It wasn’t the self-care that was going to be the answer. I wasn’t going to find the perfect self-care to fix my burnout. I had to look deeper and one of the things that I discovered was that guilt was running my life.

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. Thanks for being here and listening to the Happy Healthy caregiver podcast. I value supporting and educating family caregivers, and this podcast is a great way to scale this information to those who are thirsty for it. We have 63 million family caregivers in the US who are doing all the things, and I want this podcast to be a part of how they recover or mitigate burnout and connect to our care community.

Telling a friend, family member, neighbor, co-worker, or random person that you meet in your day. About this podcast is how we expand our reach and grow our audience. This in turn also helps support me as a solo printer because then happy healthy caregiver becomes more attractive to new partner collaborations and sponsorships as we grow our community, email subscribers and podcast listeners. So perhaps, while you’re listening to this podcast with Jeannette Yates today, think of someone you can share it with or if you can’t think of someone specific, maybe consider Sharing it on your social platforms such as your Instagram story, as it may touch somebody you didn’t even know could benefit.

Thanks in advance. I want to thank our episode sponsor Rare Patient Voice. Did you know that you can earn cash in exchange for sharing your opinion? Rare Patient Voice or RPV helps connect researchers with patients and family caregivers for over 700 diseases and conditions. RPV provides the opportunity to voice opinions and improve medical products and services while earning the caregivers and their families cash rewards. If you’re interested, join the RPV panel at rarepatientVoice. com/happyhealthy caregiver. I have a 4-star book read that I want to recommend to you.

This book is called Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall. We read it from my book club or listened to it and it was a hit. This book is about a farm family and the story toggles between the past and the present. There’s a love triangle between a past and a present. Love, and you’re gonna feel conflicted over who you’re hoping the main character will end up with. There’s also a tragic moment in the book that informs how things get so shaken up in the main character Beth’s life and many secrets that unfold throughout the pages, especially as it ties up at the end.

If you read and were a fan of where the crawdads sing in particular, I think that you will enjoy reading Broken Country. The favorite thing I want to share with you today is called Water Wipes. For many years, I was showering and washing my hair every day, and then I learned that I didn’t need to wash it every day and I realized that many people don’t. What a huge time saver this was as a caregiver who was trying to do all the things. Washing, drying, and styling your hair takes so much time.

Sometimes I do shower, but I don’t wash my hair. Other times I have to skip the shower completely and have found that these water wipes are my BFF. They’re the perfect thing to make me feel clean and there’s, there’s in the baby version, but this is the Adult version, so the extra-large XL water wipes, and I use them sometimes too for after a workout if I have to go somewhere quickly, sometimes after a workout I just change into something really quick and I use the water wipes before I get into my fresh clothes.

And what I like about them is that they aren’t wimpy wipes. They’re unscented textured wipes with 99.9% purified water and a drop of fruit extract. They’re thick enough and large enough for adults, and they don’t dry your skin out and they’re safe to use. In all the sensitive spots that require good hygiene, and many people do use them for incontinence care too. I didn’t know about them when we were looking for wipes for my mom or I may have suggested them. However, you do need to know that they are not flushable wipes.

I purchased the 3-pack from Amazon. I keep one in my bathroom. I take them on trips with me too, and they’re not gonna break the bank, like 3 packs of 30 wipes in each pack is around $10. Let’s meet our caregiver in the spotlight. Jeannette Yates spent Decades caring for her mom, an experience that inspired her to write a book and host a podcast helping adult children caring for aging parents feel good, not guilty. In this episode, Jeannette and I talk about two powerful emotions that we feel every caregiver faces, guilt and grief.

And then we unpack how to let go of perfectionism, how to embrace self-compassion, and how to find peace in good enough caregiving. I hope you enjoy the show. Hi, Jeanette. Welcome to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast. Hey, thanks so much for having me. This is so exciting. I know. I’m excited to get into all the things with you. I had to kind of like pare down my questions. I was like, this is going to be multiple hours long. We can’t have that. We want to keep it doable for the listeners to listen to.

But we always start with something from the happy healthy caregiver jar. So I wanted to kind of get your thoughts on what we got that comes out here today. It says, the only BS. I need in my life is breakfast and squats. I, when I was collecting these, I was really in the physical self-care too. So some of them kind of shine through when I first with the first edition of them. But are you a breakfast eater? It depends. It really depends. I try to like honor, do a better job of honoring my hunger.

And so I used to like eat breakfast after I worked out. Which a lot of the times meant I was hungry, but sometimes it didn’t. And so now I’m just trying to believe that breakfast is a good thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. I started doing like, cause I didn’t eat before I would work out, especially training, and then I listened to this Mel Robbins podcast with this expert, you know, and she said that that’s a big disservice for women that we need to eat protein before we do our strength training.

So I’ve been doing these protein coffees now before, making them myself so I know what’s in them. is also, but yeah, I do a nice coffee. And yeah, I’m big into a yogurt bowl. I love a good yogurt bowl in the morning. So I know I had a run of yogurt bowls. Like I was a fanatic. Yeah, the Greek yogurt bowl is a great way to get in the protein. So if that’s something you’re trying to do, yeah, it’s, it’s amazing. And then the squats is my probably my least favorite thing, but yeah, the, the big thing is that we don’t need more BS in our life, I think.

There’s a lot of BS as caregivers. Well, you’ve cared for your mom most of your life, Jeannette, and you were only 1503 years old when your mom received her diagnosis. What kind of diagnosis, which was your mom’s name and what kind of diagnosis did she? So her name was Mary Jane. Mary Jane, sweet little Southern name. A lot of her family called her Jane or Janie Girl. And in 1984, she was diagnosed with a disease called myasthenia gravis. It is an auto. Yeah, it’s an autoimmune disease that affects people neuromuscularly, uh, a lot of ways.

