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I’m not here just to console people. I really want you to see that there is a world of opportunity and success and excitement and passion even while serving as a caregiver.

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

Hello, everyone. Thanks for tuning in to the happy healthy caregiver. Podcast, which is part of the whole care network. If this is your first time listening, welcome. This is a show produced biweekly to help family caregivers integrate self care and caregiving into their lives. We are now available on the whole care network streaming radio app. So if streaming radio is your thing, be sure to download the whole care network app and you will get not only the Happy Healthy caregiver podcasts but lots of other care focus podcasts and music to energize you throughout your day. Each of our episodes has an accompanying show notes page. So if you would like more details about the topics, products and resources, we speak about Odyssey related photos. You will want to go check out the show notes by going on to Happy Healthy 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 episodes. Description.

Does your company have employee resource groups and prioritize employee wellness? Well, if so, you may want to let them know that I offer an annual corporate support package that includes educational webinars, a caregiving panel, monthly group coaching calls and more. I’m excited that employers are starting to get that working family caregivers need their support and it also benefits employers as it’s expensive to attract and train new employees and supported employees are more productive and present in the show notes. I’ll link to my speaker page which includes a speaker demo video and if your employer likes what they see, they can use the contact us page to reach out to me. I’d like to thank our episode sponsor today. Rare Patient Voice. Do you want to earn cash in exchange for your opinion? Rare patient voice or R PV? Helps connect researchers with patients and family caregivers for over 103 diseases and conditions for patients and caregivers. R PV provides the opportunity to voice their opinions to improve medical products and services while earning cash rewards, rare patient voice, helping patients and caregivers share their voices if you’re interested, join the R PV panel by visiting rare patient voice. com/happy healthy caregiver for this episode segment of what I’m reading, I recently finished a book called House of Eve by Saka Johnson. And this is a historical fiction book about two young black women and either the choices that they made or were made for them in the 19 fifties. One story is told by Ruby, a teenager in Philadelphia who is the first in her family who hopes to go to college. And the other is told by Eleanor in Washington DC, who marries into a wealthy family that has its own challenges for her. Their stories eventually collide and I found that I learned a little bit about us history in the process. What always surprises me is that some of these backward and antiquated procedures weren’t all that long ago. In our US history. So I gave this four out of five stars and I’m gonna link to it in the show notes in case you’d like to check out the book house of Eve. My favorite thing this week. Well, I’m always talking about how technology is part of the care team because it can simplify our lives and leave us more space for the things that we really want to do in life. If you are an online shopper, you may be leaving money on the table. Frankly, if you aren’t using a browser that I love. It’s a plug in called Rutin. And I think when I first started using it many years ago, it had a different name. I think it was called Ebates at the time. Well, Rutin makes finding coupon codes and saving money when shopping like a No Brainer, which I love. It’s a free browser plug in. It just goes right into my Google Chrome. And since I have been using it, I got curious to see how much money I had saved and I have saved $638 in cash back. That’s just cash in my pocket. Uh That didn’t go to different retail stores and this isn’t even including all the money that I saved by applying the coupon codes during the time of the transaction. So it’s likely way beyond at $638. Last month, I got $5.50 in cash just by making a hotel reservation that I was already gonna make. Anyway, I’m gonna share a link in the show notes which gonna give you $30 after you spend $30. That’s gonna give you a nice head start on your cash back.

Meet Peter Rosenberger who has been a family caregiver for over 38 years for a spouse with severe disabilities. Peter is fluent in the language of caregiver and has navigated a medical nightmare that has mushroomed to 85. Yes, 85 major operations including the amputation of both of his wife, Gracie’s legs below the knee. In this episode, Peter recounts his experience attempting to admit himself to a mental hospital. Discusses why caregiving should it hinder us from embracing life? Shares his strategies for finding moments of stillness and pursuing energizing hobbies and outlines the ways he spreads hope among caregivers. Enjoy the show.

Hello, Peter. Welcome to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast. It’s been way too long. So thank you for having me here. It’s been way too long. In fact, I was thinking that like, you have not probably known this Peter, but you’ve kind of been walking side by side with me throughout this caregiving season of mine. And I literally just grabbed this out of my closet. Um And for those in the video, you can see it’s the caregivers prayer, prayer from your caregiver because this spoke to me and I’m looking at it and it, it was copyrighted 503. I know it’s from your, your book, one of your books which I also have and have read. Um And, and this, this landed on me, like, probably when I first even realized that I was a caregiver. Like at first I just thought I was a daughter, you know, caring for mom. But uh anyway, it’s been sitting in my closet like it’s posted. I have this like vision board and then I have Peter’s caregivers prayer right underneath that. So that is very gracious of you. I, I remember when writing that because I was struggling with how to pray for myself. And you know, what do you, what do you pray for? You know, I mean, what am I asking the Almighty for? Am I asking for Gracie’s legs to grow back? I mean, what am I doing here? And, and I really thought, OK, is the goal for me to get out of this, feel better or is this the goal for me to, to be better in this? And, and that’s when all of this started. And um uh that book uh yeah, that, that came out a long time ago. I’ve got uh my newest one is, they’re just one minute chapters that I, what I did is I did that book and then I did seven caregiver landmines and then I did my newest one. It’s called a Minute for caregivers when day feels like Monday and they’re getting, I mean, the, the, the stuff I’m writing getting shorter pretty soon it’s gonna be a bumper sticker for caregiver. You can join Matthew mcconaughey, his book, green lights. He’s always like bumper sticker