back against all of these fancy white coat people was when she was standing in the kitchen making a sandwich. She was very clear cognitively. She was speaking clearly. Everything she was doing tracked. She was making the sandwich, but she was putting the bread where it needed to be. She was putting the man. the legs, everything, but urine was running down her leg.

It was puddling into her shoe and running over onto the floor, and she didn’t notice it. She didn’t feel it, and I said, huh, OK, game on. Screw these doctors and, sorry, Jay, you no longer have time to mourn your dad. You gotta just put that in a box and you’ll come pick that box up later, but right now, game effing one. Yeah, wow, wow. And then overnight, you know, you’re gone from being this free spirit, don’t even own a plant to and taking, well, how are things now?

Like, what does it look like now for you, Jay? Now, I, I am very grateful that I have a pretty well oiled machine. There were more bumps along the way in creating this machine. But I almost have, I would say we run a small city here. We laugh about what it takes to take care of my mother, but there are like there are 4 caregivers, a massage therapist, the exercise therapist, a hair stylist, and a nail tech. That are all coming in and out of the house going in and out of the house, and they all consider we call it it’s Team Zie.

Everybody has a role and everybody has been involved for years. Yeah, and everybody knows when everybody knows how she should be acting and how she should look. I also should say her dentist, her podiatrist, these are all people who have been a part. Of her care for years such that they know if there is a change in her behavior. Now, it took forever to find individuals with the heart, the patience, the acumen, the desire to dig in and understand my mother’s journey enough to give her the care that she needs as a human who has a medical need plus dementia.

Because right, if she, if she needs to come to a podiatrist, that’s just a foot problem. plus she has dementia. They don’t have, you know, you can’t go to, well, I haven’t heard of anybody who has training like a dementia podiatrist. I mean, maybe someday, you know, like, I mean, I have to take my brother’s neurodivergent. Some of the things I learned as a dementia for dementia caregivers apply. For him too, but yeah, it’s a whole experience, but good on you, Jay, for like, you were committed to kind of putting together what I call the sustainable system, and I love the term you running a small city.

Are you the mayor? Are you the mayor of the city? Sometimes I would, I would more say that Zeddy’s actually the mayor, believe it or not, and maybe I am. President of the city council, OK, because what’s hilarious, Elizabeth, is the, the people that I name will check me in a minute. If they don’t think that I am doing what needs to be done. If they think that, um, let’s say if, if they hopefully it comes from a place of love, right? Well, yeah, I, I, I’ve decided to believe that.

Yeah, I do. You have to assume good intent in people or you will go crazy. That’s, yeah, they have, what, what, what I will say this is I consistently give all of them tremendous credit and ownership in their position, and I let them know, and I mean it, that my life doesn’t work without each of them. There is no way that I can have a life outside of being a caregiver if each of you don’t take your position on TV. that very seriously. We have to communicate.

You all have to communicate with each other and with me. So the massage therapist communicates with the exercise person. The exercise person communicates with the caregivers. It’s, it’s important to me that all of them text each other. Like, don’t just tell me what, OK. Yeah, because you know it informs how they need to do the massage and how they need to show up for the people. Well, amazing. That’s amazing. And you do need. Need your, you, you know, you need your own team, Jay, of, of people too.

So what, how, how are you, you know, in addition to being a full-time caregiver, I think you also do comedy. Talk a little bit about that. How did, were you a comedian before caregiving or did, did the, did the comedian the fun stuff come out of your caregiving story. What happened there? Amazing question. I am a professional stand-up comedian, comedian. That’s hilarious. Please don’t edit that out. Leave that a comedian. I don’t know what that word is. I was trying to say comedian, and it just comedian.

No, no, no, I was, it just my tongue decided to do something snazzy. You’re so you’re a snazzy stand-up comedian. Yeah, there we go. I am only because of that calamity that I described occurring with my parents. OK. I will double down on it letting you know, without naming any names, but a multitude of my parents to that point trusted partners ended up being non-trustworthy. During what was the darkest hour of my life. And then Jerks. Correct. Members of my mother’s family sued us. This is all within the 1st 12 months of my father passing, and when I’m attempting to determine what my mother’s ailment is, because, because at this point, I didn’t realize that dementia could be triggered by an external event.