And so it doesn’t, like if you’re listening to this and you hear this and you’re like, oh my gosh, I know somebody that has like, don’t freak out a lot of times, it is very manageable and very, you know, there’s lots of different, you know, like, Sure. Yeah, I think of the word. Yeah, my mom just happened to have like uh a really progressive case. Now she, you know, she did have it for, you know, you know, she did have it for 40 years, and she had a lot of good, good seasons and bad seasons and, and then, you know, obviously towards The last 10 or 2100 years, it was pretty intense and pretty scary, but for, you know, there was a lot of time where medications and treatments were manageable and things like that.

So, yeah. Well, and how did you, so how did your caregiving role evolve? I mean, you’ve been through the different waves of caregiving as a young caregiver, as a, you know, young adult caregiver. And then into your adult years and your mom years, like how, how has that changed over the decades of care that you’ve provided? Right. So, you know, like I like I talk about in my book and, and when we’ve talked before, probably I’ve talked about this, that, you know, what caregiving looks like when you’re 23 is different than what it looks like at different times.

And you know, in the, in, you know, your loved one’s life. And so, you know, I didn’t identify as a caregiver, as a child. I was just trying to be a good little girl and do what my mom needed me to do. And so, um, but one of the interesting things that I recognized like within the last 23 years is like one of the first tasks I had was to help her count out her medication. That she had to take several times a day. So I would sit at the table with her, shout it out, I would double check it, you know, just to make sure, or vice versa.

And then, of course, 23 years later, I’m sitting in her house, putting her pills in the little thing for the, you know, and it’s 23 pills a day, different types, you know, but you’re wanting, you’re double checking, you’re making. Making sure there’s 23 medications a day, you know, it’s just, it’s like, oh, wow, this, this is just, it’s still a thing, you know, all these years later. But, you know, she was married to my stepfather, who did the best he could, you know, so while I wasn’t the only caregiver, I definitely had a significant caregiving role because he had his own, a lot of his own stuff going on.

And then they were still married um until after I got married, and so he was around, I think as her illness got worse and then he had some of his own health problems, it became difficult for them to be together. Because they were together, I feel like I was able to, you know, get married, have my kids. The whole time I was in college though, like they lived, you know, sometimes I lived with them. So I was a helper to some extent I was A caregiver definitely was in charge of a lot of the home care type things, taking care of the house, like, you know, things that normally you might just help out with as being, you know, a college kid living at home.

It was like, if you don’t do it, it’s not getting done. So there was that. And then after my parent, my mom and stepdad got divorced, um, I became more, I became the primary caregiver, the only caregiver, the primary, but there really wasn’t anybody else. And then, so my youngest was born in 53 and she was diagnosed with cancer in 25, and then from there on, it was pretty much. Your mom was diagnosed with cancer. sorry, yes, yes, my son is fine. He was like, I, I was like that’s news to me if I didn’t know that.

Oh yeah, so in addition to having the myasthenia gravis, she also was diagnosed with cancer. Wow. Fine. And then from then on it was kind of like that slow roll downhill and then it just picked up speed as it got closer to the end. So yeah, I know that’s kind of a long thing, but no, I mean, listen, 211 years, yeah, it’s like, exactly, but was there, were there times when you felt like juggling that care for your mom was particularly challenging? Was there a phase where you’re like, OK, I thought that was hard.

Now this is really hard, and or is it just all hard? Well, yeah, I mean, I, when I was younger, I didn’t know there was anything different, right? So like, I knew I was different from my friends and then even like I have some of the same friends I had in 23, like I’m blessed lifelong friends, and they say that they know, I mean, they could also tell that my life was different and just things were different and so like, um, but I didn’t know any different. I think um It wasn’t until I was really trying to establish my own, you know, like I was trying to be a grown up, like I was trying not to live at home.

I was trying not to, you know, that I really was like, oh, this is, you know, Part of it was like already second nature, because she’d been sick my whole life, so part of me, it wasn’t as bad as it might be for somebody else. But then as things just, you know, as I’m trying to raise my children, she’s getting sicker, you know, I’m having to teach my children about the difference between their You know, their sick grandma, what she can and can’t do versus their other grandma that can run around and, you know, like just have all these hard conversations.

So that kind of made me more aware of my role as a caregiver than perhaps I had been before. And of course, as she, by the time my kids were in middle school and high school, she was starting to need a ton of attention, a ton of care, and that was when I just got really like, almost unbearable. Yeah, both of us, you know, I was, I was thinking about myself mostly at the time, but I mean, she was obviously at the end of her rope too, which was part of the problem.

I know. And then you become our person that gets the brunt of that as well. You know, I find one of the things that I respect and I really glean from your content, Jeannette, on social and your writing and your podcast is that you are really in touch with your emotions. Like, you say stuff and I’m like, yes, that’s what it feels like, um, especially in your writing. I feel like the way that you write about stuff. So definitely, we’re going to point people towards the book, but you also talk about the things that are a lot of people don’t want to talk about, a lot of family caregivers don’t want to talk about, and you’re like, Nope, we’re going to just go right into those dark corners and we’re going to really unpack them.

And one of the biggest ones I think is caregiver guilt. How did that, how do you describe guilt? How do you deal with it? How do you manage it? How do you coach other people to kind of Do you have some things that you, you know, that kind of come out of all of your content that’s related to the guilt that you could pass on to some of the listeners? I mean, yes, yeah, um, uh, yeah, but I’ll try to give just just like a general overview.

Yeah, tease them, them to go to like this is, you know, everything I share to your point is like these are. Um, things that I have walked through and had to process on my own, and I, you know, one of the reasons I share the way I do is because like if I had this dirty, ugly, horrible feeling. Um, and I’ve processed it and got through it and, and, you know, I get, I get curious about my feelings too, and so I tend to like dig into like why, why, why, which is always, it is, but like sometimes it can be exhausting.

But I feel, I feel like if, if I’m strong enough to share that feeling, even if it makes me You look like an idiot or whatever, then maybe it’ll help somebody else. So that’s were you always that way, or did you have to kind of practice the vulnerability? Well, you know what, it’s interesting because when I first started thinking about writing the book, I’ve always been a writer. I wrote my first piece in the 6th grade. It was called Jeanette Gazette. I’ve always been a writer too.