like that. You can totally, yeah, there’s totally a need for a care, more caregiving bumper stickers out there. Um, well, I, I, when we don’t have time, you know, this, I, I watch your stuff and I look at your stuff and, you know, we just don’t have the time to sit down and go through this academic exercise. We need somebody to deposit stuff like what you do just in time for right now. Here we go. Not, not for next week, not for, you know, not even for tomorrow for today as the old him, the three for today. Bright hope for tomorrow. So, yeah, thank you for that. That is very kind of you and we hope that that stuff lands on people when they need it the most. And so on that note, we always kick off the show with a happy healthy caregiver jar. This is a very homemade jar that, you know, I made one similar to my sister, but I have collected things that have spoken to me as a family caregiver and created a jar for my sister when we transitioned care of my mom from me to her. I just thought like I was giving her the, the worst thing ever like here you go here, here she is. Take her away. And so I normally I see, can normally I see fruit in a jar like that. That’s an old mason jar, isn’t it? It is an old mason jar. Yes. So, and people can make their own jars. I’ve got these, uh you know, available for folks, but so this is what your, your today’s, let’s see how this lands for us today. Peter. It says nurtured nourished people who love themselves are the delight of the universe. Um And somebody named Melody Beatty who’s like an American self help author, author, read that. So nurtured nourished people who love themselves are the delight of the universe. Well, I, I don’t, I have, I don’t know the the universe is a big place. So I don’t know how much of a delight I am, but I try to be nurtured and I try to be nerved and uh I am, I, I agree. I, one of the things that I say often is healthy, caregivers, make better caregivers. And uh when we’re not healthy, what good are we? You know, Gracie doesn’t need me fat, broken miserable. You know, I mean, I’m not, I’m not much good to her that way. And, and so that’s, that’s the whole point of everything I do is how do we stay healthy while taking care of somebody who is not and healthy is not just having a good balanced diet. Healthy is a state of mind and, and these are, I love what you said, the happy, healthy caregiver, I mean, you understand this so well, I’m thank you for that. People try to call me that. And I’m like, oh no, no, that’s like the goal. Like that’s the, the beacon that we’re headed towards. Like I’m not claiming to be that I’m a work in progress like everybody else. And uh, but yes, and you also have another thing that I remember you said, and I think I pulled it out and even made a quote about it. Like, if you don’t make time for wellness, you’ll make, you’ll make time for, I’ll take time for stillness. You’ll have to make time for illness. That’s what it is. Yes. Yes. Thank you for that. That because those are the kinds of things I think that we need to hear and like I was just leading a group yesterday and, and one of the questions or the, it was about self care strategies for working family caregivers and they were talking about this whole thing about carving out time for yourself and the person just like, felt like what they wanted and what they needed. Like didn’t, how do they, how do they know that they have value in just being a human being themselves? Like, yes, we have value as caregivers. Like to your point. Like if you don’t take care of yourself, you’re not going to be any good to, to gracie, who, who is your spouse that you care for? But as human beings that God put on this earth, like we also are just valuable of loving care just as humans. How do you get caregivers to kind of understand that? Like it’s just, it’s not just about but I think that the, the figures, we have a conversation like this. When you say things, if you don’t take time for illness, you’re gonna make time for illness. This is not something that’s up to debate. You could argue with me all you want, I say to folks, but you try, you try not taking time for illness and see how long that lasts. And um you know, my, my, as I tell people who may have a different opinion about it. I said, well, my experience trumps your opinion. When you’ve been doing this for almost 40 years, you learn that this is, these are not true that all of a sudden I’ve just wisely came up with. These are things I had to learn the hard way. Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned the hard way. I’m the crack test dummy of caregiver. And so, OK, there’s a point, I’d love to tell you, I was wise. I would love to tell you that I’m brilliant and think of these things. What it is is Elizabeth. I’ve been tired and so when you’re tired enough, you’ll stop fighting these things. And so I think it’s so important for each of us to take that time for stillness. I don’t know what that looks like to you. It doesn’t mean you have to sit in a chair and look at a wall for me. I, I thought a lot. I, we live in Montana. I saddle up a horse and I’m not being still. But, uh, my, my heart is being still. There’s nothing wrong with the inside of a man that the outside of a horse can’t fix will. Rogers said that. And then the other day I was feeding the horses. I, I have a snowmobile that I put a little sled on and I fill it up with hay to go feed the horses. And then I decided, you know what? I, I let everybody know where I was, made sure that everybody was ok. And I said, I’m taking a ride. I just went out on a ride by myself out here. We live way away from, we live 10 miles from a paved road. I could ride on a snow mobile for hours and not see another human being. And, um, and so because we’re back up to Nashville Forest and, and so I just went up there to settle my heart down. I mean, just, you know, I’ve got to do that. If I, if I’m just bundle of threats all the time, which I am enough as it is, then, you know, I’m, I’m gonna burn, I was talking to my sister our dad is, um, I have four brothers and a sister and our father has Parkinson’s and he’s pretty frail. And, um, he’s 89. And my, and I said, well, when I get to be 22 and my sister stopped me, she said, oh, no, no, you’re not gonna make it, you’re just gonna flame out one day. Oh, no. Uh, we, we, we’ve got to settle down. We got, yeah, my stillness Peter looks like getting outside. I’m with you like I got to get outside in nature like I can, I don’t like myself when I’m trapped in the four walls for a long time. So it’s just uh it could be a 22020 minute walk. It could be like listening to some music outside or just listening to nature, but it’s outside is critical for me like just getting out there and soaking up some vitamin D. Um But I think you do have to try on different things to kind of figure out what your stillness is and that looks different for everybody. Um And I know we kind of alluded to it a little bit but for people who don’t know you Peter. Like what, how did you get to be this, uh what you call a crash test dummy of uh in caregiver, it starts with a lot of failure. Um I, I got