A lot of what I’m able to do today is just to, to feel gratitude for the high highs that I was able to have. Living flat is boring. Living at the edges is, is far more entertaining. It’s far more fulfilling, and you have to be willing to take the risk that if you’re going to have the high highs, there are those inverse low lows that are going to happen sometimes.

Are you caring for others while working and trying to of 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 happyhealthycagiver.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 so much for being here. Before we get into this episode with Brian Stifel, I first want to share a couple of quick announcements on my own.

I want to encourage you to subscribe to the Happy Healthy caregiver. My list every week I share something happy, healthy, and care-related. You can subscribe to the list by going to bit.lee/HHCnews. This episode is brought to you from Guilt to Good Enough, a memoir about caregiving, guilt, and healing. Jeannette Yates takes you through a lifelong caregiving journey, confronting the emotional toll and offering a path toward healing through boundaries and reflective journaling. Each chapter includes journaling prompts designed to help you examine your own guilt and emotional triggers, so you can heal while continuing to care for others.

I found this book heartfelt and empowering with authentic storytelling and practical guidance. It reframes good enough as self-compassion and progress over perfection. From guilt to Good Enough is here to help you care for the caregiver too. Find your copy and delve into the prompts at the selfcaregiver.com. slabook. For this episode segment of what I’m reading, I wanted to let you know about Mel Robbins and her daughter Sawyer Robbins book, The Let Them Theory. While this is not a caregiving book, it frankly should be because honestly, caregiving is primarily about adult relationships, and this book is all about those.

Can’t recommend this enough for parents of adult children, help with adult friendships, romantic relationships, family caregivers. Etc. I adored the audible lesson that Mel narrates. If you are a fan of her podcast, you’re gonna fly through this audio book. She has a friend to friend style of talking and the stories just bring the lessons to life. Buckle up and get ready to take your power and your energy back. It’s a 5 star read for me and one of the few books that I would actually reread or relisten to.

Speaking of Mel Robbins, my favorite thing is something I first learned about on one of her podcasts with Doctor. Stacy Sims. The episode was called The Body Reset How Women Should Eat and Exercise for Health, Fat Loss and Energy. One of the very doable tips that I got from the show was the fact that we and women in particular are showing up at our workouts with an empty stomach, and that is a huge disservice to building muscle, burning fat, and feeling energized. The tip that stuck with me in particular is that I started drinking a protein iced coffee before My strength training workouts.

Also, just to note, I was not an iced coffee drinker before I started trying this, but now I really see the appeal. So here’s how I put it in the practice. After dinner, usually while I’m cleaning up, I brew a cup of coffee the night before and then I put it in the fridge and then when I’m getting ready for my workout for my strength training ones in particular, and shout out to trained and Marietta and Madison in particular, who leads the small groups with variety and energy.

I put the brewed. Coffee, uh, in the fridge overnight and then in the morning, I take about a cup of unsweetened almond milk and I mix that with not quite a full scoop of Flav City vanilla protein powder, but pretty close, let’s say, you know, 2/3. I mix that up with the milk, the protein powder, and then I add it to the coffee and mix it all up and then I add the ice. And that gives me something to sip on while I’m driving to my workout and I feel like it’s giving me a lot of energy and strength.

More strength building really for my, for my workouts. So you don’t even have to add stevia because the protein powder that I use has some natural sweeteners in it. I think primarily from the bananas and the coconut that they include in the powder. This is something that you can grab and go. I hope that you give it a try.

Let’s meet today’s caregiver in the spotlight. Brian Stifel cared for his brother and continues to provide care and support for his mom. He’s a corporate executive, husband, and proud father of 3.

In this episode, we discuss real life caregiving challenges, including dating while caregiving, the myth of work-life balance, online safety concerns, and finding joy in each day. Even on tough days, Brian says he can string together a few of these hot dog moments. I hope you enjoy the show. 

Hi, Brian. Welcome to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast. Hello. Thank you for having me. I’m excited. Thanks for taking time out of your workday. To have this conversation, this chat with me. We’re going to get into it. But first, I’d like to kind of kick things off with some positive words of affirmation, get us kind of in the right mindset.

And this is what your episode is sharing with us today, Brian. It says, it’s a good one. It says, make excuses or make improvements. The choice is yours. Any thoughts on that and how that could relate to your life right now or caregiving? Make, make excuses or make improvement. The choice is yours. I love that. I think for me in my caregiving experience, the thing that the people I was helping wanted most was to feel a sense of control and a sense of forward progress. So, you know, excuses are all about stagnancy, right?

But improvements, improvements give you agency. Improvements are about feeling like for all the things you’re not in control of in your life, you can still move forward if you focus on. The things that you are. Um, and it’s empowering and that empowerment is actually healing. So I love that one. Yeah, it’s a good one. The folks, everybody takes care of kind of different, different people, and my mom was an excuse maker, I’m going to admit to you that she had a reason why she got into this situation and I would kind of call it her greatest hits album where I just knew what was coming, like track one, excuse, track 2, track 3.

It really informed like I, you know, one point, a boundary, like, I don’t necessarily have to sit here and listen to the excuses. I can walk away. I have choices of things. I can do the choice is mine, right? To, to walk away that was in my control. But it also like informed that I catch myself sometimes saying things and I’m like, well, that sounds like an excuse. So, yeah, I think it’s, it’s, it’s a good One that we can make excuses or make improvements. Well, share us a little, tell us a little bit, Brian, about your caregiving story or in, in your case, I think it’s caregiving stories with us.