I wrote a book called The Magic Umbrella. I got to find it somewhere. Yeah. So, you know, like writing is how I process my emotions and process my feelings. So in different, you know, I’ve done that. But, you know, I would tell my therapist all the time, like, this is a, this is, you know, I’m going to share this someday, but I’m not going to be when my mom’s along. And I was able to publish it while she was still alive and she never read it, but, but she knew I had written it and I talked to her about some of the things that I had written in it.

And so, you know, that’s, that’s one of the things is like, I’ve always been like this, but I wasn’t always strong enough to be able to say the hard things out loud. When it comes to guilt, the how I started, why I started talking about it is because, you know, we we talked about self-care at the beginning. Well, in the middle of, you know, raising my children and everything, one of the things that I did was I became a certified Pilates instructor. I was quite popular if I do say so myself.

I had a lot of clients, I, you know, taught. You know, it, you know, several YMCAs around town and some country clubs and, you know, I taught 10 classes a week. I really loved it. I was running all the time. I ran races. You were fit. Uh yeah, I was, and I had, I taught a Bible study, I was, I led a prayer group, of course I was journaling and writing the whole time about all of these things. And so whenever I was feeling burned out as a caregiver and I would go to, you know, figure, you know, Google how to, you know, I would hear about all the self-care I should be doing.

I’m like, what are you talking like I’m already and so I would just add another thing, you know, like I would be like, oh well, I’m not doing that because yeah, you know, maybe it’s better skincare or maybe it’s more a different workout or maybe it’s a different way of eating or you know whatever. I just kept piling it on and of course I was just. Getting more stressed out, more exhausted, and more confused. And so trying to figure this out, knowing that like self-care was important, like it is important exercise, it is important to fuel your body appropriately, all these things, you know, in my, you know, I’m a person of faith, it’s important to pray, but like, I’m like, hey, I’m about maxed out with all of these. Yeah.

Um, you’re checking them off, the things, yeah. It wasn’t the self-care that was going to be the answer. I wasn’t going to find the perfect self-care to fix my burnout. I had to look deeper and one of the things that I discovered was that guilt was running my life. It was keeping me from was it coming up like, like, was it? Well, it just like For me, you know, my relationship with my mom was on the one hand, a very good strong relationship and on the other hand, quite co-dependent.

The sicker she got, the scaredder she got, and the times, the interactions we had were just uh less and less healthy. I never said no to my mom. For years, for 30 of the 40 years or maybe even 35 of the 40 years, like saying no, we, we’ve got to do something else. No, this isn’t safe, no this isn’t, you know, we need to come up with a different plan. You can’t keep living here and where she was living. I never say like no, I can’t come over, like it’s not until like 113 years, 5 or 6 years like I never, I came when she asked.

I did what needed. I never said no. Um, and then have that work for you? It was, well, it was part of the problem because, you know, there was no space for me in her life that was full of her illness, and I was just, and as much as we both wanted to have a relationship with each other, it was really just like, what can you do for me? And then I was like, what do I need to do for you? Like, you know, it was literally you were her caregiver than her daughter.

Yeah, and so, but I felt guilty about any time that I had to, you know, like, oh I gotta go do this with the kids, but I’ll be right back, or oh, you know, you know, so it was a lot of, there was a lot of guilt there, so it came up like that and like what kind of daughter doesn’t, you know, want to do this? What kind of daughter doesn’t want to do this? And then of course you meet other caregivers who of course don’t have the same circumstance you do, but you assume that if they’re doing this, you should.

be doing this, you know, and then so you’re comparing to other people who, yeah, and then of course the guilt was, you know, I write about caregiver guilt and I talk about caregiver guilt, but the guilt wasn’t just around caregiving because if I said, if I did say no mom, you know, my mother-in-law is going to come over tonight instead of me because I got to go do something else because of course I would always have to come up with a plan, you know, I’d always have to, you know, then.

If I’m saying no to her so I can say yes to somebody else, or I’m saying yes to her, that means I’m sometimes I’m saying no to my kids, no to my friends, no to my job, no to my husband, you know, no to myself, and there, so there was always something to feel guilty about, even if I was like, for some reason being the perfect caregiver, which, you know, doesn’t exist. But even if I felt really great about caregiving that day or that week, I felt really crappy about the kind of parent I was or the kind of wife I was.

or how I’ve, you know, felt about my body that week or whatever, you know, there was always something you can’t be all the things, right, right. So the guilt really was a big piece for me. And so to me, why it’s so important to talk about it is because I feel like it’s sort of the linchpin that if if you can kind of learn about, get more curious about your guilt, learn about why you have it, certainly there’s still going to be some, you know, times where you feel that feeling.

Come up, but you can be just like, I see you. Yeah, he, um, yeah, hey there, but also I’ve got this, you know, I’m making this um not based on guilt, but based on the the circumstances actually here, which for me as a caregiver, that was a big game changer because I was allowing, you know, my mom had her kind of abilities until just a few months before she passed away. So, um, I was just allowing her to make decisions and I would say, well, you know, you don’t have to agree with her decisions, they’re her decisions, you just have to support her, which was fine for a while, and I don’t disagree with that like mindset in general, except for when her decision started to be one, she didn’t consider what it was doing to anybody else.

It was like this is what I need and you’re gonna figure it out because that’s the deal we made is, yeah, the partnership. You’re gonna fill in the gaps wherever I can’t do it. And for a while, that was like, you know, do you feel like for a lot of time. You were showing up for your mom and she was like, Well, Jeannette’s got it all together. She’s doing OK. She’s figuring out, like, were there points where you had to kind of, I kind of talk about how you have to let the crack show with your person, especially if they can reason with you, um, in order for things to get lighter, in order for them to be like more of a partnership.

