The first number of chapters talks to him about my mom, so people can like. They can associate, they can feel, and they can understand that they’re not alone. Because I, and I think that’s the hardest part is when this first happens, you feel very alone. So you gotta, you gotta surround yourself with the right people in the right frame of mind.

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. 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 continuing to listen to this podcast. I appreciate you. I know your time is valuable, so I just have one short note. To share with you today, and that is to encourage you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. Every week, I curate different content and I share something happy, something healthy, and something care-related with you. It’s easy to sign up. Just go to bit.lee/HHCnews. I want to thank our episode sponsor, Crazy Compression. Do you ever feel like your feet and your legs are exhausted by the end of the day? Or maybe you’ve noticed a bit of swelling after sitting or standing for too long? Let me Introduce you to Crazy compression socks, a fun solution for keeping your legs feeling fresh and energized.

These aren’t just any socks. They’re designed to boost circulation, reduce fatigue, and make a serious style statement. Crazy compression socks combines top-notch support with bold, fun patterns that let you express your personality. Whether you’re a nurse, a traveler, an athlete, or a caregiver who’s on your feet all day, these socks are going to change the way that you think about comfort. Head over to Crazycompression. com and use code HHC20 for 153% off your order and give your legs the energy that they deserve. A book that I recently read that I want to talk about with you is called We Begin at the End.

It’s a powerful novel by Chris Whittaker about a fiercely independent 13 year old girl, Duchess Day Radley, who’s grown up far too fast while protecting her younger brother and emotionally parenting her struggling mom. It’s set in a small coastal California town, and the story also follows Walk, the local police chief, whose past ties to Duchess’s family resurface when an old friend is released from prison. As long buried truths come to light, the book explores loyalty, justice, and what it. Really means to be a family, the ones we’re born into and the ones that we choose.

I listened to the audiobook version and I would recommend not to listen to this book in like 5, 10 minute chunks, but have like a longer period of time, a car ride or a longer walk to listen just to help keep all the characters straight. I did give it 4 out of 5 stars, and I think that you’ll enjoy it, so I’ll link to it if you’d like to check it out. Favorite thing that I want to share with you episode is Spotify Premium. We pay, I think, $20 per month for Spotify Premium for the family plan.

We’ve had it for years. I’ve been enjoying the ad-free music, and I like that we can add everybody. our family into one plan. And I also like that you can download songs and playlists offline, but what I’m really enjoying that I just recently learned about is that I can listen to 15 hours of audiobooks, and it’s only for me as the Spotify plan manager, they call it, but I can listen to 15 hours of audiobooks. Every month. This is a beautiful thing because I’m a big Libby user. I love to get the audiobooks from the library, but a lot of the popular audiobooks, they have a long wait time, sometimes 20 plus weeks.

And if somebody’s choosing a popular book for our book club, I can’t get them through Libby, but I can get them with the Spotify Premium. You can, you, you can add a separate subscription for others in your family to also get the hours for the audiobook listening, or you can also decide to add on that if you feel like you need more hours of audiobook listening than 303 hours, there’s another add-on plan for that. But I just wanted to call that out because I don’t think many people know that maybe their Spotify premium plan includes audiobooks as well.

Let’s get into our caregiver Spotlight episode. Meet Sandwich Generation Caregiver. Brendan Kelso, who shares his journey caring for his mom with Alzheimer’s while also supporting his son with autism spectrum disorder. Brendan discusses embracing vulnerability and how therapeutic writing, even just 15 minutes a day, helps him process the messy parts of life and the mental traffic that shows up at night when sleep feels impossible. You’ll learn how creativity weaves through Brendan’s caregiving life from thrifty. Books with his son to run an eBay bookstore, to adapting extended plays into child-friendly experiences, to writing a mystery thriller inspired by his mother’s Alzheimer’s journey, and even transforming her former tiny home into a brick and mortar bookstore.

We also dive into the importance of saying no, accessing California caregiver support, and finding meaningful ways to adapt when life doesn’t go as planned. Enjoy the show. Hi Brendan. Welcome to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast. Hello. Hey, Elizabeth, how are you doing today? Doing well. Excited to get in and talk to you today. We always like to start the show out with like the right frame of mind. And put a little positivity, some empowerment, some motivation. These are things I have collected over the years that have spoken to me.

So let’s see what we’ve got for your episode here, Brendan. It says, well, this is like a good one. It says, the best day to find support is on your best day. Makes a lot of sense. I, I sometimes I think that’s, it’s almost opposite of that too, because sometimes when you are going through so much, just a friend’s hug or something can pull you out of the, uh, out of the quagmire sometimes cause I mean you’ve been, I’ve been through this on both sides, so it’s, it’s challenging sometimes to remain positive about things.

I think we could probably rewrite this to say. The best day to find support is on any day. It’s like, yeah, right? Like, um, I think at the time when I picked that, it was, it spoke to me because I feel like sometimes I waited and I know other people wait until there’s a serious crisis issue before they try to find their community of people and to find resources like this podcast and what you offer and all of that. It really helps us get options and different strategies and insights if we can get in front of it and be proactive.

And we need that support for us. We do it for our loved ones. We try to be proactive, but we also need to proactively prepare for like, what if this is my situation? Like you’re a caregiver for, for life with your son and a seasonal caregiver with your mom, and we’re gonna, we’re going to get into that. This is something that we’ve got to learn how to be sustainable with and we need to have options. So yeah, best day to finding support is on any day. We always can use a hug and we Need each other, frankly, because the world in this care world is so fragmented that we’re figuring it out while the car is, you know, running down the highway.

Yeah, and on the same vein, it’s like, you know, and I do this, I’m very guilty of it, but it’s like, you know, you got to not forget about caring for yourself. And it’s very easy to forget the doctor’s appointments and the dental appointments and everything that you do for yourself to maintain, because if you’re not maintained, you can’t maintain anybody else. Yeah, you can do. That maybe for 4 to 6 months, but you can’t keep putting that stuff on the back burner forever. Listen, I’m learning the lesson too.