So introduce us to the happy healthy caregiver listeners. Yeah, and, and, um, you know, my story started 25 years ago, um, and it in many ways fast forwards to to today. Uh, but. Uh, 25 years ago, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. And so my first caregiving journey was very much about helping her through the discovery process, the treatment process, the recovery process, and there was There was chemo and there was radiation and there was surgery and there was post-surgery recovery and all the things and so I can certainly unpack that one and then 33 years later my brother got sick, complications from juvenile diabetes, which he had had at that point for 20+ years.

And my mom was barely even better before we were taking care of him. What was his name? His name was uh Rich, short for Richard. OK. Yeah, so, and in fact, Rich and I took care of my mom together. We took our mom together, and then literally before she was even fully recovered, I had to turn around and start helping him. Wow. And uh I’ll, I’ll unpack his story, but, but, uh, uh, his, his condition turned out to be, turned out to be terminal, and he did pass back then, back in 2003, and my mom amazingly is still here today.

In fact, I took her this morning for an outpatient medical procedure and it’s like we’re, we’re, we’re doing it all again. Yeah, but good news today though. Oh, you’re doing more procedures. Yeah, today it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s interesting. She has a lot of, um, you know, she’s 25 years older, so now she’s in her 80s and she has a lot of complications that have built up over the years from her treatment. So although she is cancer free, it has been the gift that just kept giving for the last 25 years.

And so today we were doing orthopedic things that are that are all byproducts of the surgeries she had back in the day. So caregiving has been a really big part of your life the past. 25 years and I think you were working too at the same time. First of all, I’m sad to hear about your brother. Sounds like you both were close and working things through with your mom and going through that emotional journey and then just slammed right back into it. Yeah, yeah. And the the interesting thing to me, I have people in my life today.

Who are caregivers. I have a, have a, my wife’s uncle is is in his late 80s and deteriorating fast, and her aunt is a full-time caregiver for her husband at home. When we see, we see what that looks like every day. Mine felt so different to me for two reasons. One, it was happening when I was so relatively young. I was in my early 30s taking care of a mom who at that time was in her late 50s and then taking care of a brother who was only 20213 years older than I. So it felt very, it felt too soon.

The other thing that was super interesting was neither one of them had conditions which required continuous round the clock care. It was much more intermittent. When my mom was having her treatments, she was in complete need of care, and then in between, she was independent. And then would become completely dependent again. The treatments were really harsh, and so with each treatment, she would go backwards and then she would get back to normal. And then the same thing with my, with my brother, he was having very serious issues and in between those issues, he would go a whole month of living completely independently.

And so not only was I working, but I couldn’t predict when I was going to need to change my life to fit the caregiving in because it wasn’t happening on any schedule and it wasn’t happening continuously. Yes, I know what that’s like. It’s like waiting for, you know, the other shoe to drop or like this waves of, of care to kind of come in and everything kind of be uprooted in your life and you’re juggling work, you’re juggling your career at this point, did you have a family of your own as well at this point?

So no, both of these occur. Before, in fact, I met my wife, my future wife, I guess, while I was looking after my brother and it was actually she was part of my self-care that the way that I met her was actually part of my self care in trying to recover from what had been just a hellacious couple of years of looking after my family. It had gotten so challenging to deal with my my brother. My mom was herself in recovery. My dad was largely out of the picture.

I did not have other brothers and sisters. I didn’t have the support system that I needed coming on the heels of taking care of the two of them. And I ended up going to my doctor and asking for a referral to a therapist. And I had started, I had started seeing a psychologist just to help me deal with everything I had been dealing with in the past couple of years. And one of the homework assignments. He gave me led me to meet my wife. So was the homework assignment?

I’m curious. So I am Jewish by birth, Jewish by genetics and so forth, but had largely grown up in a secular life. I was not in touch with that part of, of my, I guess that part of my heritage, and he said to me, uh, I think you’re going to find connection, community. Uh, it wasn’t specifically about finding a partner, but he just wanted me to find community. Uh, and he said, I think you need to get connected to the Jewish community, and I was uncomfortable. I, it didn’t feel natural to me at that point, and he gave me several homework assignments.

He, he sent me to the local Jewish community center and had me, um, like join some different groups and try to start to make some connections that way. And he said, you need to go out on dates, and I said, I’m not emotionally available for that, and he said, that’s ridiculous. Of course you are. Um, and he had me sign up for what was an online dating app at the time called JDate, which was specifically sort of like Match. com, but specifically for Jewish people. And in less than 90 days, I, I met who would be my future wife. Wow.

Good for you, well, I mean, you know, not everybody takes the therapist’s advice to heart, but I know you and I are both in the Atlanta area and so I’m assuming that’s like the Jewish family Community Services. This is all part of that, and they have a great System here. So we’ll certainly kind of link to that resource for people that they have been, um, resources that my family has used as well. So my husband, it was kind of in a similar upbringing as you. Um, I call him a cultural Jew.

I don’t know if that’s offensive, but it was like more cultural than religious. And then I was raised Catholic. And so yeah, our interfaith marriage rocked a few boats, but we’re still here almost 30, 30 years later. But we used the Weinstein hospice for his mom. We used some other services that were amazing. So, and I have been to some events where I have learned a lot about caregiving. So I’ll certainly link to that. I love, I love that story. I love also that you’re saying. Uh, you know, most people would agree with you.