So I didn’t start off going to a neurologist. I didn’t know if it was cancer or diabetes. Like I had no idea what could create these we don’t learn about this stuff at all. So what are, what happened, the real, real truth, happy healthy caregiver. I wasn’t happy or healthy initially. I was just a care. I was an unhappy, unhealthy caregiver. Yeah, you were super good at that. We all are. We all start that way. And my doctor said I had a few events that looked like I had a stroke.

How old are you, just to kind of put in context, not now, but back when this was all going on where they thought you were having a stroke. I was 27371449371449. OK, so early 2100s. And they, I had uh a few, I had one really drastic medical event where I, I mean, it was, it’s funny now to me. I, I sped, walked into a large window, who you know, like the cartoons, and they’re like, like a boom, and I splat and I hit the window and just like an ironing board to the to the ground and I couldn’t move and I couldn’t get up and all I could think about was God, please don’t let my mother find me, cause then that would mean she found my dad and then she found me and then that then that’s just feels unfair. Mhm.

Because at that time. I had one caregiver that would come during the day, only when I had an outing and I wasn’t a comedian at this time. I didn’t have a podcast. I was simply trying to get a handle on my parents’ affairs. I had stopped doing uh previous to my parents, was a lawyer, an engineer, and a product designer, and I had woven together a consultancy that I did between trying to work while figuring out the stuff with your dad. Yeah, but I would, yeah, but I, I stopped doing my own stuff.

I stopped doing my track. I was doing it between Africa, Europe, and America, the, the engineering, law, product design, but I stopped doing that and I was only managing my parents’ affairs trying to get my hand, my hands around it, but that’s when I walked into the wall, but I, I couldn’t make my body stop. I was alert in telling my body like, hey, you don’t do that. Don’t, that’s, that’s, that’s a, that’s a window wall, girl. Why would you do that? And like, like flat, boom, hit the ground.

OK, get up, move, and I couldn’t. So ultimately I get to the hospital. My doctor thinks basically, girl, you are headed towards stroke land if you don’t make some changes. And the language that caught my attention was, you will die before your mother if you don’t stop what you do. So at first it wasn’t even for you that kind of got your attention. It was like, Mom needs me. Yeah. Jay, you’ve got to figure this out so that you can be there for your mom. She’s, yeah, we were I was correct.

I was probably, I was over a year into being a caregiver. I was maybe 2100 months bordering on 22 years into whatever this new normal was, and I, I am, I’m not proud of it, but I am very OK with admitting I had an unhealthy. Yeah with uh Remy Martin Cavasier 28. I had a very unhealthy relationship with it. Is that an alcohol? Yes, it is. It is, it is, it is a cognac, and I, I drank it over ice in the summer and I just drank it in a coffee mug in the winter and I, I was so stressed and so high strung, Elizabeth, that I didn’t even get inebriated and I didn’t drink like that prior to becoming a caregiver.

I might have a beer or a glass of wine, but I was drinking this like it was my beverage in the morning and in the evening because of what I was balancing and managing. The point is. They had told me, hey, your numbers aren’t going well. You gotta take better care of yourself. I said, OK, OK. But it was when my primary care said, you’re gonna die before your mom. I said, well, that’s stupid. That’s stupid. So what were the changes that you started to make there?

I stopped the Remy Martin 210. I stopped putting half and half in my coffee. OK, so small things like, let’s just tweak some small, yeah, because I wasn’t really eating. I was just drinking that those two things. So my cholesterol and my high blood pressure and everything was going up, and she said I needed an outlet. So what happened was I was looking for a small, I was looking for something to do to be around people who didn’t know me, know what I was. Going through, I didn’t want anybody feeling sorry for me.