married to a woman who had a broken body. He had gotten hurt a couple of years before I met her, um, about 222 surgeries by that time that I could count. It’s hard because to go back to some of those records, uh, this is about, she got hurt in 210. We got married in 240 and he had seasons where she was able to live. Well, I mean, you know, do, do pretty well, but she’s always been hurt. She’s always been disabled. Uh, it was a horrific car wreck and I talked to a lot of her providers now that have said there’ll never be another case like her because at the time, uh, they could have taken her leg but they didn’t. And the reason they didn’t is because prosthetics just weren’t where they are today. And in saving her legs, which convinced she ended up losing anyway, they condemned her to a life of orthopedic trauma. But that was the conventional wisdom, her back started having problems and then they fused her back over 210 something years ago. And the way they did it was to kind of pitch her forward just a little bit. Well, then she started going further and further and further. And then she was 753 degrees over if you had what they call flat back in her foc curvature in her spine. And so of the 275 surgeries that she’s had, that I can count. Um, we just had a two month stretch at the University of Colorado Medical Center where they went in for a second time to straighten her spine back up. Give her some more cover. These are massive surgery and she’s the first double amputee they’ve done this on. But, you know, Grace, you’d be the first to tell you there were things in amputation. He has great prosthetic legs, but the rest of her is just an orthopedic train wreck. He lives with pain all the time. He has so many, uh, mitigating things going on all the time. It’s just, it’s constant, there’s, there’s, uh, it’s relentless with her. And so over the years I’ve had to deal with, you know, all this stuff he had over 21000 doctors treat her in 222 different hospitals, um, seven different insurance companies and, and all, you just name it. Um, and, and it doesn’t, it, it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. That’s why I look the way I look. Elizabeth. I mean, I’m, I’m only 30 years old. Um, uh, you don’t let this happen to somebody you love this sense of humor is key. I know for, I’m imagining that that’s part of the, how you’ve gotten this far. But that’s kind of, the question is like going through all of these things and knowing like there’s maybe not an end in sight. Like, how, how are you still standing? And how do you know, what do you self talk to yourself? And what is your strategy for resilience? Like, how, how can I have, what he’s having is basically what I’m asking. Well, there’s several things. One of them is, uh, my faith is a big part of what I do. Uh, a pretty goofy sense of humor has kept me alive with this and also, uh, recognizing and it’s taken a long time to understand this, but there is great beauty in the midst of this, that life is worth living. There, there was this point when I realized that we’re not going to get through this and then get on with our lives. This is our life, this is it. And I’ve been doing this since I was 22. So the question then becomes OK, how am I gonna live this life? What am I gonna, what am I gonna do? Am I just gonna just keep striving to get through this and just get through the day or am I gonna be productive? I’ve written four books I’ve written. I don’t know, I just finished an article this morning. I don’t know how many published articles I’ve done over something over well over 100. I know. Uh just in the last couple of years, uh I’ve produced two C DS. I’ve written songs that other people have cut. I have done all these things while serving as a caregiver. I have done interviews Elizabeth in the laundry room while cooking. I was, I remember talking to a reporter at NBC while I was cooking a roast and, and I’ve done all of this as a caregiver. And I make no apologies for the diff if you hear clanking in the background because this is my life and I’ve learned to adapt it. It’s not a bad life, but it’s a hard life. And, and I, the many of the caregivers I see are just trying to endure till mama goes on to be with Jesus and then we can get on with their life. And I’m thinking, no, this is life right now today, you’re not guaranteed anything tomorrow. And so what are we going to make it count for? And I decided some years ago I was going to make it count, but it started and I opened up my new book with me trying to take myself into a mental institute in Nashville. When we lived there, we lived there for many years and I was exhausted. I’d had a surgery that had gone wrong and I was worn out. Nobody knew how to take care of me. Nobody knew how to take care of Gracie and I was sick and I wouldn’t get any sleep. And, and finally I went over this place and I, and I asked them if they took walk-ins and they looked at me kind of funny and I thought, you know, this is a mental health. I mean, that’s the question that gets the funny look is, do you all take walk ins? I mean, for he’s sake. But I kept my mouth that I wasn’t a smart alec. And uh we put a great deal of constraint on my part and they took me back to this room that looked like early law and order interrogation room and I set there and this counselor came in. She said, well, what brings you here today, Peter? And uh, you ever just verbally vomit? Elizabeth? You just, just let it all out. Well, that’s what I did and, and I let it all out. I mean, just everything that I don’t know. I don’t know. Were there tears with that because my vomit would have a lot of, there was not with it. There was not. And so I uh can we say it’s not on your list? And um, if, if you’re not, if you’re a caregiver who hasn’t cleaned up, not, then you haven’t been doing it long enough. Um, but it’s, uh, that’s what I say. Vomits not pretty much I get the trifecta, but it’s, um, I looked, I was kind of curious to what this counselor was going to say. I mean, here I am telling them I’m crazy. Please take me and she looked at me and she said, very nice lady and she said, well, we can’t keep you here. And I was crestfallen. I said, well, why not? And I was arguing with her to admit me, I need, I really wanted somebody else to bring me meals. I wanted just a quiet place to sleep. And I said, well, why not? Well, you’re not crazy. And I said, well, you’re gonna put that in writing because there’s some people who want to see that. And, and she, she said, no, you’re not crazy but you are burned out. And he said, I’ll give you some counselors to talk to and she gave me a list and I took them but, and I ended up going to one and all he wanted to do was give me medication. I’m like, screw this. And I don’t, that’s, that’s not gonna help me. II, I need, I need understanding. I don’t want to feel the fields, not numb them. Yeah. And I, and I, I don’t, I don’t need to, uh, I just need understanding if it’s one thing to suffer, it’s another thing to suffer. Be stupid. And I’ve turned, I, I’ve just turned that corner. I said I’m tired of suffering stupidly. I’m tired of reacting. I want