Like I’ve been through my seasons of care and I just found out, I went to a doctor’s appointment yesterday and I’ve gained over 10 pounds since the summer and it’s because I’m like thick in a caregiving season myself. So with my brother and wake-up call for me, I’m like, OK, girl, you’ve been through this before. You need to, you know, reprioritize your health and Happiness again. We’re always kind of learning and tweaking and figuring things out. I want to hear, and I want the folks to hear a little bit more, Brendan, or about your family.

Um, share, share with us a little bit about your, your sandwich generation caregiving story with your son and your mom and your rest of your family and just kind of set the stage for us a little bit. Yeah, sure. Uh, my, my son has autism. We found out when he was 3. He’s 22 now, just to give kind of a Uh, frame of reference, and he, um, he was very, very challenging in the beginning, you know, for, he’s, he’s coming full circle now, he still lives with us, uh, but, you know, it’s kind of nice, everything.

Um, that he’s done and I’m very proud of him. I mean, he’s published 5, technically 8, but 5 books now. He’s a huge Dr. Seuss fan. He got into this thing 23 or 3 years ago about buying books and selling them online used books, and so we literally hit at least 1 thrift store a day. Um, and we’re always, he, he just passed the 1000 books listed on eBay spot, and you know kinds of likes are certain kinds, uh, mostly children’s books, but I mean he’ll bridge out, but what he, it’s so funny, it’s like he’s gotten so good at the identifying stuff now like he would buy VHS tapes and I’m like, you know, come on, these are junk, and next thing you know he sold, you know, for 20 or 30 bucks and he bought them for 50 cents.

How are you doing this? And so he’s kind of figured it out. He’s kind of and um. So he’s, he’s, you know, super stoked, and so he, it’s called the ICAN bookstore on eBay. OK, we’ll link to it. It’s, it’s pretty cool because he’s, he’s doing that and then he’s published books. So I’m an, I’m an author and I’ve been publishing for years, um, you know, he, I, in one sense he emulates me in that, but I’ve helped set him up with, gave him programs on his iPad to draw with, so he drew and illustrated.

He illustrated all everything. I do editing and publishing of it, um, but he does all the layout and everything, and he’s a huge Doctor Seuss fan. He, everything is Doctor Seuss-like, like Doctor Seusss. Big time. And like, for example, and he’s at, that’s at doc Keegan. com because he wanted to be Doctor Keegan, like Dr. Seuss. But I was like, well, today’s day and age, you can’t really call yourself a doctor. People, you know, they frown on that. And so we got to Doc Keegan. And so he’s, he’s excited about that and And so it’s just it’s nice to see him start to come full circle on life and starting to kind of like do things on his own and get him out there, but about 5-6 years ago, more than that, probably 10 now, my wife started noticing.

It does, it’s so fast. My wife started noticing things about my mom. She lives up in Oregon. We’re in California. And the only thing I noticed, honestly, was that she was being kinder. She’s, she’s always been very rough around the edges, kind of, um, what’s the right word? It’s just not that she’s not kind, she’s just very to the point, and emotions are hard with her, very direct, and as her son, it’s always been challenging, but I know, I started noticing she was softening, and I was like, well this is, it’s weird to have conversations with her where suddenly something’s happening and I’m like, I’m uncomfortable right now, 23 years of this and you’re doing this, but then it all made sense hindsight when you started seeing the signs and getting everything and my wife.

Started picking up on stuff and then we started just hearing from her doctors that she was not that she missed the dentist appointment, she couldn’t find the dentist appointment and then she couldn’t find her way home and things like that and so you know we got there she lives alone or she lived alone at the time. She lived alone, very big house. I mean, you know, for example, she woke up one morning and her hand was broken, didn’t even know why. And uh she fell down sometime during the middle of the night, broke her hand, went back to sleep, and then took care of it.

Um, so we went around right at, right COVID hits and we go and pick up my mom, bring her here. Um, like I said, this tiny home that I’m actually doing this in was her home for 2.5 years. She passed away in 23 with, uh, she had a stroke, um, but it was kind of, it was kind of neat because she got to spend all this time with family and then she also lived in a tiny house. A tiny home. I binge watched so many of the different tiny homes.

What’s, what’s real world living like in a tiny home? Um, it’s tiny, and part of the reason, I mean, it’s for her, it’s perfect because she was in a 2000 square foot home, very single floor. So if she would stumble or anything, there was nothing to catch her. And now there’s like thin walls. I mean, you could, I’m just gonna just give you a quick little just kind of tour. This is the like the front room. And then there’s a small hallway. We’re slowly turning this actually into a bookstore.

There’s a really nice bathroom and shower. It’s really cool. It’s a great bookstore, the ICANN bookstore, the, the brick and mortar, yeah, well, yeah, because he’s getting, he’s getting so many books that his room is literally a cascade of books everywhere and so we’re slowly just You know, modifying it, uh, but yeah, she lived here, and the nice part was that because of the kind of the proximity, if she fell over or something, she had something to hold herself up with that, you know, and, and when you get to that age, it’s not if you fall over, it’s when you fall over, and I, and that’s something that people don’t.

I think you, you You want to deny it. There’s a lot of denial in there, you know, it’s the grieving process of, you know, you just start, you know, I have a, I had two cameras in here because, you know, I couldn’t sleep at night in my own house, just wondering, you know, did she make it to her bed OK, you know, and it was nice just to look quickly and go, Oh, she’s watching TV on her couch. I’m good. Let’s go, you know, just, I had peace of mind and I could literally be anywhere and just check on my phone, and then, there it is, so.

And she was a very independent that you use the camera system that you like or Amazon Ring, yeah, we just use Ring. It was, yeah, it was easy. I mean you’re sure you can use any, so yeah, but it’s weird though. It is, and it’s weird because at that age, and you know, you, you have to almost think of them as kids again, and you know you’re the parent where, you know, there were some things that she would do that would really remind me of my 4 year old and I was like.