They would say, like, I don’t have time to date while caregiving, and good for you to kind of put into the test, and that’s really gonna let somebody know if they’re going to show up for you, right, for life. Well, it’s true and and I, uh, so I started dating my wife while my brother. I was still living. I, I didn’t know, she and I had our first date in April of that year. He died in August of that year. I didn’t know, at the time, I didn’t know that his condition was terminal.

Well, I’ll say it differently. We knew We knew he wasn’t going to live a long life. We knew that uh the disease had had ravaged him pretty badly, but they weren’t, this wasn’t um like people with, with cancer or some other diseases where the doctors turn and look at the caregiver and say, you know, let’s talk about how much time. You have left. Nobody had given us time. And in fact, when he died, he died unexpectedly. He died in his home. Yeah, uh, not specifically sick that day or the day or the day before.

So we didn’t know it was coming, but so she and I started dating in in April, and in in fact, he met her, um, and he didn’t like her. Oh, funny. But he didn’t like anybody. I mean, at that point he was so angry that he was sick, and he didn’t feel good, and then, and he, he was not himself. But yeah, we, we, we, we talk about the fact that had, had he not been sick, we wouldn’t have met. Had he not died, we may not have made it.

Uh, um, and so, you, you know, we, we, um, we find the blessings in all of it, which for me is another, yeah, is another, is another part of what I carry with me over these. These last 25 years of uh of, of, I just view, I view the experience in its wholeness. There were parts of that experience that were awful, but there were parts of that experience that were life affirming and parts of that experience that opened up new doors, which included Um, this year we’re gonna, gonna have our 20th wedding anniversary and, and, right, what a, what a blessing and that it wouldn’t have happened.

It wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t gone through this experience. I think like, when I reflect back on the caregiving years, so my folks are deceased, I’m still a caregiver for my brother. Uh, along with sharing the care with some siblings. And, but I feel like looking back at that whole time, and my mother-in-law was also sick, so we were squeezed in the sandwich generation, that it’s so like dark and dreary at some moments, but then like these little joys seem really vibrant, like they’re like diamonds in the rough.

They just kind of even sparkle more and so kind of hanging on. It sounds like you’ve got like a positive outlook on, on. And mindset on things and we’re able to kind of reframe that. Did that come naturally or is that, was that part of the learning experience for you? No, it was, was part of the learning experience and, and it also came with time. It was, was incredibly painful in the moment. I mean, particularly losing my brother, he, he was my only sibling. We were best friends.

He was 2 years older, so he had literally been in my life, my, my whole life and in the beginning, I mean, the hole that it created. In my life, in my heart, I was, I was profoundly unhappy, but, but the, the, the, the therapist was really helpful. Mhm. And helping me do a lot of reframing and helping me to, he said a lot of things to me at that time. The thing, the thing that I remember the most is that Um, that pain and happiness are, uh, are the connected inverse of one another, which means You only feel pain that deep because you got to feel joy that high, and a lot of people don’t ever get to feel the joy that I got to feel.

I know people today who Don’t even talk to their siblings who who talk to them, but only at family, uh, you know, family events and otherwise not. you know, I, I, we, my brother and I chose to live together as adults, but we shared an apartment together after we were out of school and we ate dinner together almost every day and we hung out together and by the time he he died, we had, we had bought our own places. We felt like we were gotten into our 30s like it’s time to, it’s, but in our 20s, we lived together happily and so a lot of, a lot of what I’m Able to do today is just to, to feel gratitude for the high highs that I was able to have.

Living flat is boring. Living at at the edges is, is far more entertaining. It’s far more fulfilling, and you have to be willing to take the risk that if you’re going to have the high highs, there are those inverse low lows that are going to happen sometimes. Yeah. Well said. So that was, yeah, that was, that was a lot of it for me. Well, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting, I think the advice that’s With you over time, and that has certainly kind of informed. Anything else that has kind of informed from this experience, how you’re choosing to live your life?

Like, what have you taken away from it? Yeah, well, there was a second one that I remember very well from, because it was true at that time and it has turned out to be true today, and that was to don’t burden yourself with happiness as a perpetual state of mind, right? It’s very difficult to feel happy all the time, even when your life is going. Right, it’s nearly impossible to feel happy all the time when, you know, everything feels like it’s going wrong. And when I, when I got to the therapist, one of the things I talked to him about was just, I just this profound sense of unhappiness.

Part of the exercises we went through is he, he just relieved me of the burden of seeking happiness, and we reframed, and what he said to me instead was, try to find joy in the moment. Moments of joy are very possible even if you’re not in a period of joy. Right. Um, and string together a few moments of joy, um, and you start to have a pretty good day and a pretty good week in a pretty good month, or at least more balanced when you’re feeling like everything is going the other way.

And so a big thing that I try to do now is I look for moments of joy and over time, my wife and I developed a We have a nickname for our moments of joy. We, we call them our hot dog of the day. Oh, I know how that story came out. And the way that that happened is we were in Chicago visiting family. And we were at their house for lunch, and they served hot dogs, and they had been cooked on the grill, whatever, but it was the greatest hot dog I had ever eaten in my life because it was a transcendent hot dog.