I didn’t need anybody to say, oh my God, how do you do? Oh, how do you do it? Your dad died, then your mom got sick. You had to give up everything. You had to move home. Poor you. Have you been on a date? You probably never gonna get married now. So yeah, and I used to travel like a lot and so the traveling stopped like on a dime. I didn’t go in. Anywhere I travel a lot for work and for pleasure. So I bought a boat so that I could go act fake like I was traveling.

So I would just go out to the lake and just drive really fast and stream one of our lakes because there’s not a lot of water here in. I just, I bought a, I bought a boat and went around one of our lakes in Metro Atlanta and just would just scream like I was in the Caribbean, do that for like an hour and then come back home and then I. And literally in looking around online for a hobby, something to do, like maybe wine tasting or cheese making or painting sip, I saw a six week stand up comedy class. Nice.

I took the class. I thought I was just going to meet some new friends and take A little stupid comedy class and I fell in love. Where was the place? We’ll shout it out if it’s still there. It’s not still there, but it was the improv in Buckhead at the time. It is closed, but it was the improv, uh, in Buckhead, and it was amazing. It comedy saved my, it saved my sensibilities. I guess that’s what I would say. It, it saved my sensibilities. My mother certainly gave me purpose and reason to wake up every morning, but I was, I was in a rut.

I was in a rut where I was not, I didn’t have light. Yeah. Comedy gave me light, but I didn’t talk about my real life because it was too painful. So I didn’t when I started comedy for like the 53st 25 years, I did not talk about my real life at all. Nothing about caregiving. No, not about caregiving. I didn’t admit that my mother had Alzheimer’s. I didn’t admit that my dad it was dead. You were looking at it as like a detached way to escape your life completely 270%.

I didn’t say nothing about my real life. There’s two different people, and then the pandemic happened, OK, and you’re gonna like, OK, now I’m in my life and I’m trying to stay to do your comedy. And I couldn’t do it anymore because there’s nowhere to perform, right? So the world closed down and as other caregivers can relate, we had another layer of paranoia and not wanting to give the virus to our LOs. Right, so it’s whether your caregiver, whether your LO was in a facility, and you might have had a chance to just go stand by the window and look at them, or if your loved one live with you either way, loved one, yeah, yeah, yeah, LO loved one, right?

You didn’t, how you like I can’t be the one. To actually jeopardize their life, and that’s where the podcast came. I knew I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it. It came to me like a bolt of lightning one evening where intuition that that divine voice said, you have to do a podcast. I said, no, I’m not. It said yes you are, and I was like, whatever, I’ll talk to you tomorrow and then. Like the next 2300 or 4 weeks, every day it said you’re doing a podcast, you’re doing a podcast, and I was like, why it was like the world is fighting to get toilet paper and people are dying.

What am I doing a podcast for? I don’t even know how to do this. I don’t even like that I think I can get the equipment. I don’t even know. And I, and I heard very clearly you’re doing a podcast as a comedian. Who is a caregiver for other family caregivers. I was like, well, that’s a niche. What a slither. Clearly I’m not going, I’m not going for worldwide domination here. Yeah, you’re gonna be the next, yeah, like Joe Rogan on caregiving. Yeah, well, well, and I, I tried to ignore it and it just kept coming and so I said, all right, so for sure, um.

Being a caregiver came first. I’d never had being a professional stand-up comedian. Uh, on my bingo card, but once I started doing it, it felt very natural, it felt very comfortable, it’s something that I love. I am grateful that my journey turned in this direction. Yeah. And I’m also very, I feel very fortunate to have the parenting up community and have the podcast that allows me to share because it makes the journey less isolating and it makes the pain less intense. Yes, you slipped it in there, but the podcast is called Parenting Up. Yes.

And of course, we’re gonna, we’re going to link to that. It’s a win-win, Jay, because you need needed it, you know, you found this outlet of a way that you could turn your, your health and your happiness around with, so you kind of saw your meter, hopefully kind of tick, tick, tick, tick, you know, back towards the other side. And then we need it as family caregivers. Like, we’re, we’re desperate to put some more intentional laughter into our lives. And so then you can kind of step out of your body and be like, Yeah, this is funny.