That’s interesting, but you know, I had to reframe some of this, the way I thought about things, the knife and the toaster and that type of stuff, like, yeah, the things that they, they can, honestly, it was the pouting, the tantrums, you know, and it’s funny, it’s like, cause I didn’t like, she loved wine and she would just constantly drink her wine and so I Kind of needed some of that, but it’s, it’s weird. It’s, you know, when you get near end of days, it’s like, do you want to fight how much you want to make them healthy, or do you want to have them enjoy the last bit, and then you have not the stress of like you need to eat healthy.

So, you know, I lean more of just battles for sure. Yeah. Otherwise, it’s not. No, it’s the same way with my brother. My folks are deceased and my, I have a brother who’s got an intellectual and developmental disability and is on the autism spectrum. So I’m his primary person, but he lives in about an hour from me and we just moved him into a community for adults. In the Atlanta area, which is kind of a unicorn place, frankly. So it’s been a big adjustment, but I’m, you know, the peace of mind and never kind of knowing which version of him you’re going to get.

And, um, and there’s so many things that I could, um, nag, I guess is the right word, him about. And so I have to kind of pick my pick my things with him, um, for sure too. So You, you’ve got, you’re squeezed in the sandwich generation. I don’t know if you, did you call yourself, did you know you were in the sandwich generation? Yeah, squeezed between caring for kids and your aging mom at the same time. And I’m curious though, because I find sometimes, and I’m jumping around all the place too, Brendan, but that’s OK. They can, these people are savvy listeners.

They can keep up with us. But I find that some of the resources and the things that I learned about for dementia caregivers specifically and Caring for people with dementia is also very applicable for my brother, who is neurodivergent and he’s got an intellectual development. He’s got a communication type of disability. Have you found that? What’s your son’s name, by the way, between your mom and your son? Like Keegan, Keegan. My mom’s name is Keegan. That’s right, Doc Keegan. Yeah, Doc Keegan, yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, I find that pretty much so.

It’s, you know, a lot of the techniques we used with my son, I started using some with my mom. I mean, we, we already had cameras in the house because sometimes we’ll go out and we’ll leave, and Keegan’s at this age where he’s, and he’s a teenager, you know, and, and when you have a kid with autism, it’s really wild because it’s like, is that something that’s autism? Is that something that’s teenager? Is that something that’s a combination, and you know, it kind of messes with your mind, you know, you got to pick that.

And, but we would leave just cameras in the house, so it’s just a precautionary thing and we can check in on him and, you know, leave for like an hour and come back for something because he wants that independence, you know, he doesn’t understand why he always has to go with those places. So, you know, but that was years ago. I mean, he’s so much more mature now and so much more capable, but it’s, it’s a, it’s a long road. But there’s a lot of the techniques and a lot of the services honestly in California we have what’s called IHS.

Us, I’m sure you’ve heard of it, but it’s in-home support service. And as a caregiver with someone with autism, you can get funding from the state because basically, you are the in-home caregiver. And so they will pay you money for this. And it’s, it’s a significant amount of money. But my mind immediately went to when my mom moved in, I’m like, wait a minute, she can apply for this too. And so because of that prior knowledge of the system, I went and pushed that one and I started getting in-home support service.

So we were getting it from both sides. And it that helped pay for all the caregiving that came in. I mean, it was tremendously helpful because, as you know, it’s none of this is cheap. No, and you, you are lucky to live in California. California is probably one of the best states to support caregivers financially. Not every state has that. So like in Georgia, we do not have a great support system, but what I will do for people listening is I’ll link to um something where you can look up your state and see what’s available in your area.

But I’m, I, I want that to be something that exists. In all 50 states because you did have to leave your corporate career. You and your wife probably sat down and had conversations about it. Tell us a little bit about that, like making that decision and how long, you know, what have you been doing since then? So, you know, my son was born in 2003. My wife was a teacher and she left soon after. So she had to Give up a lot for this. And then at the same time, I was, uh, I write Shakespeare for kids, classics for kids, Greeks for kids, and I was doing it as a hobby, and then it started actually doing pretty well.

And so around 2015, we were looking into adopting and my wife’s like, look, I’m not doing this and that, you know, unless you’re coming on board. So I decided to take up the writing thing full time and then moved. Too, and so I started writing, um, and, but kind of writing in the morning and nights as opposed to, you know, so we caregive during the day, um, and it’s worked out pretty well. So it’s still, you know, it’s, it, it is kind of a full-time job, but it’s a full-time hobby in a sense, because the priority is always family first, uh, and then go into this.

That’s kind of, that’s kind of what I like. You’ve got a lot, you’re multifaceted. You’ve got, you’re helping, you know, your son Doc Keegan with his editing and publishing his books and his bookstore and thrifting the merchandise for for his bookstore. Sounds like he’s, you know, got some things there. You’ve got the in-home support services, then you have your, it’s playing with plays, right? Yes.com. Yeah, playing withplays. com is where you’re taking, the way I understand wanting kids to like Shakespeare and other types of plays like that and making them fun, or tell us a little bit more about playing with plays.

Yeah, basically I take Shakespeare scripts. It started with Shakespeare. I have 43 scripts right now. Um I take Shakespeare scripts. I truncate them down to like 1525 minute melodramatic, funny, engaging, mostly me being funny, but I sprinkle in Shakespeare’s lines, and then each book has 33 scripts. And so I started doing this. As an afterschool program, and I taught like 15 kids and then. This one mom came and watched me, and she came down and she’s like, Hey, this is great. I want you to do this for my kids. And I’m like, Well, you’re like 20 miles away.