Well, they know how to make them up there. They do. Well, they do. And so it came from a butcher in Chicago. I can give him a plug. It’s called the Romanian kosher butcher shop. How we’re gonna totally plug them. And I’ve never heard of this place, and I’m telling you, it’s like you put something in your mouth and it’s like this explosion of, oh my gosh, you gotta like hot dogs, but if you like it, if you like a hot dog, it’s a transcendent hot dog.

And anyway, we, we both loved it, we went nuts for it. Fast forward today, we, we get them shipped here to Atlanta and every Memorial Day we eat them and it’s super fun. But, but what was born out of that day at, you know, at her cousin’s house where we ate these amazing dogs was like, That completely altered the trajectory of my day. It was so delicious. We talked about it like the rest of the afternoon, we talked about it the next day, and it was so stupid.

It was a hot dog. But what it really was, was an unplanned, unexpected moment of joy. And we now refer to that as what, what’s your hot dog of the day? You know, what was your hot dog today? That you, you ought to be able to find one hot dog in your day. Yes, yes. And it could be as simple as something you ate or a song that you heard or something funny that you saw, you know, flipping through your, your social feeds or whatever it is.

So yeah, so I, I’ve learned to look for Mad Dog. I love it. I love it. It’s, you know, and it is the little things, right? And two things can be true at the same time. You could have been very tough moment of your life, lots of things going on, and the There’s still this, like you said, these moments of joy. And in a way, you know, you’ve mentioned the word gratitude, but it is, it is a gratitude. And some people journal these little hotdog moments, you know, in a, in a journal.

And you do form a habit, I think, almost like a rewiring in your brain where you’re seeking these hotdog moments, you’re having conversations with your wife about them. And, and, and really looking for them and like, OK, what, what, reflecting back, what was my hot dog moment today? Um, and then the next time you’re like, this is a, this, this might be a hotdog moment. This was one before type of things. So interesting to me that that’s self-care, right? Little micro acts like that can be infused in any kind of a day that can feel like it’s gone off the rails.

And I know I had to have that practice too, Brian. It’s like I I have to steal the hotdog moment of the day, but I, you know, I saw something before there was Happyhealthycaeggiver.com. There was an Instagram that I eventually became Happy Healthy caregiver, renamed to Instagram, my Instagramgram account, and I saw somebody do 100 days of, I think they did 2021 days of of happy, maybe. And I decided I was going to do 100 days of healthy. And health can mean lots of different things, right? Not just working out, but it kind of got Got me into this habit where I was being accountable and I had to post something every day of saying, OK, what is one thing I’m doing for myself today?

And maybe it was, you know, an ice cream cone or maybe it was a nice chat with a girlfriend, or, but it was those kind of little itty bitty things that were were happening. I’m really encouraging folks to kind of take this to heart and, and use that. Um, and I love that it’s still a tradition that you all have 20 some years later. It is, and it reminds me that when, when my mom was going through her treatments, it was also um A source of healing for her.

So in her case, she had a very odd kind of cancers. It was, it was called a soft tissue sarcoma. So it was a, it was a big tumor in her thigh of all places. So it’s very odd they had to, I mean it was like grapefruit size big thing. So she had to have uh radiation to reduce it. Then they took it out and when they took it out, they messed up her legs and they had to do all this like surgery on her legs so so she wouldn’t have her leg amputated in and in.

OK, so. She had, she had. Multiple rounds of radiation, and her radiation was hardcore. It was in inpatient radiation where they implanted some things like in under, you know, under her skin, and she was like sleeping in a lead room by herself. And then her chemo treatments were all inpatient, so she would have to spend 3 days in the hospital because the, the, the orange goop that they were putting in her made her, you know, was so poisonous. And then she would need to be cared for at home kind of for a week after that.

So, so, so I was, I was going to her house, staying, staying in her house, being in the hospital with her every day when she was having the, the treatments, and then staying with her at home afterwards. So it would be, it would last like 7 to 10 days at a time, and she would have to do that every 3 weeks. So we 10 weeks, days on, 3 weeks off, and then we would do the 10 days again and so forth. And so during those 93 days, I was the it was my job to keep everybody else informed what was going on with her.

Like her deal was, I’m not talking to these people, right? I’m going through hell, I’m going through this terrible treatment. And so she made me her spokesperson, but we didn’t want me to have the burden of having to do this, you know, hub and spoke one-off, like how many different separate conversations could I possibly have. So we, we agreed that I was going to create, you know, a newsletter that was the update on her. And so every 3 weeks, we would send the next one and it was going out to 100 and something people.

It was our nuclear family, but also to, you know, all of our people, all of our friends, whatever, this was before social media, right? So we couldn’t just post, we couldn’t just post on her account. And so, The newsletter, which could have been just the facts, ma’am, to Stand up comedy, it turned into how could we make this the funniest thing you’ve ever heard can’t wait to read it. That they can’t wait to read. So we were making fun of her tumor, we were making fun of her treatment, we were making fun of her bald head.

My mom was a, was a really good sport. Part of her way of dealing with the whole thing was to, you know, rather than to demonize all of it, was to make fun of all of it. And so, you know, our, our hot dog every day became writing this newsletter together and And publishing this thing and then reading all the responses of people who were snorting milk out their nose when they read it because it was so, it was so irreverent. And my mom to this day, she’ll say, you know, she, she, she’s the only cancer patient who gains weight.