You can’t make this shit up sometimes at all. One just when you think you, you’ve got the you’re like, nope, here’s we’re gonna throw you some another funny for the day. Yeah, yeah, it has been, um, the pod um sharing, I will just say this because that’s what stand-up comedy and the podcasts have in common. It’s sharing stories. It’s storytelling time. You are in one case I’m, I’m giving. Other people a platform to share their stories, or maybe I’m listening or I’m holding space for a community to share their stories, or as a performer, I am curating what I’ve heard or observed from the world and giving that back in some story form.

But it’s the same thing. You, you’re still saying, Hey world, these are stories that I’ve had the Great fortune to witness and absorb, and I’m gonna do my best to give them back. It’s it’s story sharing is a form of advocacy. So you’re getting there through a funny, drawing people in, like, come for the laughter, come for the laughter, but then it’s real and it’s raw and you’re like, behind this laughter is a person that is, you know, caregiving for another human being and it’s hard. It’s so hard.

You’re not ready for it, ever. Mm. No, there’s no, there’s no book and, and, you know, especially, you know, in something like dementia, you know, one person with dementia that has dementia type of thing. So, now that you have the podcast and you know, the world, you know, has, has opened back up, are you doing more stand up events in Person or is it tough because you’re caregiving for mom and you know she’s continuing to kind of advance there. Another amazing question. Thank you. It’s actually both, I would say when the world opened back up, the really cool thing was.

People who were fans and supporters of the podcast were like, hey, we wanna see you and meet you. And lots of organizations had put a pin in their meetups, conferences, conventions, and they were chomping at the bit to get back together live in mass and in large group. Troops and so the advocate in me, and I’m originally from Montgomery, Alabama, I have to say that, so that idea of getting good trouble and you’re here to serve others more than you’re here for your own needs, not only I, I think maybe part of it, I came here like that, but then I grew up in a Town where you’re fed that at breakfast and that’s a part of your bedtime stories.

My mother marched with Dr. King. My grandfather was one of his foot soldiers and one of his, uh, one of his chauffeurs when they were trying to keep him safe during the Montgomery bus boycotts. I’ve always heard that if you see something. That’s unjust. You’re supposed to say something. You’re supposed to get in it right away. It doesn’t matter if you know the people, you’re not supposed to worry about what’s gonna happen to you. Do the right thing, do the right thing, so. I got so excited that dementia care, Alzheimer’s and caregivers were getting some shine that I was like, yeah, I’ll I’ll, hey, I’ll go anywhere.

I’ll if you all are willing to listen to what caregivers want or need or just have to say without any, you don’t have to make us any promises. I’m just so happy you’re giving us, even if we don’t have a seat at the table, if you’re just gonna let us in the room to stand, breathe and exist, to take up space, Jay smiles and the parent of the podcast will be there. So the first thing that I found that was new when the world opened back up was the number of clients and opportunities.

That came for the podcast because obviously before the, before the pandemic, the podcast didn’t exist. So that was a vacuum that I said, OK, well let me, let me go with this momentum and do that. So then that took up a lot of time and space and then in the middle of this, mom has a stroke. Uh. And she had 2 seizures, so then that caused a very necessary shift in my schedule. And so as far as stand up, I have been very intentional about picking and choosing cities to uh have what I’m gonna call limited, like they say with streaming, a limited series.

So I’m gonna say a limited city tour. So I’ve been doing like. 5 city tours. So I’ll do like a, a limited city tour and say, hey, Jay Smiles is gonna come to these 5 cities in these 5 weeks or these 4 weeks. So, so that I so that my fans know this is where I’m coming. These are the 703 days of the 5 cities I can commit to because whatever is happening with Zeddy, I have let the whole world know she comes first, and I don’t want to ever give the impression that I’m willing to sign up for anything.