She’s like, I’m not asking you, I’m telling you, OK? And it was a homeschool group, so they had 7, but she wanted to use the same script, and it started making me think. I’m like, how do I teach drama to kids? And I’ve always been a thespian at heart. OK. How do I teach drama to kids with the same script? Cause most scripts, when you look at them, have, you know, 94 males and 5 females or whatever, and I, I dislike that. So I don’t care if males play females, females play males, it doesn’t matter to me.

I just, I let the kids have fun. Um, and that’s the whole point. If you Engage Shakespeare and you have fun with Shakespeare, they will love Shakespeare when they get to high school. I hated Shakespeare in high school because it just wasn’t presented right. And you know, I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I have, I have kids that I’ve taught that I’ll teach my stuff, and it’s, it’s, it’s a blast to just watch it all, and I do Greeks now and classics and all sorts of.

Well, you’re, you’re teaching confidence in kids and trying new things and laughter, all of that. Yeah, public speaking. I’ve already shared it, by the way, with my girlfriend who’s a A drama teacher at an elementary school. So she would like to know about the recess. So we’ll certainly link to that. And then this writing has been a passion for you versus the playwriting and it, and then caring for your mom, like that led to a whole new experience for you as an author. So tell us about that.

So COVID hit, and when you have a theater program and they shut down every theater in the world, your business kind of tanks. And I was talking to my buddy, and he’s like, You’re still a storyteller. And I was like, Yeah, but writing a novel is a different beast than writing a play. And but so I, I wrote a few chapters of the spy thriller that I wanted to do and read it to my wife, read it to some friends that are like, it’s not bad. I’m like, All right, so maybe I can do some decent writing.

But in the same time, I started to take care of my mom, and I was doing a lot of therapeutic writing. Writing is for me, stuff gets in my head and I can’t get it out, and I have to. Well, it starts at 2 or 3 in the morning. I will write it out, and I’ll have to just get it out so I can go back to sleep. But the therapy writing, and I have a lot of humor in me, so, the therapy writing kind of started twisting, and I was like, what if, and this really hit me, I’m like, what if an Alzheimer’s person suddenly said like a cryptic word, and then you, you couldn’t like reach in and go, what?

Tell me more about that. And it started making me thinking, I’m like, how would it, how would you go into that mind and try to pull it out? And so, the book, The Night She Said Hatchet, I was born and it’s a very quick read. It’s short chapters, but it’s got 100 chapters, but they’re all very short, and the 23st 20 are a lot about my mom and I. If you were to read it, you would go through and go, is this real? This is not real. When I went through a lot of my beta readers, I had so many people googling stuff and checking on stuff, so I had to write a section in the back called real or not real for everybody who was asking about what was real and what wasn’t.

And a lot of the beginning, the book originally was Just Brendan as the protagonist and my mom, Laine, as my mom. And so a lot of it was those therapeutic, therapeutic stories in there. But I, I put in a lot of like humor. So it’s like there’s heaviness and then there’s light, and there’s heavy and light because I don’t want it to drag people down, but in reality, it’s a fiction because it’s a murder mystery. So, you know, it’s the night she says hatchet, which unlocks family secrets and, you know, all the stuff, 40 year old.

And murder mystery and stuff like that. So it’s a lot of, it was a lot of fun. So it fed my creative need, but it also fed my need to get this out of my system. And, you know, I, I always say it’s like the last gift one gave me. So, yeah, so interesting, and you certainly had a lot of content that was happening in your dementia caregiving life and your, in your life. And I too have found that writing would to be very therapeutic for me, particularly in my early caregiving years.

And I’m very familiar these days with waking up in the middle of the night. Maybe I need to pull out my journals again and start, start down that path as well. But so interesting how this caregiving for both sides of the age spectrum has opened different doors for you and engaging kids and, and sharing kind of this, this side of your mom and you through your dementia story. I would say that your book is not just for people, dementia caregivers, it’s for anybody. Right, yeah, oh yeah, it’s, it’s honestly, it’s a fictional thriller, um, and that’s kind of how I frame it.

But you know, if you look at the cover, the cover is purple, and the reason the cover’s purple is it’s the Alzheimer’s Association purple, and I purposely did that because it’s a call out to caregivers kind of saying I see you. And also in the beginning, you know, I write a little snippet author’s note about my mom and some of the stuff that I went through. And the first, like I said, the first number of chapters talks to him about my mom, so people can like. They can associate.

They can feel, and they can understand that they’re not alone, because I, and I think that’s the hardest part is when this first happens, you feel very alone, whether it’s autism, Alzheimer’s, dementia. I mean, you feel very alone in it. You, and you realize how many are out there, and you gotta, and you, and sometimes you have to be very careful like going on like, you know, dementia Facebook groups or Alzheimer’s Facebook groups because lots of times it’s the people that need the most help. Have the most problems are the ones posting.

And so it can feel very negative or very disheartening too. Um, and so you gotta, you gotta surround yourself with the right people in the right frame of mind. Yeah, I agree. I found that early on in my journey, even in my own writing with Happy, Healthy Caregiver when I was blogging, like, it was not who I wanted to show up as, you know, I felt like I was kind of leaning toward this kind of dark, dreary. And that’s not who I am. I’m a, I’m a glass half empty kind of gal.

I like to see the, the bright side of things, but not in, hopefully not in an annoying way. I’m also a realist that you need to feel your emotions and, and all that. But I think it’s important that we find the right communities to connect with, like you said. Um, and be choosy about it. And there are a lot of communities that you can try on out there. Where did, where did you find some resources and things to both help you with your son living with autism and your mom living with autism, and you, you know, as the caregiver, you and your family in between, like, you mentioned the in-home support services, but any others that you want to call out.

Uh, well, I mean, the Alzheimer’s Association was great because I could just give them a call, everything’s free in that sense, and you can pick their brain and they can start pointing you in the right directions. Whether that’s helping compose a list to find homes or anything. Hospice was great. My mom went through a spell where she went to the ER 4 times in 5 weeks. And each time, her blood pressure was getting less. And so, The doctor said yes to hospice at that time, so we had 6 or 8 months of hospice service until they finally came back and said, Look, your mom’s fine now, you know, so we don’t need to be here anymore.