Do you feel like she thought, like you have this persona? I’m laughing because what happened was, what had happened was, I wasn’t, I know this will shock you, Elizabeth to know that like I, I was an open book. So like she knew when I was maxed out, and she would be very concerned and she would say, you are doing way too much. But what she meant was you’re doing way too much for other people and the other things. Yeah, just keep my stuff. There was no idea that like it was what I was having to do as her caregiver that was part of Of, you know, why I was burned, you know, burned out.

Like it was just like, oh, well, yeah, like, you cleaned your house and I’m like, Mom, I’m not a neat freak. I’m just trying to get the gross crap out of the toilet. You need a housekeeper. Yeah, yeah, like I’m not, yeah, you know, it would just be like, you know, she would deflect my mom was a master. I mean, I feel like our moms were very common and sounds like they were very, they were OK with receiving the help, which kind of. Like the opposite problem.

They’re like, my parents, not let me help. Yeah, yes, exactly. And they were like, no, you know, but it’s, I know we, we shared some Paul Winn wrote an article about being a perfect caregiver on ARP and I’ll link to that because your photos and some. That was so funny because I didn’t even know you were gonna be in that article and then I opened it up and I was like, oh, I think, but I shared, he reaches out sometimes I share some names with him. So if you’re listening, hi Paul, because he knows we talked to a lot of different caregivers and we can kind of point him when he has a good story idea.

Uh, and he does such a great job writing this, but we’ll link to this ARP one, but, you know, I just, I feel like there’s, I say sometimes in my talks that I give the programs that there’s nothing I can say that’s going to make you feel less guilty. Like we are, it is human nature to feel guilty and we want things to be different. Like we want, we want to be able to do all these things and help all these people. But then there’s this reframing, which is what I’m thinking that.

Sounds like you’re talking about like, you saw that the feelings of guilt were coming up, but then you had an internal dialogue with yourself, like trusting yourself that you can make smart decisions. Well, there was that and it took a long time to build up that confidence and build up, you know, another thing that I think is important when it comes to taking care of ourselves and, and not getting burned out and all of those things is, you know, setting boundaries and you can’t set boundaries if you feel guilty, because the You can set any boundary you want and it’s you’re just, you are gonna be the one that mows it right down as soon as somebody pushes against it.

It’s not gonna be you wanna keep your boundary, yeah, and so was the boundary like what was an example of a boundary that you had with your kids or your husband or your mom or somebody? Well, so just, you know, for my children and husband, if they happen to come across this episode, you know, in full disclosure, we are still working on. Having boundaries that are, you know, effective. But one of the things that I had to just learn how to do, and it was very hard, the guilt was so strong, because how do you tell your mother that basically is all by herself, she is, you are the only person that know you just can’t do anymore, you just can’t do it.

And for her because of her own trauma, she heard, I don’t believe you need it. That’s what she heard. So she heard, I don’t believe you need help, so I’m not going to give you more. And what I had to learn to say to her is, no, I believe you need more help. I know you need more. What I’m telling you is I can’t give you any more. This is all I can do. This is all I can do. And to learn to be able to say that and to have to say it over and over and over again.

And then of course, you’re not just walking out after you say that and do nothing, you’re, you’re looking for other resources, you’re trying to figure out other ways for her to be safe and healthy, right? Yeah, you know, I get a lot of heat for, you know, saying that, you know, I, of course, I wanted my mom to be happy, especially towards the end. But we were in a place where she was literally going, she was almost bedbound before she went into the nursing home, but she was technically able to get in and out of her bed if she needed to, and not always if she needed to, but, you know, yeah to say she wasn’t bedbound.

And then We had to when she was in the nursing home, it was like, or in the rehab before she got put in the nursing home, she was like, I, we’ll figure it out. And I said, Mom, we’re at the end of the road. This is the end of the line. We have, we have waited and waited and waited and kept you out of assisted living and kept you out of, you know, gotten you out of rehabs as quickly as we can and we’ve done all this and we’ve done.

You know, it’s, and I knew that this was her worst nightmare. She had told me, I don’t want to be in a nursing home. I don’t want to be in a nursing home. I don’t want to be in a nursing home. Um, but due to the nature of her illness, due to the, her, her level of need of care, I had to say to her, mom, I love you, and I know this is not going to make you happy, but I’ve, I’ve got to keep you safe.

And I’d love it if you were happy and safe. But If I have to choose one, I’m going to have to choose safe this time. Whereas we had kind of sometimes like chosen safe enough, you know, yeah, yeah, it’s risky, but yeah, yeah, we’re gonna figure it out and we’ll hodgepodge our way, we’ll jingle our way through this situation. Yeah, keep you out of a nursing home. And then eventually it was just like, no, we can’t do this. And I get some pushback on that from time to time, and I understand, but I mean, they’re they’re not in your shoes.

You make the best decisions with the information. And to your point, like this is not just been like a quick little stint. This is your life, years of your life. And you know, somebody once said to me, like in that phase of life of of feeling guilty, they were like, your mom has already lived this phase of her life. Like you get to You get to live, you know, 40 year old Jeanette or, you know, I remember hearing you say that before and it’s interesting because I that is, I love it and I and I and I want that to be true and I just know there’s so many caregivers walking around saying, nope, can’t do it, can’t do it.

Yeah, no, it’s my job. It’s my job. It’s my job to take care of them. It’s my job. Yeah. And these are, these are hard choices that we make. And to your point, it wasn’t an all or nothing. It wasn’t like, oh, I’m, I’m YOLO, I’m out of here, you know, but it’s, it’s like, no. I still make calls from the nursing home because they know me so well and I’m they’re on my speed dial and I’m on that so we have a relation. That’s one of the things that was one of her fears was being like the people that she knew growing up that got put in a nursing home that didn’t have any family.

They were all by themselves and these horrible images and there are a lot of horrible images like you have to be an advocate and we’ve been there we were in those places too for like the short term. There were times where I’m like, yeah, I’m getting you out of here. I believe you know we’re doing it. But, you know, one of the things that, um, I talk about too is like, I wanted to, did not, you know, my mom’s been dying since I was a little girl.