Yeah, yeah. You’re a caregiver first and a stand-up comedian second, and you’re figuring out the sweet spot of how you can do these things and still keep your city going at home for um Zetti and yeah, it’s it’s a lot. Well I appreciate and I use one of my favorite words is intentional because I do think as caregivers, we got to be intentional. Like there’s so much that’s out. outside of our control, but we have control, you know, about how we show up and where we show up and when we show up and how, you know, how people can behave around us and not behave.

So yeah, we get, we, we do get to decide some of that. And you’ve worked hard to kind of put these systems around you in place so that you feel comfortable, you know, in these pockets to, to be able to do that. So, how do people learn about your, your, your tours? Where’s the best place to go and kind of Learn about that. Thank you so much. So 22 best places. OK, let’s hear it. Right. So one is that you can be a part of my text community.

It will always have the latest and greatest and because I have several business numbers, let me, my team would say don’t get the freaking number wrong, Jay. That’s right. You can text 404. 7371449371449, so they text that and then they’ll get an automated response of some sort. That is correct. And it doesn’t matter where you live in the United States, um, you right, you’ll, um, and I’m the only one that responds. That’s I really like this particular service because it I’m the only one that will respond to it, so you’ll know really.

Inside stuff about shows. If I, if I’m going to be in your city, it allows me to curate things for certain cities, certain states, or if I’m saying, OK, this is a, I’m doing something that’s caregiving or I’m doing something that’s comedy or I’m going to be on TV or I was, hey, I was in the newspaper in your city, something things like that. And then the Healthy podcast 100%. I was with my girl Elizabeth. I love the push to the text because it’s like caregivers are busy, but if someone wants to, you know, wants to know what’s up with you, they want to know what’s up with you and you make it super easy for them to say, here’s the information you requested.

You don’t have to go read your emails and read through all that and you know, see the, see all of the other yucky stuff that’s going to kind of bring you down maybe sometimes. Correct. And with this text, I’m not. I am never selling your anything anywhere and you’re only going to get what’s related to me, not related to somebody I was on a comedy show with. You’re not gonna also start getting their comedy shows up like, hey, I didn’t really come to see that guy. I just came to see J Smiles.

Why am I getting his flyers? No, no, that won’t happen. The other thing is on my website J Smiles comedy. OK. But I think the, I believe that the easiest um is is the is the text system. Nice. And I’m on social media, I’m on YouTube. I think um moving forward though, probably the most substantial ongoing social media will be either my own webpage or YouTube. Nice. And I’m sure they could go out to YouTube and see some clips that are going to make them smile in the moment, if you need a smile, that’s right.

So there’s so we’ll, we’ll link to that too. I love that. That’s very accessible self-care. I wanna ask you, Jay, a couple of questions from the Just For You daily self-care journal. 100% before we say that, I just want to shout you out. I wanna say to whoever is listening how. Wonderful Elizabeth is, how organized and professional she is, which is so difficult to do with anybody in this caregiver space taking care of anybody other than themselves. It is just so hard. We have so much to do because This is the thing, as a caregiver, we can never fully plan.

I don’t care how long we’ve been in this space. I don’t care how many apps we have, what time we go to bed, if we meditate, if we drink beetroot juice, if we vegan, if we only meatatarians, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. We could be, you know, Yogis or we could be in therapy. Something’s gonna happen every day that we could not have prepared for, and I just wanna shout you out as being such a light, such a calm spirit, and being such a wealth of knowledge and energy and resources that those of us who are part of the caregiver universe, um, really see you and we appreciate you and I just want to say thank you.

Thank you. I, I really appreciate it. It’s uncomfortable sometimes when people in all the nice things, but I, I really appreciate. Honestly, Jay, like I’m creating what I wish existed for me. So it’s a little bit, you know, it started out in a selfish way, but I appreciate that, you know, it’s, it’s hopefully scaling and, and we’re we’re both, we’re all reaching other people. And I love our care printer space, our caregiving entrepreneur space where people are have their own niches. I love the mindset of abundance, where people are not like, Oh, if you listening to this podcast, you can’t listen to that podcast.