But, and there were 2 different types of hospice. There was hospice funded by the state. There was a hospice like a local community, and they both would feed in and then friends too. It’s like, you know, I wasn’t afraid to share. You know, on social media, sorry, and uh it’s or Facebook or whatever to my friends saying, hey, you know, my mom has Alzheimer’s, and it was amazing how many people are like, mine did too, mine did too, mine did too, and it’s like, oh wait, this pool is a lot bigger than I thought, you know, and some of them would call up, some of them would just lend advice, and so a lot of that helped.

I believe out’s better than in, so that’s kind of where I got a lot of my resources. What have you learned about yourself through caregiving, Brennan? Oh wow, that’s a That’s a tough question because it’s such a slow process. So it’s hard to, you know, look back and forward. Uh, the probably the biggest thing is looking at other people in the world. You know, when you’re, when you’re 2025, you’re coming out of college or whatever, you know, you think you know everything going on, you judge people. And then, When the world comes up and like slaps you in the face a number of times, and you start realizing that so many people are going through so many things, and now it’s like I have in my fraternity, we have this big alumni event every year, you know, I’m not afraid to say, hey, I’m going through X and Y. And as soon as they do, everybody else is like their, their, their walls come down, they’re like, oh, I’m going through this too.

I got this, and you know, like, We have this one cabin off to the side. It’s called the CPAP cabin, I think, because like all these guys have like these breathing units, and they all have to sleep in the same place cause they make so much noise, but it’s like, it’s not just like one or two guys, it’s like 5 or 33 guys. We all got challenges. We all got garbage going on. And you have to realize that everybody does. Everybody you look at, it may look pretty on Facebook, but there’s stuff back there.

 

And as soon as you’re willing to accept that you’re not alone in this, I think that’s, and you start treating. People different. I don’t, I don’t know if that makes sense. I think it makes perfect sense. I’m wondering, you know, as a guy, do you find that it’s harder or more difficult or challenging to be vulnerable and to find support, or have you not had that experience? I’ve always been pretty vulnerable that way. I don’t let it phase me in the sense if somebody has like a wall up or something.

A lot of my friends that I surround myself with are more like that, and I think that’s just, you know, over time and figuring that out, you know, and, and, and time does. Too, it’s like, you think you have certain friends that are good friends, and then you realize you see what they do is they have children and life and marriage and so so on and so forth. I’m not sure I should have been a friend with that person. I like this person better. You just, you change things.

Things as life goes on changes. And so I think, you know, for me it’s always, I mean, I, I believe in showing the emotions because if I don’t and I keep them in here, it tears up in here, you know. So and I also know other people are going through stuff. Everybody’s going through stuff. Life is messy. And I think sometimes we compare, like, I’m not going to share that person’s going through a tougher journey or whatever, but it’s, it doesn’t matter to the person, the individual, it’s tough on them and their circumstances might be slightly nuanced and changed.

So I appreciate you sharing that because I think that people are scared to be vulnerable. And I know I was there too, like, and I had to kind of let the crack show before things started to get the load started to get lighter and I started to kind of just sit up a little straighter and be like, OK, it’s in, and, you know, still practicing that to, to the today. But I find that we’re reluctant to do that and I just want to encourage people to be vulnerable because I think it’s always worse in our head than when it comes out.

And what if it could be different? What if, what if by you sharing, you would have like a deeper connection with somebody or more help or whatnot? Like, I don’t know. What do you want to say to the person who is struggling with being transparent. Just know that everybody out there has issues. Every single person, even that perfect person with 5 kids and they’re all in college, and I mean, everything that you see about them is just perfect, their house, and, you know, there’s There’s something they’re hiding behind there that just is because it’s just, it’s life like you said, life is messy, you know, it’s is not a straight path, you know what is it someone told me once they’re like, you know, as soon as you tell like God your plans, that’s how you make him laugh at you or something like that, you know, because yeah, you make plans, he laughs in your he or she laughs in your place, in your face or whatever, yeah, and so it’s like, you know, there’s no, there’s no straight path for any of us, and You know, and all of us, all of us treat it differently.

Every time I get like a little something, my mind gets paranoia and I’m like, OK, I gotta go to the doctor, check that out, you know, and it’s part of it is just to release that from my mind. So I’m like, OK, it’s no big deal. You know, that mole was no big deal. I got it taken care of. They looked and they Said, hey, you’re, you’re cool, you know, try to come in more than every 3 weeks or something, you know, but it’s just, you know, it’s just everybody treats it different.

But just know, I think you meant 3 years, right? You don’t have to go to the derham every 215 weeks. I don’t, but I was being sarcastic saying 230 weeks, you know, it may be 22 months, yeah, but uh. I overcentralize. I overdo it sometimes just to add the humor in it. It’s a good point though. And so you, you know, Brendan, you’re a creative family guy. You’ve been this, you know, you haven’t, you’ve been caregiving for a long time and will be continued caregiving for hopefully a long time, right?

And so how do you mitigate caregiver burnout? Like, what is, what are the things that You do to help you mitigate it, or if you’ve ever had it, how did you recover from it? My wife, I’m not in this alone. I mean, honestly, she is probably way more than I do, especially in the beginning. I mean, I, I couldn’t do any of this. He wouldn’t be where he is without her. Um, and, you know, we’re, we’re not alone. We do this together. And I think that’s, that’s huge.

I mean, if you’re doing this by yourself, you know, that’s It’s, it’s like the more I go through life, the more I just admire like single moms, and it’s like, just even like when my wife goes away for a weekend. You know, it’s like I have barely any time for myself to do anything, and it’s, it’s because there’s just so much going on. And, you know, I can’t imagine being a single mom, caregiving, having kids, it’s just working, it’s just, it’s insane. It’s, I think that’s where I just kind of like tangented, but, you know, it is not being alone, it’s having support, really.