Like she was so pissed off. She’s like, she’s like, OK, if I’m gonna have to have cancer, I’m gonna have to have chemo, like, I’m gonna lose like 50 pounds. And she like got it, you know, she got sort of weirdly Excited about it, right? Instead, the medicine that they gave her caused her to like retain water. Like she blew up like the Michelin man. Her cheeks were all big. She didn’t even look like herself. She was so mad. Rather than not wanting to eat at all, it made her ravenous.

And so we would write these funny newsletters about how she’s like gnawing on T-bone steaks, you know, like she’s some kind of animal at the zoo. Anyways, the, the, none of the jokes we wrote would be funny to anybody on your podcast today because they were all, it was all personal to her and it was all in the moment, but I share the story because it was not only was it a great moment of joy for me, but it was a great moment of joy for her in the middle of some really, really crappy days.

I mean, she felt horrible, right? The medicine made her feel so terrible and Uh, the irony of having to poison yourself to survive, right, was, was never lost on her. And yet, we were cackling, the cackling. I mean, it was, it was, I really believe it was critical to her healing, and although it happened organically, it wasn’t something we we scripted out because we, you know, we were like trying to do right. It was consistent and it lasted, you know, through every through every treatment right until she was cancer free.

So that, that it was, it was a cool part of my self-care, but it was also part of how I was able to help her heal, which was, which was very cool to watch. Those are great hot dog moments like you said, and like having this time with your mom, like, you know, I think about that with my mom, like she was bedridden the last two years of her life and You know, we had lots of great coffee chats and I’ve had her on my podcast and the different things like that.

And we may, we probably wouldn’t have had that had I not, had she not been, you know, sick. So there are like these bittersweet type of things through that. And by the way, I do feel like I have to mention, because part of our role as caregivers is we do have to update everybody a lot of times. And there is a, a, um, a link to a nonprofit in the show. not it’s called caringbridge. org that people can go and use as like an online journal and you may have gotten these in recent years through people, but it’s, it’s a way to kind of have it all in one place so it’s not, you know, over social where people get, things get lost in newsfeed and don’t hit the algorithm or, you know, all of that stuff.

So, but such an interesting, thank you for, for sharing that story. I do I want to pivot with you because I know we’ve got limited time and I You know, I originally was introduced to you through working with um Cox Communications Company, is how we got acquainted. And I recently had a partnership with them where they were looking for someone from the sandwich generation to represent their, their survey results, and so got to Experienced my first satellite media tour, which was something which was a lot, but great experience and a great team of people that you have there.

And that’s how we, we met and I learned about your caregiving story. But I’m curious, the whole point of the engagement that I had with them was on Digital and mobile safety, and especially as a person who’s like caring for older adults, and you’ve got kids now, um, you know, and so you’re, you’re kind of in the middle and you got to worry about it for yourself. Like, do you worry about digital safety for your family? I do. So I am now a member. the sandwich generation.

So, so I’m now in my 22s. My mom, who survived that cancer bout 260 years ago, is now in her early 23s and is living in an independent living slash transition to assisted living kind of a place, and I’m her person. You’re her person. I am her person. She now lives 23 minutes away, and I am her person. I was her person this morning. I took her to the doctor. I’m going to be that person’s person this afternoon, so here we are sandwiched. Yeah. And at the same time, my, my wife, who I met just a few years after my mom’s cancer started, we’re now celebrating 22021 years of marriage later this year.

We’ve got 225 kids 303, and 230. Wow. And so my kids are all very much. At the age where they, they are digital natives, they live fully online, and there are so, so many things to worry about. So I have my mom on the one side who is susceptible to all kinds of digital predators who go after innocent senior citizens, you know, to try to steal their money and scam them, and I’ve got kids who are either subject to, you know, the mental health side on the one hand because, because kids are mean.

Um, and the internet is, uh, an anonymous place where you can be a very mean person, but you also have to worry about their physical safety because there are predators out there who try to recruit kids. And so it is a very, very serious issue and one that I take seriously as a parent and I feel super lucky that I work for a company. Who cares about that? So I do work for Cox and have been there. It’ll be 218 years. Actually, my 218 year Cox anniversary is my is my 20 year wedding anniversary.

I started, so I never have to forget the the yeah, the dates and what, what I really appreciate, one of the things I really, really appreciate about Cox is we, we really do. want, we want to help our customers care for themselves and and you know this thing we provide for folks who may not know who we are, we are, I think that the largest private internet service provider in the country. I think we’re the 3rd largest among the traditional cable providers behind Comcast and Charter. We, we represent a community of almost 11 million Americans who live where, where we do business all around the country, and we provide internet service, and the thing about internet connectivity is that, you know, it’s, it’s one of the greatest advancements in human history, right?

You and I are having this conversation right now over the internet and, and the internet at its best. is an enabler of human connection, a remarkable enabler of human connection, but it at its worst, it actually takes away from connection. It can cause isolation, it can cause alienation, and it can lead to pretty serious mental health issues, and so we want to do more than just provide it, right? We also want to be a thought leader in helping our customers use it as a source for good.

And so there’s a lot of different ways that we do that, but one of the ways we did was, was we fielded this study of the sandwich generation. So we surveyed seniors who are at one end of the sandwich. We surveyed teams who are The other end of the sandwich and then we surveyed the people like you and me who are in the middle trying to keep both of them safe. So it was cool. It’s a blind study. It was like 1600 people and we, we, we learned a lot and we validated a lot of what we thought we would see.