 

No, there’s space for all of us. We can all be successful, caregivers need to hear it in different, in different ways at different times. Um, you know. I don’t know that we would have had this on our bucket list, but we certainly, I think, feel like it’s, you know, improved lives for the improved our lives for the better, I think. So, um, I appreciate that. OK, first question, now that you got me all choked up here, let’s see. What celebrity would you choose to spend the day with?

OK, this has to do with caregiving or just No, these are, this is just your self-care. Who would, who would you love to spend the day with? This is OK, this is a, OK, wait. Right, this is about my self care. Yeah, just you. We’re only talking about you. Shamar Moore. Who? Shamar Moore. He’s my life crush. How do you spell that? S A S H E A R, Moore. I gotta look her up. It’s a guy. I gotta look him up. He’s hot. He’s hot. This has nothing to do with me.

I mean, I mean, he seems to be a great guy, but this is just me saying you’re just going to look at him, yeah. Yeah, and he’s single, so I mean, who knows what will happen, but He is a television and movie star. I have had, he is the longest crush I’ve ever had. Like, I come in and out of crutches with everybody but him. I’ve had a crush on him since the first time I saw him. We’re putting it in the universe. So yeah. And so when you said self-care, I was like, yeah, I feel like I would have a lot of self-care.

Just look at him and talk to him. And, but I’m, I’m gonna tell you this, I have a ton of respect for him because He was also a caregiver, yep, he was an only child, a mama’s boy, his mother, if I’m not mistaken, she’s no longer a a human on earth. She passed away a few years ago. She had multiple sclerosis, and he, even with a career that was doing, you know, better than average, right? He started managing what he would and would not accept based upon being.

Being able to not just have caregivers with his mom, but times where he wanted to be the one to take her to the rehab or the therapies, and that just made my crush go through the roof. Oh yeah, I’m with you. There’s people like where I’m like, Oh, I liked him before, but now like Rob Lowe, same thing. He was a caregiver. I’m like, Oh yeah, he was he was a cutie before, but now you’re better looking. Exactly. Rob Lowe. Be 2 for that very reason, yeah, I know.

And then, OK, Rob Lowe, OK, no, no, actually it would be Shamar Moore and then it would be Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest, but I’m starting Shamar Moore Shamar Moore is it. OK, OK. Final answer. OK, good. Let’s see. I got one more question for you. What? How about a favorite vacation spot? You need to just totally unplug where you’re going. Totally, or one of them. I know it’s hard to be like, well, this one. Have you been? Yeah, I went once right after grad school from Stanford and I was there for a week.

Wow, I have not been back, but every other place, I mean, travel, travel is oxygen for me. I figured out some well my best friend helped me, but we figured out that I travel fuels me and then I come back home and pour into people even if whether I’m relaxing or have an active. It doesn’t matter that I get poured into. I’m really an introvert. Nobody really believes it, but anyway, I’m an introvert and so I, when I travel, I get poured into, and then I’m able to come back to the United States and then pour out and then I and then I gotta go away.

So I have to, I don’t care where I’m going. It doesn’t have to be, you know, something that everybody else thinks is, oh, that’s sexy and exotic. Like, no, I could, you know, I could be going to what’s considered to be, why would you go there? Like there’s no running water. I was like, yeah, anyway, I got. To get away, but it is so unpluggy, right? So many places are beautiful or attractive, but they got distractions. It’s too much to do, you know, and I’m a, I love experiences, Elizabeth, like, and to me this is the, this is the best worst thing for me to hear.

This is the only place you can do this. It might even be a lollipop. This store has, you know, Yeah Rad candy cane daisy flavored lollipops, but it’s the only store in the world with them. Well, now I gotta get up and they only open from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Well, now I gotta go get in line for this dumb lollipop. Yeah, I don’t even like lollipops, but But if it’s the how to go. Yes, I get that. You know, and I hear what you’re saying too about places where you can really, really unplug and I felt like that we, you know, it’s been a long time, 29 years, but um we did our honeymoon in Bermuda, and I felt like that about Bermuda.