I’ve been worried about her dying since I was a little girl and it was put on my shoulders that if I didn’t help, she was going to die. If I didn’t help, she was going to die. Um, that was a lot of weight to carry, a lot of guilt to carry, and, you know, that’s another thing I had to let go of that my life, her life was not in my control. Like I couldn’t and her happiness is not in your control, and her happiness is not control, which that’s another thing that could be a whole episode.

Elizabeth will have to do another one on I know it’s so hard, it’s so hard. I’m doing it with my brother right now, like his, you know, I want him to be happy, but I need him to be safe. Like yeah, safe is winning out there for sure. Yes. It’s, it’s so many things are out of our control. I think that’s the biggest lessons about caregiving is like we don’t really have that control about much, frankly. I was, I was, I just want to say this one thing, but I knew that I wanted to reclaim the mother-daughter relationship and what we had was a very not fun caregiver.

Care receiver situation where it was just not, it wasn’t what she wanted in that sense in regard to relationship, may have been what she wanted and needed as far as care goes, but it was not what she wanted from me as her daughter, and I think she missed me as her daughter and I missed her as my mom. There were many times in my life early in my marriage, especially where I needed my mom and I could not go to her because she could not handle it.

She could not, she could not help me go through those. And so for the last two years of her time here on Earth, we were able to heal some of that and reclaim that relationship. I, I have many, you know, could have done, should have done, you know, we all do that, right? I’ve learned to have some grace about that, but I do not regret, um. The grace that my mom and I showed each other the last two years where we just, you know, every time we felt like we were gonna give up either on the situation or each other, we just gave each other one, you know, one more shot of, you know, let’s not.

Let’s not walk away from each other. Let’s say, let’s say. And that I will, I will never regret, and I, I think that prolonged her life and has certainly made the end a lot sweeter for both your care prolonged her life, Jeanette, all of it. Like, yes, the mother and daughter relationship repairing that is and healing that, but you showing up, gave her many, many, many, many bonus years. I’m confident of that. What were some of the things that you did to kind of reclaim this mother-daughter relationship?

Because I hear that a lot, like, same thing with, you know, I have my sibling relationship with my brother, maybe you have a spousal relationship, like, what, were there things that you intentionally did to heal it? Well, you know, one of the things, even before she went in the nursing home, you know, and we got some extra care into the house and I off boarded some of the tasks that I had been doing. And so even though I actually really enjoyed bath time with my mom as much as I, you know, like I hated having, you know, having to give my mom a bath, but like we made the best of it.

I mean, we had a whole thing. It was, it took like an hour, you know, it was like a big huge fun, you know, we made it as fun as it could possibly be when you have such dignity for her and so like we had to make the best of it. So it was, you know, we had lotions galore and all that, you know, but I knew that. The person coming in to care for her could do that. And so I had to offer that. So first thing was, you know, offboarding some of those relationships.

So the time that I did spend there was either doing stuff that either only I could do care-wise, or, you know, like with her medications and stuff, that was, you know, something that the CNA’s weren’t going to do, right? So like there was stuff like that, but then there was also more time for me to just sit and listen to her, which she was a great Storyteller and so and the keeper of our family, you know, history, and so she always talk about that and so just being able to be more present with her even while she was still at home, and then once she got into the nursing home, it was demonstrating that I was not going to abandon her, that You know, her fear wasn’t really the nursing home, even though that’s what she said her whole life.

It was that she would be abandoned. And so I just demonstrated the best I could that I was going to show up, I was going to be involved, you know, a lot of people think if I put my loved one in a nursing home, like you said, there’s many there’s many reasons why you why you might not, yeah, however, don’t not. do it because you feel like you’re not going to be a caregiver, if you do it, you know what I’m saying? Because I was just as much, I had just as much of a role in her caregiving.

It just was a different, like I was more of a project manager than I was in the trenches, which helped me be able to, I mean, I took so many crafts for us to do and books to read. She liked to read a lot. And she could read very quickly. I remember one time she read a book faster than I listened to it on Audible. Well, yeah, it gave you the space to be the daughter by them reassuming those tasks for you. You were like, Oh, what fun thing can I do with mom when I go visit.

And sometimes I was doing it and she was just sitting there watching me do it, like she couldn’t do it, but she would watch me hook the rug or You know, paint the, you know, whatever, and, you know, sometimes she would be able to do it, and sometimes she wouldn’t, but just little things like that. And then of course, I started recording because of she was a good storyteller and it was it’s very important to her that the stories don’t get lost. I recorded this her telling me the stories, I asked her questions, I interviewed her a lot.

But I still haven’t been able to, how did you do that just like with your phone or just with my phone, um, and you know, so a good editor would need to get in there, but had I wanted, you know, I could have lugged stuff in there for sure, but you know, it was just literally like I’m just going to turn my phone on and see what happens, um, and just having conversations with her and sometimes I would video them just depending. Yeah, but, you know, for me, and there was a lot of time to say the things that had been, you know, like, what do you, what do you want to make sure she knows, what do you need to hear from her, you know, that kind of thing.

And so I would, you know, I made sure. That she knew that I was sorry for all the times that I, you know, made mistakes as a daughter or caregiver and that I also forgave her for all the times that she made mistakes as a human, as a mom, as a person. Sometimes we talked about specific things that each of us had gone through, and then sometimes it was just a general like, you know, I love you, I love it I love you, I forgive you, I’m sorry, you know, that kind of thing.

Sweet, very sweet. You know, you, you, you expand on all of this in your book, you expand on it in your podcast. I mean, certainly the theme of like, no judgment. Let’s talk about the hard stuff. Um, and the book is called From Guilt to Good. The podcast is the self-caregiver, right? Is that what? So the podcast is from Guilt to Good. The book is from Guilt. So, OK. From guilt to, from guilt to good enough. OK, love that. Well, you know, because let’s let’s put an exclamation point on this.

Like, what does being a good caregiver mean in society versus what does it mean to you now? Well, I think that’s part of the problem, right, with what it means to be a good caregiver. Everybody defines caregiving differently. For some people, it doesn’t count unless you’re in, you know, doing the actual things. For other people is only You know, like they’re long distance and they’re only able to do phone calls and nursing home and, you know, all that, you know, that kind of stuff or financial or whatever.