What surprised you? Anything surprised you of the results? You know, I, um was expecting more seniors to feel more on top of it. I thought fewer seniors would feel afraid or feel conscious of the risks than they did. I knew that the kids, the kids get it drilled in them these days, all the things around bullying and around watching out for watching out for predators and so forth. But I think I wasn’t expecting the uh the seniors to feel as vulnerable as as they felt. I, I shouldn’t have felt that way.

My, my, my, my mom is completely That way, you know, she, she thinks she’s savvy. She’s she’s convinced that she’s savvy because she has, she has a smartphone and she uses it and she uses it deftly. Right. Right. But she doesn’t even realize all the things she clicks on that you should not click on. Let’s talk about links you should ignore. She doesn’t get fooled by phone calls, so all the scam phone calls, you know, that might try to get your Social Security number or try to get your, uh, you know, to, to, to reveal your banking.

She’s She’s she’s very savvy there, but she doesn’t understand the insidious, the invisible things that can happen on the internet when you, when you push a link or push a button. All the things that are happening behind the scenes when you do that, they can start to. Yeah, yeah. So, so at Cox, we spend a lot of time on education for, for all the generations on how to avoid that sort of thing. We post a lot of that in educational articles that we have on our website and then we do a lot.

The outreach with different communities where we try to teach them that as well. Yeah, well, I was great. I mean, grateful to have the opportunity. I know one of the things that surprised me is how much we are online as, as sandwich generation. It makes sense. I was expecting like teenagers to be just like sitting in the room. And I know for us as a family, like we had rules. My kids are young adults now, but at the time, they had to, we collected their cell phones and plugged them into our room after 9 o’clock at night so that they could get the sleep.

They needed for school and had some boundaries around things. But even last week, Brian, my brother, who has an intellectual and developmental disability and on the autism spectrum, bought a gift card. So, you know, as much as we’ve had this conversation multiple times with him about people who are not who they say they are online, we don’t want to take them offline because there’s some good stuff, like you said, about staying connected to friends and family from our old hometown in Pennsylvania. Yeah and so forth. So, but it’s a constant kind of thing and a, and a worry.

And so we have taken some precautions so it doesn’t have access to too much if we get into too much trouble. But it is a worry. It, it’s certainly a worry. And so I will link to the survey at Cox MobileSafety. com because I think in addition to seeing the results of the survey, people can take advantage of the resources that Cox worked with Common Sense Media to create some resources to help facilitate. These conversations with our older adults and our, and our kids and I, I think it’s not just a one and done conversation.

It’s like we got to have these conversations all the time. Well, you do. It’s, um, you know, I think one of the reasons that that some of my colleagues were interested in getting to know you is online safety is the sandwich generation version of it is, is, is absolutely a form of caregiving. It’s a perpetual form of caregiving, just like with a physical illness. The people you’re looking after have to be in partnership with you. I can’t protect my kids unless they seek to protect themselves. I can’t protect my mom unless she pays attention, and we have to have the conversations about what’s safe and not safe.

You can only buy so much protective software at some point you have to be a participant in your own safety. And when you’re sitting in the middle. In that sandwich spot, you just worry all the time, right? You, because you can’t, you can’t control their behavior it’s like they, they get out of the car when you drop them off and you want to look at them and just go make good choices, you know, make good choices. And so it’s, that’s a big part of what this is about is you, you care for them while they are well.

And you arm them to prevent the bad things. That’s a big part of what it’s about. Yeah, you do the best that you can do. You make the best decisions, the best, the best precautions and, you know, that you can can, and it is a partnership where you do hope that they meet you halfway and yet there are lots of folks are vulnerable. So I really appreciate again that the The resources that have been put out there, and I, I, I also think, you know, good for, good for us having this conversation about that this is part of caregiving, like, that technology hat, it’s a hat, it’s a big hat and, you know, and, and there’s financial risks with this and lots of other, um, like you said, mental health risks.

And social isolation and all of those things. It’s a, it’s a big deal. It’s a big deal. We’ll never be bored as sandwich generation caregivers. We have a lot to worry about, but we have to, you know, take the action. So if this is a worry for you, maybe take the action of seeing what you can, the conversations you can have about it, and put that into place and Yeah, we do the best. We do the best we can. It’s a lot. Would love to kind of chat with you too about your self-care, like, you know, you talked about how dating back in the back, you know, 20 plus years ago was, was a big part of your self-care, the therapy, amazing.

That that really had a lasting impact on you. And what was it like to juggle work and care? Like, did you find at the time that people were, you know, were you, were you, did you feel OK talking about it? Because sometimes there can be a stigma of people talking about it at work. It was incredibly difficult to juggle. I had a job. Which was a largely a traveling job at the time. And so if I wasn’t traveling, if I wasn’t on site where my clients were, then it was very difficult for me to do my job.

And so when I was When I was looking out for my mom, I was really having to take a week off at a time to go do that and then go back to the job. And so I had to negotiate that with my employer. Wasn’t a very senior person at the time, I, you know, and, and I didn’t feel that I had the power to do that. Fortunately, I worked with some folks who were, who were really amazing. I was still working with them and for them when my brother got sick and then it was even And it was even harder because at least my mom’s treatments were predictable, so I could negotiate with them, Hey, this date on the calendar next month, this date on the calendar, 183 weeks after that, I’m going to have to be where she is, right?