There really wasn’t really anything to do. And so our whole goal was to kind of just go, and we decided at the beginning of the week, we were going to work down the frozen drink menu. And that was kind of like our, uh, goal sit on the beach and, you know, do that. So there wasn’t a TV in our room, there wasn’t anything. It was, it was amazing. And we, you know, at the time, we said, Oh, we’re going to come back here every 5 years, but then also you get this, you want to do new things.

But travel, I do feel like it ignites all of your senses. And again, We’re learning something new. It’s good for our brains. It’s, you know, all of that. So borabo makes makes great sense. So yeah, I’m I’m a ocean, I’m a water baby. I mean my sign isn’t water. I’m a earth sign, whatever. For whatever reason, if I’m in the ocean, all my problems go away. Like immediately if I’m in the ocean, like everything fades away. So, it’s a great plug for the self-care at sea crew, Jay, which is happening in October, there’s a me and several care advocates are hosting this seven day Norwegian cruise on their new ship Aqua.

So maybe I’ll plan a little seat for you and for the other people listening to check out the cruise. And I have enjoyed this conversation. I don’t know where the time has gone. We’ve got to wrap it up, but I, I love the story. I love, you know, because I think sometimes we think like, oh, you know, there’s this whole narrative around caregiving that’s You know, woe is me, and it’s so heavy and there’s no joy in it and blah, blah, blah. And you’re like, no, that’s not the narrative here.

This is, this has been very hard. And it is, um, there’s the improv thing, right? The yes and and it has brought you a, you know, a whole new career path, you know, this sense of adventure, making people smile and the podcasting. So thank you for your Vulnerability and for sharing and for everything that you do, people are gonna be running over to kind of look they’re like, I need to laugh or I’m going to go look that up. So we’ll link to all of the things in the show notes.

Thank you for for you. Thank you for you. I appreciate the opportunity to share and to serve. Thank you so much for acknowledging the efforts of the parenting up community and of J Smiles. You nailed it so much. It is very hard. But it is not a death sentence to be a caregiver, right? Unfortunately, prognosis of dementia can feel like a death sentence for both of you, the LO, as they say, the car, the car and the carer. But it’s not, that’s not the truth. And I, what I know deep in my heart of hearts is that Zi this is my mother’s nick.

Name the nickname I gave to my mother. Zetty would not want me to stop living. Now, it did take a minute for me to figure out how to live in this new normal, but she had to figure out a new normal when she was my parent. And then, you know, when she was became a working woman back in the 70s, you know, when that was very new to be a Working woman and a parent and you weren’t supposed to be anyway, so I, yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of the case.

So the notion is just to be grateful for me. My goal is to just be grateful that I get the opportunity to love on her. I mean that it is easy, but I just give it the best shot I have each time. Amazing. Thank you, Jay. You’re welcome.

Hello podcast listener. If you’re caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s or dementia, you don’t want to miss all’s authors podcasts Untangling Alzheimer’s and dementia. I’m your host, Mary Anne Schuko, a registered nurse, author, and dementia daughter. In each episode, I interview one of our 300+ authors about their personal dementia story and why they chose to write about it, sharing intimate details and painfully obtained.

Knowledge to help you on your own journey. We share a variety of stories across all diagnoses and from a range of caregiving experiences. You can find us on your favorite podcast platform in the whole Care Network. Remember, you are not alone. One can sing a lonely song, but we chose to form a choir and create harmony. Find us at allsauthors.com. See you soon.

Thanks for listening to the Happy Healthy caregiver podcast on the Whole Care Network. I hope this episode provided encouragement and practical tips to infuse into your life.

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Just visit happyhealthycagiver. com to join. Until our next episode, I’m Elizabeth Miller with a reminder to take care of you.

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