It’s, it’s, you need someone, even if you’re single, you still need other people. You need groups of some sort, even someplace just to talk. Even if you just write it out, just write it out, get it, get it, get it from your head onto a pen, I type mine in, I dictate mine, you find a way, but you gotta get it out, because if it stays in, it’s gonna blow. What does your writing practice look like? I mean, I know that’s a big part of your therapeutic writing, you talked about creative writing, um.

How does, how do you make that habit stick, or is it have any kind of a ritual around it, or is it just whenever you feel it, what does it look like? You know, I love, love writing. The thing is, is when you’re a caregiver, you can’t set things, you know, I, I listen to authors all the time and they’re like, you know, you need to set these hours every day, go in your office, write, and that’s great if it works for you. But, you know, if something goes on with my son, I don’t have that choice.

If there’s this going on, I don’t have that choice. So I write when I can. So, you know, it’s, it’s an adaptive principle. So I do a lot of dictating. If I’m on a road trip and I’m driving by myself, you know, I’ll plot a story in my head and I’ll dictate a lot of it on the phone as I’m going along. Um, and then I’ll get up early, I’ll stay up late, you know, and maybe just put an hour here, an hour there. Um, you know, when I first started doing the plays, my wife had great advice.

She said, look, 22 minutes a day. That’s it, do 23 minutes a day. And sooner or later you’ll get somewhere, and sooner or later I launched my first book. And frankly, I looked at it 22 years later and it was horrible, but it did well because the content was right. I went back, cleaned it all up, and I’m like, it’s so much better now. But the whole point was, I just did it, and the 213, the 221 minutes a day was the most important philosophy, and I learned that that elephant sooner or later does go down, and you just take little chunks here and there.

You’ll be amazed what you accomplish in 220, 2300 months. I mean, I think it’s, that’s very true, and to your point, like caregiving, like there are, it’s hard to put structure into something like that. And yet I know that a lot of people would have like an all or nothing mentality, like, oh, I can’t write for an hour or two, like I’m, I’m just not going to do it. And that really Dipilled that for you and we’re like, no, I, 15 minutes. I can find 15 minutes. And it was similar for me when I started Happy, Healthy Caregiver.

I had no business starting a business. I had caregiving, working full time. Like that was how crazy and ridiculous, you know, did I think that was over 10 years ago. But I just did one little Thing a day. I took action on like one thing, you know, writing a post, doing something, listening to something so I could learn how to do the next thing I needed to do on my website another day. But taking those little bite size action or those micro acts are, they really add up to bigger, significant things.

And that’s with everything. That’s, you know, whether you’re writing or starting a business or just trying to make some kind of a healthy change, it’s, it’s those little, little baby decisions that, that really add up. What do you think about self-care? Like, does that, do those words bug you as a caregiver, or, and what else do you do to, you know, make yourself a whole happy and healthy person? I again, I’m going to give a lot of credit to my wife. She sets our family up to do.

You know, trips here and there, breaks, go and do stuff, uh, you know, for me, it’s like I’m either working around the house, doing something with the kids, or I’m writing. And for me, writing is everything. It is my therapy. It is like, it is the, it’s that muse in my head that I just, it just keeps coming out and it just, I have to keep writing. It’s, it, it’s the one thing that makes me feel whole and everything else is going on. But self-care is so important, and whether that’s running, walking, seeing a therapist, just going and seeing friends.

I mean, I’m sure you know this, social is massively important as you get older, uh, because, you know, that That tends to, you know, that’s one of the signs. It’s like if you’re not social, your brain’s in a lot of it is because your brain’s not working. I find when I, especially when I, I’m in the throes of writing something and it’s something new that I haven’t researched before, and I start researching it, it’s like I’m learning something and I find myself being clear in my mind because I’m learning so.

Much about this and trying to manipulate the words to say it correctly so I can present it correctly. So social is probably my hardest. I’m not an introvert in any sense, but I will just dive into my writing. And so, but, you know, my wife’s like, hey, you know, you got to go do this with your friends or whatever. I’m like, Oh yeah, that’s right. So. Well, it sounds like Keegan helps you with that too. You’re going, you’re at least going to a thrift store and stuff, which is also a big, a big help.

I mean, what a neat thing that you all get to do together. And it’s giving your wife some space to do something else while you’re doing that. It’s giving your son purpose and you’ve got these memories that you’re making together. It’s an income for him to feel independent. So, so interesting. And the therapeutic writing, I think, can be really healing. And that is why I wrote my journal, the um the Just For You Daily Self-re Journal, is that I wanted people who maybe weren’t writers, right? Like not everybody.

Um, it’s going to be like, oh, I need, I need to try this. And so they’re listening to this episode and you’re thinking, I have not tried journaling. I have not tried some kind of therapeutic writing, then maybe that’s an opportunity for you. So that is why I wrote the journal is that I wrote a prompted journal to give people kind of something to write about so they don’t have to that that removes that barrier. And all of the questions are really about helping them prioritize their own health and happiness.

Written with caregivers in mind because I know sometimes caregivers lose themselves in the caregiving process, right? It becomes all about their people and less about them. So I want to ask you a couple of questions from the Just For You daily Self-care Journal, and there’s no wrong answer, Brennan. OK, here we go. Here it is. This is what it looks like. And the first question I’ve got for you is, well, I feel like we’ve already kind of, well, let me ask you this, and maybe you’re not gonna say, what small area of your house has the potential to bring you joy?

It’s, it’s interesting. It’s like, I’m very optimistic person. It could be the kitchen cause that’s where everybody accumulate accumulates, and, but, you know, it could be our little office space where my son has all his Dr. Seuss books like he was, he’s got like an eBay huge shelf, but he also has a, um, Trophy shelf with all this, he has specific Seuss books that he likes to find and collect and it, you know, sometimes it could just be my room and my bedroom where it’s like it’s like just close the door.