But with my brother, he would be fine one day and sick the next and um it actually came to a to a head. I was working for a customer who was in the United Kingdom. And so, uh, it, I, I had, I had flown, uh, overnight on a Wednesday night, I landed in London on Thursday morning. I had gone straight to the office. I had worked all day, and Thursday night, which now it’s middle of the uh uh uh or or Thursday night, I get back to my hotel.

And I checked my voicemail because this is before cell phones were kind of right when we were first starting to have them. I checked my voicemail and at this point I find out that my brother’s in the hospital. He had passed out. He had been rushed to the hospital. It had been almost 24 hours between the time it happened and the time they had gotten a hold of me. And so, uh, fortunately, he was OK in that moment. I got up on Friday morning. I spoke to him.

I flew home on Saturday morning and I walked in. To the office on Monday morning and I looked at my boss and I said, I resigned and they said, oh my gosh, don’t resign, and I said I can’t be where I need to be. There’s no negotiating this like I can’t do both of these jobs at the same time. And it started out as a leave of absence. And I took a leave of absence for what was like 2 months and change from that moment when he had been hospitalized, it kind of got him back to a good place and he was, he was kind of back doing well.

And so then they said, Well, why don’t you come back part time? You don’t have to travel, but you can work in the office. And so I came back to the office and like 4 weeks passed and then they said, Well, we just want you to take this one trip. And I went and took that one trip, and then turned into 2 trips and I did that for about 60 days. And then he had an episode again. Um, and then I quit. I just outright quit. And then, and then I was with him every day.

Um, and he died three months later. And so what I, uh, you know, when I reflect on that, first of all, I’m so glad I quit and so proud of myself for recognizing in that moment, will never remember how much money I didn’t make in those moments, I will always remember. those last 3 months I had with my brother, and, and they were a good 3 months because he was, he was coming up and down. I mean, we, we bought season tickets to the Atlanta Braves. We went to baseball games that summer, you know, before he died.

We, we, we cook meals together, we spent, we spent really good time together. And so now, you know, when I reflect on it, um, you know, here’s how I think about it, work life balance is an aspiration, but it is typically A zero-sum game. You can’t, you, you can’t often do both. You have to do one or the other, uh, and so what I What I learned was that being a caregiver is a job, and it’s not just any old job, it’s actually the most important job.

You could ever do, uh, I mean, it ranks right up there for me with, you know, maybe parenting my kids, which is a different version of it, um, but other than that, um. And what I learned was that it’s OK to make your caregiving job your primary job. And I, I was lucky enough that I could afford it. Not everybody can afford to do that. I could at that time. I couldn’t do it indefinitely, but I could do it for the period of time that I did it, and I was able to quit one job for another. Nice.

And do it with, with no regret. But for those people who are listening who go, well, you know, must be nice, right? You’ve had that privilege, you have to make it OK to make your caregiving job come first sometimes, even if you, if you can’t completely choose choose it over the other, when you’re, when you’re trading them off, you don’t always have to choose. The job that that pays the bills, you know, we’ve been so programmed to make our career the most important thing in our life, right?

It, it defines everything about us. It defines our identity. First thing you ask someone when you meet them, oh, you know, what do you, what do you do? It, it dictates where you live. You live where you’re, you know, where, where your, your job is, all the structure in your life where it comes from, comes from your job. It gets most of your waking hours, it gets most of your mindshare, and none of it is as important as the person who needs you. Um, but we convince ourselves that it is because societally we’ve made it, right, this most important thing.

And that was the other thing, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I think about the time I spent with the therapist, what he was really able to help me with is you’re not giving up your career just because you’re making it less important today. OK in this season of your life where something had to give and your values are in front of you and it’s like, OK, you need to get your your priorities in order and and figure out. Where your priorities are. And I know that, you know, I was, I had a pretty flexible arrangement where I worked, but I did keep working, although I would say that I worked to a point where I kept the lights on.

Like I was not seeking promotions. I wasn’t volunteering for the project. I was not normal, Elizabeth, like, yeah, I’ll do that. Yeah, I’ll do that. Like I was keeping the lights on. I was trying to get rid of some things that were really time consuming. Maybe there were other people having conversations with my boss about that type of stuff. You know, I have changed jobs. We intensive travel to no travel, like, you, you, we do have some control of some things potentially that we can, uh, impact, but ultimately, in my head, I want to quit my job and have complete flexibility, which is now what I have since 2021.

And I took a huge pay cut to do that, but it’s, you know, super rewarding. But I also have something, I have a blog post I wrote about flexible jobs for caregivers that I’ll link to too, because, yeah, there’s I’ve also met caregivers who had a very care focused job, right? So you’re doing this caregiving, family caregiving work, and then you’re, you’re this healthcare profession or you’re also caregiving at work and it’s super burnout on both ends. And so maybe there’s a way to kind of flex that.

But I, I appreciate you saying that you live without regrets because I think that that’s really what needs to shine through with this is like everybody’s situation is different. That’s right. It doesn’t The zero-sum game doesn’t have to be as big as it was for me. So my version of it was your family or your job, and I took my family. It’s, it’s about making the trade-off in the moment. Where’s the most important place for me to be today, right now? If the most important place for me to be right now was taking my mom to the doctor, then I need to block my calendar and say I’m taking my mom to the doctor this morning.