to learn to respond. And, um, as I was leaving, she said, we, we’ve been giving out boxed lunches all day and we got one left. It’s tuna 50. You want it? Well, Elizabeth, I’ve never turned out tuna 50 now in my entire life. And, and that record remains intact. Not even when my best friend and I Dexter James Glinsky the second we call him. Well, he’s a great American still. We’ve been friends since we were 12 and mom made us go over there. And weed. The garden for this lady in our hometown there in Anderson, South Carolina up the road from you. And this lady was nuts. I mean, she was crazy with a capital K and we, we were out there, we in her garden and she brought us in there and she said we got tuna fish and so of course we’re gonna take tuna fish. I’ve never turned one down and then he reaches for the blender and it, and I was like, what 10003 is this? And she pours all the stuff in the blender mat. The blender just match it up and well, and I’m looking at this thing and then she pours it out on this Pepper Farm type bread where it’s just kind of dripping. We’re, we’re having to sold it through it while it’s dripping down our elbows. So I will never turn out a fish sandwich because that’s the level that I suck to. And then she asked me, didn’t want a tuna fish sandwich. I kind of looked around for a blender just to make sure everything was ok. And he handed me this blunt and then she looked at me and she said something j my life. He said, I’d recommend a book for you to read, but you’re the guy to write it. Oh, and I, and I thought about that. I went out to my car and I opened my sandwich up and ate it. It wasn’t pepper farm type bread. So I it was a solid piece of bread so I could eat the tuna with it and it wasn’t blended up. And I thought, what would I say to other caregivers? And then I thought, what would I say to myself? And that’s when I started writing because I wrote to myself and everything I do on my podcast on my broadcast, on my books, on my article, I’m preaching to me. I am saying to me, what I feel like needs to be said to get me through the challenges that I deal with to reorient my mind. And uh there’s a um there, there, there’s, there’s these principles that started coming after that like take time for illness or make time for uh take time for illness or make time for illness. I had to come to the understanding that my wife has a thing. I’m not that thing, you know, and I’m no good to her if I am thinking in this way and that he deserves that. The, the greatest asset he had is to keeping her life from going even further down a journey is me in this sense. And so I have a responsibility of stewardship, not obligated because I think so many caregivers get lost in that fog of caregivers. I call it beer, obligation and guilt. And oh, I have to, I must, I need to, I’m supposed to, I should have, I should have, I should have we should have all over our field and that, that’s gotta stop. I have a stewardship responsibility. I didn’t do this to Gracie. I can’t undo it, but I can care for her to the best of my abilities in it. And the same thing I do with the fog. I mean, you guys have fog down there in Georgia. What is the first thing you do? You float down and you don’t turn on your high beams at night. Why? Because the glare will come right back at you. Well, when you’re a caregiver, you slow down and you don’t turn on your high beams because you’re not gonna be able to think that far down the road you’re gonna have to deal with right here and right now that’s it. And these are things that I started to do to help, slow my own heart down and then to help point my fellow caregivers to safety to slow their heart down so they can come back away from that cliff. Let’s get your breath, let’s take a knee if we have to. And then let’s start thinking through this thing again. It’s one thing to suffer. It’s another thing to suffer being stupid and I refuse to do that anymore. And I want to help as many of my fellow caregivers as I possibly can to back away from that. And let’s think through this, let’s think through these decisions. I can’t tell you how to take care of your family anymore. And you tell me how to take care of gracie. But what I can speak to is the craziness that gets in our heart and our mind and to settle ourselves down. I speak fluent caregiver. Yes, you do. And, and so when I, when I work in Africa, we gracie, when she lost her leg, she wanted to start a prosthetic limb outreach. So that’s what we do. We do prosthetic limbs in, in Ghana. When I go over there, they speak English, but it’s a different kind of, it’s like p we are so glad you are here. Well, I understand the words but it’s, I have to work at making sure that we’re understanding from the reference points and everything else. I could hear an American accent and my, you know, like this. Yeah, I can hear a southern accent all the way across the airport. I mean, I can hear it y’all from 500 yards away when I’m over there. And, and so when I hear somebody speak in a way that I understand immediately turn and I’m, oh, I understand. Nobody knew what to say to me. They said words, but they didn’t know how to speak to my heart. They didn’t know the language that was down in here to speak to that. That’s what I do. And I have spent so much time in the village of caregivers that I speak it fluently. Well, you know, I, I think it’s even more rare Peter because you, um, in general, I don’t think there’s many male caregivers that have gotten that in tune with their emotions and how they’re feeling and really unpack and not being and just going for it. Like you’re relentless about kind of unpacking all of the things that, that allow you to speak the fluid caregiver. So I, I appreciate you kind of also just being a guy and, and I don’t have any other choice, are you? I, I get that there aren’t a lot of people. And I think part of that is though Elizabeth is that there’s not a lot of people that know that it’s ok to and, and I think that’s your job and my job is to help them understand that it’s ok too. It’s ok to unpack this and keep unpacking and go deeper and go deeper. You know, Schultz had said this, he was an erupting Gulag for 27 years as a political dissident. And when he was freed, he said bless you prison for the change you made in my life for there upon that rotting prison fraud. I learned that the goal of existence is not prosperity yet we’re told. But the maturity of the human soul, we’re not gonna stop unpacking. There’s no need to, we could grow and we could grow and we can grow. But as long as we think that we are somehow imprisoned as caregivers will never grow it’s when we realize that no prison, I’m not in prison with this. I’m not paying to gracie. I am tethered in the sense that I cannot go far from it. But within that tether, I chose to be extremely productive. And I want my fellow caregivers to do the same. I want them to understand. The only thing holding you back truly is you not your loved ones. Circumstances, you can, your mind is free. You are, you are free to be as miserable or as joyful as you wish to be. And there will be days when you are wearing like