It’s like my little private world that I just wanna be not disturbed by anybody, um, and I mean like your oasis. It is, it’s like, you know, when you have kids, especially when they’re little kids, and, and sometimes when they’re, they’re butting heads, it’s like you’re like, oh, just leave me alone for a minute, you know. Oh, you know, I, so I guess it’s anywhere. I mean, I’m in the tiny home now because it’s like it’s quiet, it’s, you know, it’s away someplace I can do just thinking and be cerebral for a bit.

Uh, is it close to your house, the tiny house. Yeah, no, literally it’s, it’s like 40 ft away. OK, it’s on the same property, yeah, yeah, in the, in the first chapter of the book I read about the tiny home. It’s this tiny home I’m writing about, the part of the real, not real, and the, um, you know, it’s, it’s literally 40 ft, but it’s sad too because like my mom would come out, but then she would come back and call me and she’s like, you know, hey, I don’t know how to get to your house, and it’s literally 40 ft away, and it’s like.

Come on, Mom, you wanna be like, Mom, it’s right there. Just look out your window. And yeah, but the reasoning is you can’t say that too because then they don’t understand it. So you know, I, it’s, and that’s one of the things too is when caregiving, you gotta be careful, you know, which, which landmine you step in, you know, the hardest was when I actually had to tell my mom she had Alzheimer’s sometimes. And that one was, and it was only, it was only for certain reasons, you know, it’s, you know, sometimes it was like for her dog.

Her dog, she had this border collie, and my wife loves animals. So, and in the book I talk about this border collie too because this border collie bit my son when he was 203 and this border collie also bit my daughter when she was 3. Both of them had to go to the ER. And she, that dog meant so much to her, but we did not care for that dog, and that dog stayed in the tiny home with her, and um. We would always to do very, I was like, Mom, you can’t just let the dog out because of the kids.

She’s like, my daughter will not do anything to your children, and she would always get very mad at me about that, and I’d have to explain that your dog already has. And so, you know, this was a struggle, you know. And the other 11 of the other big struggles which is very common is the driving piece, you know, you know, taking away the car, taking away the license. Luckily her car broke down and it was never fixed. Mhm. So it made it easier, but then I remember one day when she was trying to rationalize with me.

Look, I’m just gonna putt around town. I’m fine. And I’m like, you know, that, that’s kind of, you know, but sometimes. Yeah, yeah, and then sometimes I’m like, tell you what, Mom, you can go do the test, and if they pass you on the test, you can do it. And then we never got around to studying for the test the test, yeah, yeah, but then this also becomes a loop too, so the vicious. I know. Yes, it’s so hard. It’s so hard to lose, lose your dependence.

What was the last thing you said no or not now to? You know, I think sometimes we get stretched, right? We get stretched too thin. Has there been something you’ve had to been like, no, I can’t take that on right now, or Regarding, regarding caregiving or regarding just life, yeah, anything, um, I’ve learned, I, I’ve always been a pleaser and, um, I always like I was an engineer by degree. I did engineering for 20 years. And I always moved up pretty well, and mainly it’s because I always took on tasks.

I would never say no, I’d always do them. So I get promoted and things like that. But then over time, you start realizing that they keep giving you stuff and they stop paying you. And so, that’s where some stuff started clicking going, you know, if you’re not gonna pay me, I’m not gonna do it. And so that, that’s when I started learning how to say no, and then they started Getting to a point where there were certain people that I didn’t care to work for, you know, I had a very, it’s a no, I’ll call it jerk policy for for just to be clean, but it was a very no this policy.

If I got any inclination I was working on anybody who was just rotten jerk, I’m like, done, done. I’m just done with you. Either get rid of you or I won’t work for you. And then, but that started teaching. Teaching me that skill and so now it’s like, and especially with my own little business here, it’s like there’s so many things I want to do, but it’s like, OK, I’ve got to say no to some so I can do the others, even 15 minutes a day it’s like, you know, my list is gonna go on for 30 years at this point because of so many different things.

And so I’m like, OK, slow it down. What can I do? What can I delegate? What can I, um, get assistance to help with if I can, you know, find the right people. You know, cause I’ve always been, I like having the control of it, doing it myself, but I’ve realized that, you know, I can’t get everything done that I want to get done if I do that. So no is a very powerful tool, and it’s a very healthy tool because, you know, you need your sleep too.

Yeah, you can’t. If you say yes to something, you say no to something else. That was something that I, you know, I used to tell myself like I was the person, like you were saying at work. Who would give it to Elizabeth, you know, she’ll do it. She’s, you know, enthusiastically, but at some point you’re like, No, I’m stretched. I’m at capacity. That’s one of my lines. I’m at capacity. And I get this as a small business owner too, like people come to, you know, well, can’t you just share this and can’t you do that?

Yeah, but if I say yes to that, then there’s something else that I’m giving up in that in that time frame. And yeah, there are, there are ways that I make a Living doing some of this too. So it can be really challenging and yet trusting yourself that you know enough to know your own capacity and what you’re willing to take on. And it’s OK to have a little white space as well in your life. Like it doesn’t have to be completely chocked full with everything. And so sometimes the phrase that I say to myself is like, if I get asked to do something or offered, I’m like, is this, is this a hell yeah?

Because if it’s not a hell, yeah, it’s probably a no, like, or I’ll get back to you. And so that’s kind of this filter that I put it through, and that’s events and things, you know, do I want to spend my energy, you know, around jerks or vampires, I call them, where they suck the life out of you. It’s like, no, I’ve got to protect my energy right now. I can’t afford to, you know, go to this event and get sucked dry and then come back depleted and empty.

So it is It is such a, such an act, but I think we do have to trust ourselves there. OK, last question. Oh, and this is going to be a good one for you. What was the last great idea you had in the shower or on a solo car ride? That’s tough. I’m always just kind of firing up ideas left and right, and honestly, usually it comes at like 2 in the morning. I’ll, I’ll wake up. Lots of times it’s a, uh, a premise of like a story plot.