And yes, that might mean I have to work tonight where I wouldn’t have to make up the time I missed. Um, so it’s, it’s, uh, everything that it doesn’t have to be, uh, you know, the sort of the catastrophic version where you, you stop earning your pay, but, but you have to give yourself permission and, you know, I, so I’m 25 years later, I’m now the old guy, uh, at, at work who mentors younger people, and I talk about this a lot. I tell my story a lot.

I am when I’m helping people think through. Um, their career, we, we convince ourselves that it has to always come first, and it doesn’t. It doesn’t always have to come first. It only has to come first sometimes, and you have to pick your moments where you let it go to the backseat and you bring your, your values forward and your family forward and you take care of your workplace is always going to push for more, right? Like that’s what they’re inclined to do. And so we’ve got to have boundaries and systems kind of set up to say, and I think Ultimately, people respect that at the workplace, unless you’re not working at the right place, but say, Oh, wow, she’s really got her priorities or he’s got his priorities in order.

That’s the thing, the people we work for and work with are themselves humans. We don’t work for these monolithic entities, right? Where I work, Cox is not a, it’s not a thing. It’s a community. It’s a community of humans just like me, who have their own set of challenges outside of that workplace and And we help each other. So, so this morning when I was taking my mom to the doctor, my team had it covered so I didn’t have to. And I do the same for them.

A woman I work with just, just took her daughter to college and she had to be out for two days taking her, of course, you take your daughter to college, you don’t have to make that meeting. We’ve got you covered, right, because that’s what you do. And I think um a lot of people feel afraid. To do that kind of negotiation at work, but, but the people you’re negotiating with have the same lived experience or a version of that same lived experience that you do. I think it’s important because I know I worked at the same company, but I switched positions, different departments, and I had kind of a good thing going in my IT department with flexibility, and they were maybe a little more receptive than other departments.

And I had a thing for my self-care that I worked out Wednesdays and Fridays and I got to Work a little bit later in order for me to shower and look presentable. I went to a trainer, I had some time to myself and I was sad that I thought I was going to have to give that up because I wasn’t going to be at my desk till 9:30 on those days. And I just went in and asked my boss. I said, you know, I just for my mental sanity, my mental health, you know, I’m a caregiver, this one like, there are two day mornings I work out with somebody and he was like, OK. Like I had built this up to this like huge deal in my head.

He was like, Yeah, no problem. Just put it on your calendar. Yeah. So I think, um, give ourselves a little bit of grace. It’s not, it’s not. What, what if we just asked is really what it comes down to. Well, we’re running out of time, Brian, and I wanted to get you a couple prompts out of the Just for you daily self-care journal. This is also could be an activity where you kind of like you were talking about your mom and joint newsletter writing, this could certainly be used as a way to kind of prompt discussion with your care recipient.

I wrote it with an intention of helping people put some focus back on their health and happiness, because that was the journey that I was on, clawing my way back from burnout. But this is a good one. What’s something good that happened this week that was unexpected? Did you have a good hot dog moment? Uh, well, I, I, I’ve had a bunch of them. So I also dropped my oldest off at college, so she’s 18 and just started school. We arranged for her, we figured out that she needed to have a rent.

insurance for her dorm if we wanted all that stuff to be covered. And so I explained to her what it was. I explained to her what the coverage she needed to get to do it. And then she called the insurance company herself. She did the whole thing. She put it in her name. She signed the contract and she called me after to tell me about it. And I had this, this just awesome dad moment of, you know, like, like she just flew, you know, I didn’t do that for her.

She did it. Uh, and, and she was so proud of herself for doing it. Um, and so it was, um, After 18 years of uh of receiving care, she was ready to do it herself. Taking steps to become independent. And yet there are some kids going to college who don’t even know how to do laundry, don’t know how to sign up for their own classes, like, so that is a really reaffirming thing to as a parent to witness. So I love that. That was awesome. I was very proud of her and um I got to be honest, a little bit proud of us. Yes.

Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Next question says, what’s a life lesson that you believe needs to be taught in school? Oh, I wish we would celebrate failure more. We all learn so much more from our failures than from our successes. We diagnose our failures much more than we diagnose our successes, and I don’t think we spend enough time celebrating and encouraging risk taking and failure. Yeah. Yeah. We, we learn a lot. We learn a lot from all of those things for sure. Brian, the time flies when we’re deep in conversation.

I really, really appreciate you kind of sharing. I learned so much from the different caregivers that I’ve spoken to on the show. I know that this is going to resonate with a lot of listeners. So I want to thank you for your time today and thank you. You sound like you’re a great boss to work for, so and a parent and And so having that ripple effect on your different communities is is impactful, so thank you. Well, I appreciate it. It was an honor to talk to you and uh I hope your listeners found some nuggets. Thanks.

Thank you. Do you enjoy listening to podcasts? So do I. And I’m always up to support a fellow Career whose podcasts I value. Nicole Well, host. Of navigating the world with your aging loved one explores the world of aging and care. As a former guest, I can tell you that Nicole’s podcast has an ideal mix of practical tools and resources and messages of hope and encouragement. You can find Nicole wherever you download your favorite podcast or go to her website, we’llather.com. 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 happyhealthycagiver. 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 qualified. Profession. 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.

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