Yosemite Sam, you know that I updated myself on that and, and I, you know, there are days when you’re just fussing and fussing, I get it. But there if you’re willing to do that, there are days when you’re gonna see beauty and things of such preciousness and, and and exquisiteness that it’s going to enrapture your, your soul. Yeah, but you gotta be willing to watch for it and look for it, wait for it and you gotta be willing to go into some very dark places to see it. Yeah, it’s like it literally is, I think two things can be true at the same time, right? Like you can, you can have these really tough things happening and there can be some great joy in that. And I almost feel like the joy is even more vibrant because of the murk that it’s all in, like, you’re just, you are, you’re kind of scaling through and like, whoa, look at that little amazing thing that happened or that thing that we can celebrate today. Um, it just shines brighter. I felt like the, the peaks of joy. I believe it does. I was out on horseback last fall before the snow came and I was not hunting. Um, but I was just riding and I, the trails I ride on out here are, are pretty obscure. There’s, there’s not a lot of people out here and, uh, people said, do you watch Yellowstone? I love it. Um, I’m not saying we have a crane statement on the property. I’m not saying don’t, but I was out riding and I go up this trail and into the National Forest and I cut over on a couch trail and I was coming down and I decided to go down into this ravine and it’s, you know, I’m looking at a 50 mile view over to big sky and it’s, and then I, I see two spike elks. These are elks with just one point on their young ones and then I heard a third one bugling and I, I thought, I, I was stunned by the richness of the moment that I, I got to witness this on horseback doing something that, you know, how many guys want to be a cowboy, you know, kind of thing. Um, how many people want to be able to, to get out, you love nature. And here I am in this kind of thing nobody gets. I mean, it is so rare for these kind of things compared to the amount of people in this world. And I just drank it every bit of it in. Just drank it in because and my soul I came back and Grace said you have a good ride and I was like, oh yeah, you know, and my soul would retard. Yeah. You’re tired. After riding, you’re dirty and everything else. It doesn’t matter. I mean, I, I was just, I, I could hardly contain myself because I saw something of beauty and I was going slow enough to be able to see it. Yeah. Yeah. I, I totally can understand what that, what that’s like and, and feeling that and I, and I hope that you’re, I almost feel like if there was a church for caregiving, like you would be the preacher, um, Peter because, like, I could listen to the stuff like the, the, you’re a storyteller. You, you’ve got, you know, rich wisdom from your living in the trenches of care, caregiving. Yeah. I mean, we’re failing forward. It’s ok. Like, yeah, and, and the writing I think I know writing has, was critical for me as a way to process it. So, you know, someone’s listening to this and you want to kind of try that on to see if that works for you. There’s a lot of different ways that you can just kind of spill it out on the, on the page. Even if it’s, even if you don’t want to publish it, like, just for yourself, um, it’s really important, I think to just kind of process, write it down. Exactly. I got a buddy of mine who’s a caregiver for his wife. She just passed away last year and, uh, he does bonsai trees and everything is just the little uh trees they do at the Japanese garden. And it’s everything is intricate. It’s so tiny, but it’s so intricate and it’s what it does is just settles him down. And uh and I thought, what a what a tremendous gift. I got another friend of mine who collects driftwood and makes little things out of it. And another buddy of mine who took care of his wife with Alzheimer’s. He takes little pieces of wood that he finds and he carves these little birds to remind us that the scripture is considered the birds of the air that they neither toil nor, nor reap. But, but your Heavenly Father takes care of them. He’s gonna take care of you, you know, and it’s just a little bird. He put it in your pot. I’ve got a bunch of them and I’ve given around to people. He’s given out hundreds of them just as a reminder to say, you know, it’s going to be ok. And there are things like that that keep you in the present moment. Like, um, I am a support caregiver for my brother who has an intellectual and developmental disability. My parents are deceased and, uh, Tom has got a passion for bingo and I was kind of going to, it just to, you know, spend time with him, you know, do things with him. But then I thought, you know what darn it, I like bingo and you know why I like bingo is because you dab those things and, but it forces you to be the gateway gambling drug. A GG, you’re gonna be in Vegas for, it’s all over. Yeah, but it, it forces you to be in the present because you’re gonna miss something. And so just to kind of stop all that, like traffic in your head, um, in the bonsai tree. Like I could see, like you make a mistake, you’re going to cut off the whole lamb. Like you’ve gotta, you gotta pay attention there. That’s, that’s important. That’s why I don’t do bingo by the way because I’ll be in Vegas if mama needs a new pair of legs. Come on. No, I’m just kidding. But, yeah, you’re right. You have to, you have to find that thing that for you. And for me, I, I have the outdoors. I also have a pianist. I play, uh, uh, I write, I enjoy cooking. Um, I, I enjoy the drive. I like, I listen to audio books, uh, while I’m working. I, I’ve taken classes I’ve taken, I don’t, I, I don’t know how many lectures now I’ve listened to, I’m studying theology. I am. I took a class at Hillsdale College of CS Lewis, a big CS Lewis fan. I’m doing all this on audio because I, I doing laundry and I’m doing all my task while I’m doing this and because I refuse to stop pushing myself to learn and to grow that in for you. It is. And if people are going to take the time to read my book and if they’re going to take the time to listen to my program, then by God, I want to give them, I, I want to show them this is what I’m doing that I’m pushing myself and my journey is relentless every day. Gracie’s right now at full time care like she had two months in the hospital. We were there for Christmas, we were there for her for New Year’s. We were there for her birthday. This is my life, but I’m not going to stop living. And I want my fellow caregiver to understand how important it is to, to keep pushing yourself to learn, to grow, to appreciate things. It’s not gonna be everything that you want it to be. But if you sit around and wait for it to get better so that you could start living life you’re in for some real hurt on that point. Yeah, it’s gonna be potentially too late for sure. Uh, the, it’s, it’s, and I know for sure that you were writing your book, the, the latest one, back in the, um, Thanksgiving time frame because you, you worry, she had a huge surgery. I know her