And for some reason people that is, so what I learned is, you know, we can’t compare with, you know, each other. We can’t compare our experiences, what it means for you to be a good caregiver is different than what it means for me, but the general idea is, you know, giving care to the person that needs it without, you know, killing yourself, essentially. Yeah. It’s that easy. It’s that simple. It’s not easy. But when I was writing, so like that’s why I came up with the podcast title years ago from guilt to Good.

It’s like, how do we move from feeling guilty all the time to feeling good all the time about what we’re doing. And so whether that’s taking better care of ourselves, setting boundaries, being more confident, communication skills, the, you know, I kind of ran the gamut there on all the different ways that we could feel good about the caregiving that we were doing. And then when I was writing the book, um, You know, I was like, dang, I shouldn’t have named my podcast out. It’s good. I think it’s smart branding to name them similar.

Yeah, so like, but so I was like, well, how can I build off of that because you know, that is part of my like I talk about guilt so much. It’s like I kind of, you know, that’s and. That’s what the book is. And so, you know, around that time was one of my mom’s gazillion emergency surgeries, and I remember one of the things that I always did before she had to go into some sort of emergency situation, if I had the opportunity was I would say ask her something kind of important.

And at that time, I said to her, you know, you know, we did the I love yous and, you know, all that. And then I said, hey, you know, if Grandma, if so if her mom, Grandma Blanchard was here, what would you want her, what, what would you, what would you want her to say to you right now? And before I could even get the words out of my mouth, she said that I, that I had done good enough, that I had, that I was good enough, you know, that I was, you know, that I had worked hard enough that I, you know.

And the more I thought about that, the more I thought, you know, I think that’s really where we need to come together as caregivers is good can sometimes mean perfect. Like if we’re just a good caregiver, sometimes in our head, that means we have to be perfect. Good caregivers don’t make mistakes. Good caregivers never say no. Good caregivers are selfless. We do not think of ourselves at all, you know, that’s a good caregiver. For some reason it shifts in our brain, a lot of times. It certainly did for mine into perfection.

But what if instead of trying to be a perfect caregiver, good caregiver, we just try to be good enough. And I think if we can rest in that space where we’re doing good enough, we’re doing the best we can, and that is good enough, then I think we’ll be able to let go of a little bit more of that guilt. So that’s why, that’s it’s so subjective, right? Like, these are subjective terms and You know, like my house is clean enough or, you know, it might be different for you than me, but it’s like if I, I can walk in and someone can walk into my house and they don’t have to like look at the baseboards and the floors, but like, things look picked up, you know, that’s good enough for me.

So yeah, it’s, it is, it is subjective. But it is this constant like self-talk thing and, and I think good enough is also relates to self-care in that way, like what’s going to be good enough for you, what’s self-care for you is not going to be necessarily the same thing that’s gonna, gonna work for, for me. So, And we’re going to get into that first, but I, I wanted to first kind of wrap up this caregiving stuff section where, you know, caregiving for your mom was your identity. Yeah.

Like it was your identity. And so now you’re in a phase, a recent phase, frankly, after the day to day demands of caregiving have ended for Mary Jane, what And what has helped you process that grief? And another big G word, right? Guilt was a big one. And now I feel like, oh, she’s really diving into this other G word, grief, because that’s where you are right now. So, of course, you know, I am fortunate to have writing as like what I do. And so that’s how I process things.

So You know, I am walking around in my grief. It is wrapped around me like a blanket. It is a, there’s so many metaphors I could use, and I am both embracing it, but also getting curious about it and wondering about it, seeing how it ties into the work that I’ve already done in therapy and, and my, and the trauma therapy work I’ve done. And so for me, it’s just about sharing what I’m learning. About it in in the way, in the metaphor way that I can, and then of course there’s other people that talk about grief completely differently and and I was just on a call with somebody before this and they were, they’ve written a book about grief and they were trying to think about it and, you know, she was talking about this idea of like, you know, demystifying or, you know, figuring it out or solving it and I was like, oh, but I think one of the most beautiful things about grief is that it’s, it is a mystery.

It is a mystery that we are in and that we get To explore and we don’t have to solve it. To me, mystery isn’t grief isn’t something I have to figure out or solve or get through. It’s just something I’m experiencing. So there’s there’s that piece of it for me is like, I don’t think we get through it. Yeah, I don’t think there’s some like and like yeah, but a lot of people are like, and even knowing that, like even like I’ve read 100 books on, you know, like all this stuff like I’m a, you know, I’ve done all that, you’re in it.

I’m yeah you’re swimming and I still was like, OK. I’m going, you know, which part of grief am I in now? And you know, this must be denial or this must be, you know, and I was like very metacognitive about it and like my therapist is like, oh, you know, stop it, girl, just be in it, just be, you know, like stop trying to figure out how to explain it. You don’t have to explain it, just be in it. And so like that was, you know, that’s something I’m trying to do too.

And somebody asked me the other day, like, now that you don’t have your caregiver hat on, like what other hats are you putting on? I was like, I’m trying not to put on any hats. So I’m not trying to put on my mom hat when I’m with my kids or my wife hat when I’m with my husband. I’m trying to just be Jeannette when I’m with my kids and Jeannette when I’m with my husband’s like trying to that just be, you know, because I think it’s very easy.

I got an email from some former podcast guest this morning about, you know, his wife had died and he’s like, I just, I’m finding that I’m taking care of everybody else. And I’m like, you know, because it’s a void, it’s this huge void, you know, do you have any tips? And I was like, well, my tips are like What are the things you like to do, or what are the things that you’ve gotten curious about? Do you have any hobbies, you know, could you do a cooking class?