So what do you do 2 in the morning? Like, where do you put that information? So I have my phone and on my phone, I have two things. I have a notepad that’s called My Thoughts, and I literally wake up and it’s, I open up the notepad. I, I push my thoughts, and I just, I just start typing, and I know. I know that I can’t understand what I’m typing. This is when I just have random thoughts, um, but that thought loops in my head, which makes me stay awake.

So I’ll go and write down the thought, and I honestly never read it. I never go back to that. And if you were to read it, it autocorrect so much, and I’m just typing in the dark. It’s like, I have no idea what I’m really writing, but it’s just this page that’s just so long of just gobbledygook, but it’s just out of my head. I did, but when I get storylines that I’m like, oh, then I actually pull out the, uh, the, the mic, the app, and I dictate it.

And so I’ll just say it really quick, so it’s still out of my head, but this way it’s being captured correctly so I can go back to it and I can see the plot line and the storyline to see if it’s a good book or not. So those are the two things for that. But honestly, the last great idea we had. Uh, we have goats and a pig and a tortoise, dogs, cats, and we had, we had to, we do, uh, we had to take down some fences, so the dogs now are inside.

They’re usually outside. We had to realign some of the fence lines, and now the dogs are just driving me nuts inside. So we move the animals around each morning and then each night they come back, but we have a zip line in the back and the other day I was like, Hey, what if I take the goat, hook him up because he’s got a collar, and we put him on and he grazes. Well, I’ll hook him up to the zip line and he can just go zip line on our, he does the zip line, but he like, it’s just basically a runner for him.

He just walks along and grazes this all this tall grass. I’m like, so he’s still on the ground, but it’s containing him. Yeah, so interesting. Yeah, yeah, I’m all that was a great idea. So that was the last great idea I had. Oh, I love it. It’s just fun. I love it. How do any parting words that you wanna kind of share to, to wrap us up? And then how do people stay in touch with you, Brendan? Sure, um, you know, honestly, I would leave it with just don’t be alone.

Talk to people. Don’t be afraid to talk to people. Don’t be afraid to share. You know, we’ve spoken about this a couple times, and you’ll find more boat rowing with you. Then you are by yourself because that ocean is big and the more people you have, the easier it is to navigate and I think that’s probably my biggest word of advice and the Alzheimer’s Association um as well as uh in autism. I don’t really have an organization with autism, um, per se, uh, you know, but you know if anybody ever wants to reach out and ask questions about like Some of my journey on the autism, that’s fine too because I’ve navigated uh with our regional tier to uh medical school systems, home school systems, private school systems, all because you know we’re always trying to find the right avenue for our son as he was, you know, growing up in education, but I’ve also had to make sure the organization.

would support and fund that are appropriate. Lots of times that’s just crafting your words correctly, so they fund it. Um, and so there’s, there was a lot of that that went through. I mean, I’ve had to go to court twice. It was kind of like, you know, they brought the judge and 3. To hear our sides, you know, and I’ve, I’ve gone through both, and I have been successful at it, and mainly because I advocate for your son. It is, you’re an advocate. You’re a huge advocate. Yes, that’s exactly what it is, and it’s just.

You know, so You know, just don’t be afraid to ask questions. So I have actually 2 websites, 3. My son is doc Keegan.com. You can see this. You can see his suits like books there and buy books there. My scripts and everything is playing with plays. com because we play. Um, but, since I write thrillers and plays, they’re one’s for children, one’s for adults, I had to make a kind of an author website. So that’s BP Kelso, and if you just want social bp Kelso. com/links, um, that’s where you can find all my social links.

OK, great. I love it. Well, yeah, you can reach out to me on any one of those if anybody does and wants to ask questions. I appreciate that, and I’m sure that there might be some people that have some. Questions that want to dive deeper into some of the topics that we covered, because we covered a lot of ground today. Yeah, yeah. But I think the one thing that really shines through for me in this episode is that how powerful writing has been for you and the therapeutic writing, and maybe we’ve encouraged some people to try it on and see if it’s going to be a fit for them would be amazing.

So I appreciate that. And one more, and one more thing on that, you know, I was Uh, English was my worst subject in school. Um, it was always easiest got into engineering. I was dyslexic when I was a kid, uh, ADHD, Ritalin, um, and I honestly didn’t start reading until I was like 21 or so, and that’s when I, I guess all the dyslexia had finally like kicked. I finally like organized it in my brain. And it wasn’t as much of an issue. So, if you, this has been a challenge for you in the past, it doesn’t mean it could be a challenge for you today.

So don’t be afraid to try things that didn’t work for you 20 years ago, uh, because it may work better now than it did then. So I just wanted to bring that up. Yeah, no, I think that is an important thing. To call out. Thank you so much for your vulnerability and sharing your story, and I know that people are gonna, um, glean a lot of insight from this episode, and I appreciate you. Yeah, well, thank you so much for letting me come on and tell my story and talk about my stuff.

So I greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. Hello, podcast listener. If you’re caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s or dementia, you don’t want to miss All Authors podcast, Untangling Alzheimer’s and dementia. I’m your host, Mary Anne Chuuco, 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 and 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 allauthors.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. You’ll find the show notes and all the resources mentioned at happyhealthy 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 happyhealthycareegiver. com to join. Until our next episode, I’m Elizabeth Miller with a reminder to take care of you.

Are you still here? Well, it’s time for the disclaimer. I am not a medical, legal, or financial professional, and I am not providing medical, financial, or legal advice. If you have questions related to these topics, please seek a qualifier. Professional. I have taken care to spotlight family caregivers and experts, but their opinions are theirs alone. This podcast is copyrighted and no part can be reproduced without the written permission of Happy Healthy Caregiver LLC. Thanks again for listening to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast on the Whole Care Network.