and, uh, you were working on talk us, tell us a little bit more about the minute for caregivers when the, every day feels like my, I wrote that book. She had her first big back surgery, nine hour surgery. A year ago, January 2 years ago, Jan January. So January 2020 22 and she was there for 10 weeks. So that, and I wrote that down the hall from her room. I had a little spot once I would go down there and just take a break and I’d write and, and her doctors and the pas and all they, they knew that was kind of my office and there was a little concessionary down there at the end of the seventh floor there. And I sat there at a table and I wrote most of that book there or in her room. I got one of those little hospital, uh, tables they do, they bring to you, you know, for your meals. I got one for myself and I stood there at a standing desk when a hospital crate and I wrote about that book while I’m sitting there. There’s one chapter I wrote, Called Quiet In the Room where we learned to just keep the room quiet, uh, uh, to settle ourselves down. So that we could think. I wrote that in the, er, uh, while they were doing something with there and it was not a situation where he was in Christ but, you know, it was, there was a lot going on. I brought my laptop. I knew we’re going to be there for a while. So I’m literally right there beside her bed, beeping everything else. He’s got to sleep a little bit but they’re still monitoring her and I’m writing an article called Quiet The Room. And, um, in the, er, if I don’t lead, by example, as a caregiver that I really don’t have anything to say to people and the people that listen to me and read my stuff, uh, recognize that, that, yeah, I’ve locked in the times and, and, you know, this is not a theory to you or me, Elizabeth, this is how, this is how we do it, this is how we’ve done it and how we’re going to keep doing it. And I’m, um, I’m ok with that and being public about it, I think helps hold us accountable as well. Like we’ve got that, um, it’s not pressure because I signed up for it. You signed up for it and, and, but it’s, it’s chosen accountability. I think that, um, we have a responsibility, a stewardship opportunity here again. That, ok, what am I gonna do with all this? Information, I have a mask, all this experience. What am I gonna do with? Am I just gonna just keep it all like here or can I share this with others so that they too, can you know, go do their things? There are songs that need to be written by caregivers. There are books that still need to be written by caregivers. There are all kinds of things that need to be done and somebody’s got to go to these individuals and say, like that lady said to me at a mental health hospital, I’d recommend a book for you to read, but you’re the guy to write it. You are the guy to write. You did write it the great, they’re great books. Um I lo I love all of them and I feel like after talking to you Peter, like I know, hopefully the conversations energizing you too, but I feel like it’s like a Rocky Conner moment. I call it like Rocky Balboa where you’re in the corner like a battered and bruised caregiver and somebody’s there. Kind of like you’ve got this, you’ve got this and they’re putting the water in your mouth and they’re rubbing the sweat off and, and squeezing the shoulders and like get back out there. And I feel like when I listen and read your stuff, like that’s what that feels like for me and, and how do more people get to hear you? Like we talk about your show hope for the caregiver.com. Hope for the caregiver.com. And, uh, I, you know, I, I’m not a there, there kind of guy. I’m a, I’m a, don’t go down there because I’ve been down there. That’s a bad place. Don’t go down there. But I, I really want to point caregivers to something I’m not here just to console people. I really want you to see that there is a world of opportunity and success and excitement and passion even while serving as a caregiver. And I’m saying that logging in now nearly 40 years of this. So, you know, yes, you can like, yes, yes, you can, like, you can go on vacation, you can do this, you can do like there’s, there’s a will, there’s a way type of thing um that it is not about putting your life on hold. That doesn’t, that’s not a successful strategy for anybody um to do that and particularly with, with the, with the technology, like what you’re doing with me right here. The world is our oyster now. I mean, I’m in Montana, you’re in Georgia, you know, I mean, we don’t, we’re not limited by space and time anymore. Um, in the way that we used to be and we could do things globally now, we should do that. You’re doing it. I’m doing it. Why not somebody else? Yeah. And there’s plenty of room for way more people to kind of join in because there’s so many caregivers that you and I can’t, you know, even begin to even help touch all of those lives. You, you talk um switch a little bit of self care and um before we kind of go through the lightning round of the self care. But, but you talk about how caregivers need to speak, speaking in first person singular. Like what is, can you expand on that? Like you share that? That’s as the caregiver. How are you doing? Well, we just got home from the hospital or mama’s doing ok? Or our situation is this or he’s had a bad night and I, and I stopped him and I said, no, how are you doing? And that’s when the tears, that’s when the stammering comes. And so I, I try to, to get caregivers to learn to speak from their own heart and do it slowly. It’ll take a while it takes, getting used to. And, um, I, I learned that at the piano. Um, because I was Gracie’s a no kidding singer. I mean, a really good singer and, um, uh don’t, don’t take my word for it. Go go Google it. Uh uh uh and, and she’s done big stages but when she kind of came off the stakes for a while and my past draft me to come play at church and I’ve been playing since I was five. That’s where we both formally studied music. And, um, I’m up there, but I’ve been playing for her for a lifetime. So I’m hearing her voice in my head as I was playing the, the changes, I’m more of an improv player. And so I’m up there playing him in front of hundreds of people. This is, by the way at the covenant church in Nashville where that shooting was, um, that was our church and I’m up there playing and, um, I played for, I went back to Nashville to play for the funeral almost a year ago of Mike, uh, the janitor who was killed, he was a custodian there. And Mike used to sit there in the sanctuary and listen to me play while I practice all the time and, and, um, but I was in there playing and the pastor wanted me plays. People were coming in to kind of quiet the room down. There are hundreds of people there and I wasn’t playing the melody. I was playing and hearing Gracie’s voice in my head. And so I’m playing around it, playing the harmonies and they were great chords, but nobody knew what I was playing. And that was the longest 10 minutes of my musical career because I had to go back and remember to play the melody as I was playing of songs that I’ve been playing for a lifetime. But I was so used to playing it around