Could you go to join a book club, like, rediscover who you are. I think it’s a really um cool when you’re ready, like, you know, it’s also OK to take, take as much time as you need. There’s no time frame on this, and that was what I, you know, he’s, he was a very, you know, actionable person with lots of milestones, and I was like, and yeah, give yourself grace, you know, there’s the good, the good G word with the guilty. My favorite meme this this week has been like, I’ve walked the walk and talk the talk and I’m gonna sit the sit and like I’m like, oh, that’s me right now.

I’m just sitting the set, you know, and, and also I think something else that we need to consider as caregivers depending on the type of caregiver we are, especially those of us that have caregiver, done caregiving for parents, and you too, you’ve got, you’ve done caregiving for parent, you’re you’re caring for your brother. There’s going to be other opportunities that present themselves to you, and you need to care for people again. And so, you know, I You know, I’m closing out this, this caregiving journey with my mom, but I am also under no illusion that I’m never going to be a caregiver again and so I want to use this time wisely, um, heal, um, you know, re-energize where you can do.

Things that I want to do and can do with the time that I have because I know, you know, just, you know, we, none of us know when the next opportunity. None of us know. I mean, I know I’m going to have many opportunities siblings that aren’t married. I’ve got big family, like, yeah, we’ll never be bored for sure. Um yeah, it’s such a You know, grief is such an interesting thing to, and something that we don’t talk about. Do you find that now that your mom, um, when did your mom pass?

I, I don’t wanna, she passed away June 3rd of this year, so just a few months. I’m glad I asked you, cause I was like, I thought it was like September, but I’ll tell you, the years have been flying or the months have been flying by June 3rd, and that, that’s also weird, like, that’s the date, you know, it’s like you think about it, yeah. You know, the, the date and it’s like, this was just June 3rd. It was just little. June 3rd. Now it’s June 3rd.

Yes, yes, and then, you know, she, she had, there was a birthday of hers, you know, and then like, we’ll get to that time of year where it’s like, I knew last year at Thanksgiving that was going to be her last Thanksgiving, and I knew at last Christmas it was gonna be her last Christmas, but it’s still now like coming to those times or, you know, yeah. You know, how do you, do you have a thought or a plan for like how to, I don’t know, honor her, respect her or infuse a tradition, but like have her still there in some way?

Well, so for a couple, so one. The thing that I have been thinking about is like, she was, I hesitate to say the word obsessed, but she was very concerned, we should say. About her family where they were all buried at the cemetery in our local cemetery. They’re like all of like her grandparents, aunts, uncles, everything, her, my grandmother, her mother was there is there every Mother’s Day, Christmas, all that, we would go Easter, we would go clean, clean around and get put new plants and stuff.

And of course, like that was one of the things that went when. to do it anymore. And then now I’m like, OK, well, that might be a good way to honor her and the rest of the like, you know, just kind of this is something that she would have wanted me to do, uh, you know, so there’s that. But I thought about that this year. I was writing something and I was like, speaking of which, I probably should. Yeah, I’m not gonna say you’re making me feel guilty because you’re not, but I’m thinking about like, that was my mom used to order a big wreath or a Blanket, what do you, I don’t know what the hell you call those things that lay over the, yeah, and from the Calvary summit and I had it like on a to do every year.

It was like one of my caregiving to do for her. Yeah, and then that and one year we got lost because they had cut down the tree that had been right near everything, so we drove around the cemetery for like an hour. I was hopping in and out of the car. I mean, like, so there’s a lot of good memories of all that. Yeah, we even see it though. It was like states away. I was like, this mystery blanket, who knows if it even got on the gravestone.

So, you know, I think there’s that and then I think also, um, for me, I think the best way to honor my mom, especially the kind of person that she was, and I know she hoped for me to be is one that was just really present with my family and so I don’t want to spend a lot of time coming up with like. You know, something that to make it seem meaningful when I can just sit there in my quiet amongst family, but in my quiet, in my heart, quietly say, you know, Mom, do you see this?

Can you believe your grandkids look at how big, you know, look at how well they’re doing, or, you know, and then I’m sure there’ll be opportunities for me to, you know, be thankful for her and, and things like that. You know, I’m trying hard not to over manage the holiday. Yeah, I just yeah, make it less. I mean, I’m always like, how can I make this easier? Every year, I’m like, this is still hard. How can I make this easier? So I know it’s, it’s constantly tweaking and and adjusting.

Well, I’d love your thoughts on some of the things in the just for you daily self-care journal. Um. And I know we’ve got, you know, all of our feelings around the word self-care, but it is what it is. It is, yeah. Do you have a better, do you have a a word you like better than self-care that you feel? I just think like caregiving, we should all define it for ourselves, you know. How do you define it? Well, I think of self-care as the things that we do to tend to ourselves on a regular basis.

So I think of it more, you know, again with the metaphors and, you know, coming from, you know, the South and my family, you know, it’s like I think of gardening and my family was farm families. This idea of like, we’re, you know, sometimes we’re just tilling the soil, the soil. Or where, you know, and sometimes it doesn’t look like much, and then other times it looks really beautiful and amazing. Sometimes we don’t look like much, and then sometimes we look really beautiful and amazing. That’s OK. You know, it’s just part of the different seasons.

So I think really if when we’re talking about self-care that’s sustainable, self-care that will actually help us get through those burnout seasons, which I also believe are there, whether we want them or not, they come and we just have to You know, learn how to navigate through them hopefully if we’re better, if we’ve tended better to ourselves and The day to day that when we do feel burned out, we can recognize it earlier, we can slow down and not I think Suzanne White is and maybe she’s one of the people I don’t remember which one who said this.

One of our caregiver friends out there said, you know, like, you’re going to hit the wall. Do you want to do it at 150 miles an hour or like 5 miles. So I think of that. So for me, self-care is more about tending to yourself physically, emotionally and spiritually on a day to day basis. I like that. Yeah. OK, well, that’s no wrong answers here, Jeanette. Let’s see. If you can choose one superpower, what would it be? Well, that’s a really hard 11 superpower. I think it would be the ability to have a sustained amount of energy all day long and then go to sleep really well.