Gracie and I, it, it, it locked me in to say, OK, I lost my melody. How many caregivers have lost their melody. And so one of the goals I have for myself and my fellow caregivers help us to sing our own melody. We got it. It’s there. It’s gonna take a little extra work. We could do it. You speak from your own voice. That’s why I ask people when they call my program, how are you feeling? I’m not basing everything on our feelings. But I wanna start that dialogue for you to start speaking from your heart, say what’s on your mind, you know, and I don’t care what comes after the word. I, you know, I, I pissed or I’m this or whatever. I don’t care. Now we have a real conversation. Fine is not a feeling. Well, if they say I’m fine, I will usually say I’m not buying it. You want to go deeper. I mean, I’m, I, I will confidently and boldly not brashly go into really messy situations because I’m convinced of these principles. It’s not my opinion. My opinion is irrelevant. I don’t even care about my opinion. But these principles that I’m talking about, they are bedrock. And right now when I talk to caregivers, I know that one of the biggest needs they have is something solid to stand on so they could just breathe for a moment because everything feels like shifting sand on them. And so that’s, that’s what I do. It’s just help them. We’re gonna, we’re gonna speak from your heart. What’s going on with you and I’ve got a caregiver support group that I started out here and have an eclectic group of people that come and it’s a great time just to sit around and just kick around ideas and we talk. But we, we, we all sit around a table with a cup of coffee and speak fluent caregiver to each other. And then we go back. Well, nobody understands caregiving like another caregiver. Which is why on my show, I only talk to family caregivers because they are the experts in family caregiving. Um You go to the other shows for the other, the other experts. But that’s, that’s important to me to do that. What, what is your self care? Like? What are some of your self care rituals look like that? Just kind of constantly keep you energized and refreshed so that you can like manage the, you know, the drama of the day. I do several things. One of them is uh like coming on your program. This is, this is um energizing for me. Uh I love to do it. I love to do my program. I love to be able to talk about this issue. Uh I love to create um whether it’s music or writing or whatever um cooking of those kind of things. I, I also like to cook myself intellectually. That’s self-care for me because it keeps my mind sharp. That’s why I take classes and, and I have um I wear out Bluetooth earpieces if you want to talk to me and, and, and I don’t have an earpiece or I’m not in the car while my Bluetooth in my car, it’s gonna be a short conversation. I am not gonna hold a phone to my head. Uh, I just won’t do it, but I do like to uh, have robust. I got a tutor that’s, that’s working with me. He’s a retired, he’s also a caregiver for his wife and he’s my theological tutor and he put his beat, beats me over the head and, and things like that. II, I love that because this is keeping me sharp. It, yes. My body gets tired and I, that’s when sometimes I go out and just get on a snowmobile and where I live, I wake up every day to a 50 mile view. No kidding. We live way up in the Rockies and it’s an extraordinary view and I’ll see deer and moose and, you know, Elk and everything else and, and that helped settle my soul. II, I miss Nashville to a point. I mean, we don’t have a Waffle House in the whole state and Waffle House is a big part of my care routine, you know. And, um, I miss that but I don’t miss the traffic. I don’t miss the craziest. I, I watched to the follow thing I was supposed to do with a friend of mine this morning. He’s stuck on 75 trying to head out of Atlanta and you know, that I don’t miss because every day when I drive to town I see antelope. You have the deer and the antelope. Yeah, I see it all. I see pheasants. I see it all. Uh, a bald eagle and, uh, I saw a golden eagle once. I, I’ve only seen them one time and they were massive and so those are things that have kind of helped settle my spirit down and slow me down. I mean, I still work. I, I don’t, I don’t have a, a sitting desk. I have a standing desk. I’m always working. You’re, you’re type a and probably I’m a type a like we can’t change our type. I’ve tried like it’s just you are, you are rest and sleep are two different things that’s really important for us to. I, I’d fall asleep at a moment’s notice, but am I resting? Resting is knowing that it’s gonna be ok. I’ve a, a, as a friend of mine said, the caregiver group the other day, his wife was asking him for the 1000th time that day, the same question. And he said in his heart, he spoke to himself and he said, he’s got this just to answer her question and it was that he was resting in that God’s got this answer her question. It’s ok. It’s gonna be ok. And I thought that’s, that’s my self care of, of reminding myself of where solid ground is and standing there and not being in a hurry to leave it so good. So good. Well, I gotta, I gotta ask you a couple, put you on the spot, Peter. Um You know, lightning round. Here we go. You ready? This is prompts for my because uh you know, people need to try on hopefully writing and this is kind of a low entry point. Um When’s the last time you asked somebody for help? Uh I asked this week, well, at the end of last week, I, I signed a contract with the people to come on board and I just, I spent the money to help me with a lot of technical stuff. And then I said, uh I got another friend of mine who helped me with some accounting stuff and I said, look, I’ve got to offload this iii I can’t do all this. I need your help. Yeah. In the last week, constantly kind of my, one of my little sub themes this year is say yes to less. And that’s to again, make more time for that. I will steal that Elizabeth. I’ll give you credit for it, but I want to steal it. It Yes. Oh, that’s the best compliment. I love it. Yes. Say yes to less. Um OK, so this one is like one of those monthly fun pages in my journal, but I pulled this one out for you because it says songs that make my heart sing and I know you’re a musical music lover. So when you need to just kind of like, feel energized, like, what, what do you turn on? What are the song songs that make your heart sing? I have several program places in my car on Sirius. Uh I listened to the Sinatra channel because I love Frank Sinatra and we wouldn’t know. I don’t want to be friends with people that don’t like Frank Sinatra. And, uh, and I, um, I listened to that, I’ve been listening to some, uh, the good, uh, blues rock stuff that a friend of mine has put me on to. I love the hymns. I love to play the hymns. I love hymns that are done well. And, um, and then I, I’ve got to tell you, but I turn on my wife’s music when I listen to her sing and we’ve had the chance to record some, some great stuff and her voice, that voice, even in the hospital when she was singing, she was kind of croaky a little bit because he was dry. But, and I was just like, oh, and we sit there, I brought a keyboard into the hospital room. Um, we had the best decorated room this year for Christmas and I had a friend of mine let me borrow a keyboard and I set it up in the corner and I played, we played Christmas songs and he sang, you know, it was, you know, have yourself up there and you think of that from a hospital bed and I’m in the room and, and, and it was, it’s Christmas Eve and friends are there and it was spectacular. And I thought I’m not gonna stop playing music just because things are whatever. And the music is a huge part of my life and I, I love listening to it and I love the Doobie Brothers and kitty luggage and the Eagles do. Those are all good. Those are all good, good texts. I um I’ll have to send you, I have a caregiver anthem playlist that like when I hear songs, I think about caregivers and I have compiled a playlist on Spotify and then uh Pandora or Caregivers, Kelly Clarkson. What does it kill you? Makes you stronger? It’s a great, it’s probably on there. That is one of the greatest songs. What does it tell you? Yeah, I’m gonna send, I’m sending you the caregiver anthem playlist so that you can on one of your next uh you know, walkabouts or um it drives into your support group, you can check it out. Um OK. What’s something that you’re currently praying for? Yeah, it’s the same thing. I pray all the time. Great for today. Bright hope for tomorrow. That is, that is the go to pray a prayer for me. Great for today. Bright hope for tomorrow. That’s it from greatest of faithfulness. It’s a great lyric uh written by Thomas and um I I think that, um, clarity of thought, clarity of thought because it’s so easy to get disoriented as a caregiver when it’s all coming at you. And I have to aa lot of plates, um, and it’s been a lot of plates and, and so I, I need that clarity of thought. I love that. And then, um, it says list three things that you have feared and three things that have comforted you. But let’s just take one, what’s one thing that you feared and, and one thing that you’ve found comfort in, I think one of the things that I have feared is that um something happens to me that incapacitates me from caring for her. Uh I know I can’t guarantee it because I mean, I get on some bills and horses and everything else, but I try to be careful. I try not to get on roofs and do gutters. I ask people to help me do that. You know, I just, I don’t take, I don’t take stupid shit. I do. I think the, the risk for me is outweighed by the benefit for getting on a horse for example. But you know, those are things that I, that, that trouble me um is that, you know, keeping myself engaged and healthy. Mhm uh To make sure because the responsibilities are significant on me. And so I don’t want to drop that ball. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense. What are any parting words of wisdom things that you wish we would have said that we didn’t say. And then how do people stay in touch with you and find out more about your products? Well, you always go to hope for the caregiver. com or just Google me. Um I, I think that I want, I want to end with the, the phrase I, I’ve actually trademarked this phrase because it is the cornerstone of my life. Healthy caregivers, make better caregivers, healthy caregivers, make better caregivers, not happy for, for me. I mean, because sometimes I said we just want to be happy, but I know I love how you said you got healthy and happy. You can’t, how are you going to be happy? If you’re not healthy? You can’t, you know, and so we, we, we, we chase happiness, but we do, we chase healthiness. And I wanna see your listeners listening to your program recognize that there’s a dual thing they have to just, they can’t just lock in on being happy because happiness can be taken away from you. But healthiness belongs to you. You know, you could put down AAA milkshake and pick up water. You can, you know, not uh do something that is going to create unhealthy to make a bad financial decision. You could stop that right now. I can’t guarantee that I could be happy right at this moment, but I can guarantee that I will make a healthy decision. And if you taste healthy happiness will stay here. And I think, and so I, I want your listeners to embrace the fact that if you didn’t put the happy caregiver, you put the happy, healthy caregiver, you know, together. Because healthiness is where, where I believe that is, that is our victory place because we’re content in our mind and our spirits. And then all of a sudden we’re going to discover. Wow, I, I’m actually happy because I’m healthy and, and so you keep pounding that particular and it’s mental health and physical health, like it’s all of it. It’s professional. Financial grammatical. No, I’m not. But, but all of the above because those are decisions that are within our grasp right now. Some people think they can’t be happy unless they’re done with caregiving or they get through this and I say they nay and you can, and you can start helping us right now. And part of that is just listening to this conversation with Elizabeth and me that 22 veteran caregivers who got a lot of scars and skin in the game. But, but we’re not, you know, Elizabeth, I look at you and I see your stuff. You’re not miserable, you’re not over there just crying in your beer, you know, kind of thing. Um You’re living life l why? Because you understand happy and healthy and those are things that I want fellow caregivers to understand healthy caregivers, make better caregivers. I love it, Peter. Thank you. So much for being here on the show. I hope this landed on folks that needed to hear it today. And I just really respect, you know, your journey, your storytelling, your sense of humor, all of it. It’s, you are so gracious to have me on and I appreciate you very much. Thanks for your flexibility with my uh impromptu studio set up here. But you’re very grateful Elizabeth and I look forward to more times with you. Ok. Thank you.

Thanks for joining us today on the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast on the whole care network. As always show notes that a company today’s episode can be found on my website Happy Healthy caregiver.com. Just look under the podcast menu for today’s episode image and that will take you to the page with the links and information we spoke about today. You’ll also find other resources on the website along with links to purchase the just for you daily self care journal. When you purchase from my website, you’ll get a signed copy and for a limited time free shipping. If you’ve enjoyed what you heard today, consider subscribing to the show on your podcast platform. It really helps other family caregivers find the podcast and you’ll automatically receive our biweekly shows in your podcast listening queue. Maybe while you’re subscribing, consider leaving a five star rating and review or just simply talk it up on your social channels. Let’s stay connected. I’m on Instagram and Facebook as happy, healthy caregiver. And until we meet again, please take care of you.

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