I love it. I would love to sleep better. I’m prioritizing my sleep, but it’s Still, again, it’s not bad, but it’s, it’s a hard it’s not what it used to be. But yeah, just having like the perfect amount of energy and whatever I need to be doing. So if that’s running a marathon, I have the perfect amount of energy. If it’s, you know, yeah, you know, I like that, reading a book, I have the perfect amount of energy and then whenever I’m ready for bed, I just Get in there and Lights out.

I love that. What is one of your plans that you put in place to recharge when your energy is depleted? Could be physical or emotional energy. That’s so specific. As much as I love chatting with people and doing my podcast and, you know, all that stuff, I’m actually an introvert. So I’m an extroverted introvert, I think, is what they call an introvert is what I call myself. Yeah. Um, I love talking to people and, but when I’m done, I need to go take a break. Like I know people, and it was funny because um I used to have a job where I was worked in marketing and I did a lot of video calls and, you know, we would lead online conferences and I was the cheerleader of the conference.

I would be, you know, like on the videos, you know, hyping everybody up and some of my colleagues would only see me then. And so like, I would joke sometimes in a staff meeting, like, you know, well, I got, you know, I’m gonna sleep for 3 hours and they’d be like, and then we would all do like a conference in The same city, and one of them walked up to me the one time they were like, I watched it happen to you, where I would be like on camera and be like, hey guys, and then I’d walk on camera and be like, Yeah.

I’m like, I told you. Yeah, yeah. It it’s, I mean, it is a lot when you’re on, you’re speaking, you’re communicating with different people, you do have to recharge. I, I totally makes sense to me and The days that I do speaking or conferences, like I had some time for myself, you know, the next day, like I I plan for it. It’s like, girl, you know yourself. Why you, why are you doing that over and over again. I like to work out by myself. I like to, you know, have an afternoon for myself, things like that.

So yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Last question, what would you, what would make you feel spiritually fulfilled? I know you talked about your spirituality being important to you. Mhm. So what does that look like? So you’re fulfilled. I’m, I’m very honest about this right now, which is that though I have not struggled with my faith, I’m not in a, you know, I’m not having a crisis of faith in any way. Um, I, I am struggling a little bit with my, how I practice my spirituality, how I practice my faith.

And so right now for me, is, you know, to connect to my spirituality. I read a lot of books written by, you know, saints, and I’m not even from a, from a background that has those, but I’ve found that the, um, you know, the writings of, of some of the saints or writings about saints. Been very helpful to me. I shout out to one particular, well, we can link well who this is who I want to shout out in honor of my mother. She loved this particular nun, and I have several of this woman’s books and for the caregivers out there, this person, her name is Joyce Rupp, R UPP.

She was a nun. Um, and she wrote several books. She has a devotional called Fresh Bread. It is one of my absolute favorites. She also wrote a book called May I Walk You Home, and it’s about helping a loved one at the end of their life. And it was written by her in another hospice or palliative care person. Um, and so it’s very helpful to me, but she writes in her devotionals, she writes poetry, um, as well as just, you know, writing, and then she gives suggestions on things to read, um, out of You know, different books of the Bible or something like that.

So for me, reading her work not only like connects me back to, uh, my spirituality, but also kind of reminds me of my mom. So it’s like a, it’s like a double sweet heart. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That’s so sweet. Mom would love it. Mom would be, yeah, and, and that’s why I love these questions. It’s like they’re off the mark and it’s like the other little nuggets kind of come out. How, what do you want listeners? They are listening to us talking today. What are you hoping they’re going to take away or parting words of wisdom for them, and then how do they stay in touch with you?

So, I’m gonna say the same thing I say it in every podcast that uh that I love consistency because to me this was what was the mantra that sustained me and got me through, um, in my darkest burnout times when I was really still feeling guilty and not sure if I was making the right choices and just beating myself up constantly and trying to do the right thing. As a friend actually said this to me. She said, You have done enough and you are doing enough. And that gave me so much relief.

And so what I say now to caregivers, and I’ve said, I said to myself was, I have done enough, I am doing enough, and I am enough. And so that’s what I want caregivers to know. You are, you are doing enough. If you’re listening to this podcast, if you care enough to listen to a caregiving podcast, you’re doing enough. Yeah, you have done enough, you are doing enough, and you are enough as a person. Those are my parting words. And if you want to get in touch with me, of course, I’m on Instagram, so come find me over there, the self-caregiver, and I’ve also started a sub stack, which, you know, so has everyone else I know, but I, you can find me over there, um, at the self-caregiver too.

the name of my substack is from Guilt to Good Real caregiving conversations. And right now I’m writing about not only my caregiving experience, but I’m bringing that into the present day obviously and writing about being on the other side of caregiving and what it looks like for me now. And so, Both of those are probably the best. Also play around on TikTok. That’s where sometimes I get a little snarky and make a little funny, little funny caregiving things, but yeah, that means that, yeah, yeah. Well, we’ll link to all of those things.

I think there’s a good platform depending on the moods that you’re in to kind of gravitate towards different things and like I said, the writing, check, check that out the way that you describe your emotions and really just kind of put it out there, I think is something that caregivers are thirsty for because sometimes it’s just hard to kind of put it all into Into words. So it’s very validating to realize that we’re not the only ones thinking some of these dark negative thoughts sometimes or unpacking some of the unpleasant things or just saying enough is enough, or all of it.

So keep on, keeping on. I love that you’re in this space and I love that I’ve gotten to know you through this. So thank you, thank you, Jeannette, for coming on today for having me, Elizabeth. It’s been a pleasure. 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. You’ll find the show notes and all the resources mentioned at Hahealthy caregiver.com. I also invite you to check out previous episodes of the podcast that you may have missed.

If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Ratings and reviews also help others discover the podcast, and sharing with a fellow caregiver is a great way to spread support. Stay connected with me between the episodes by following Happy Healthy caregiver on your favorite social media platforms and subscribe to the weekly newsletter, where every week I share something happy, healthy, and care related. Just visit happyhealthycaegiver. com to join. Until our next episode, I’m Elizabeth Miller with a reminder to take care of you.

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