My heart broke a little the day I realized I had forgotten myself.

I don’t mean that in some grand, existential, cue-the-violins kind of way. I mean I actually looked in the mirror one day and didn’t quite recognize the woman looking back at me.

I used to go almost nowhere without my hair and makeup done. I loved fashion. I loved all the sparkle. I knew what music people were listening to and what was happening beyond my own front door. I built my original Royal Albert tea set one piece at a time from garage sales. I drooled over my dream car. I worked out. I loved the feel of the sun on my face. I loved going on a food search just because somebody said there was something fabulous hiding on a menu somewhere. A good book on a rainy day with chili on the stove was my idea of a good party.

None of those things were particularly important. Except they were. They were the things that fed Ruth.

Somewhere during years of caregiving, those things didn’t disappear all at once. They simply became less important than everything that needed me. Mom needed something. Work needed something. The house needed something. There was an appointment, a prescription, a meal, a problem, a deadline.

And handling things is something I’m very good at, so I handled them. Hair could wait. Makeup could wait. Who cared what I was wearing? The tea cups weren’t going anywhere. There would always be another restaurant, another song, another Saturday. I’d get to it later.

Later. There’s that word again.

I can already hear somebody telling an exhausted caregiver to “make time for yourself,” and I may have to throw one of my precious tea cups at them. That’s not the answer. This isn’t really about time. It’s about loving yourself enough to remember that you are important, too—and that’s more difficult than it sounds.

Because when you’re caring for someone you love, their needs are real, immediate and often non-negotiable. Yours? Well, they can wait. Nobody suffers if I don’t put on mascara. Nobody misses a medication because I haven’t listened to new music lately. The electric company does not care if I’ve lost all interest in fashion, and Medicare has yet to ask about my tea cups.

So those things become optional. The makeup is optional. The music is optional. The workout is optional. Wandering through garage sales is optional. Going somewhere just because it sounds fun is definitely optional. Optional, optional, optional.

And little by little, almost without noticing, everything that feeds you gets moved into the optional column. Until one day it isn’t just the things you love sitting over there. You find yourself in the optional column, too.

We become so accustomed to asking, What does she need? What needs to be done? What problem do I need to solve next? that we stop asking ourselves much of anything. We stop dreaming, anticipating and looking forward to things-not because we’ve decided we don’t matter, but because treating ourselves as optional quietly becomes normal.

That’s the part I wish I had noticed sooner.

I don’t think the answer is desperately hanging onto the person we were before caregiving. I’m not even sure that’s possible. The last seven and a half years have changed me. Of course life changes all of us, but caregiving has changed the way I see love, responsibility, sacrifice, time-and myself.

Then there are the things that surprise me. I’ll see a beautiful tea cup at a garage sale and feel that familiar little spark. There you are. Not the woman I was seven and a half years ago. Just me. Still here. The same, but different.

And maybe that’s the shift. At some point, we have to stop focusing only on what we think we’ve lost and start looking at what can be.

I can spend a lot of time cataloging the things caregiving changed, the things I stopped doing and the pieces of myself I thought had disappeared. Some of that loss is real. But if I keep looking backward for the woman I used to be, I might miss the woman who is standing right here—and all the things she might still become.

Those old loves aren’t necessarily instructions to go backward. They’re clues pointing forward.

And I think those clues are worth noticing, even while you’re still caregiving. Not because you need another assignment. Good grief, the last thing a caregiver needs is a checklist titled HOW TO REMEMBER YOU ARE A PERSON stuck to the refrigerator next to seventeen appointment cards.

Just quietly notice. What still makes you laugh? What catches your eye? What do you miss? What makes you feel beautiful, interesting or curious? What makes some little part of you perk up and say, I remember this?

Because someday, in whatever way it happens, caregiving will change. I don’t believe the goal is to emerge from it exactly as we were when we entered. How could we? We will carry the wisdom, the sacrifice, the hard days and tender ones, the ridiculous stories, the scars, the laughter and an extraordinary amount of love that we poured into another human being.

And I believe something amazing can come from that.

Not because the hard parts were secretly wonderful. Some were excruciating, and they don’t need a pretty bow tied around them. But we will walk forward with something we didn’t have when we began: hard-earned wisdom about love, sacrifice, ourselves and what really matters.

If you’re right in the thick of caregiving, please hear me: I’m not leaving you behind while I start talking about what comes next. You are the reason I’m writing this. Maybe your days still belong almost entirely to someone else. Maybe you can’t see your “next” from where you’re standing. That’s okay. You don’t need to see it yet. Just be on the lookout for those little pieces of yourself that still light up. You are still in there.

We may have made ourselves optional. But once we notice, we can start looking for the clues. And instead of focusing on everything we think we’ve lost, maybe we can begin to wonder what can be.

Because you’re coming with you to the other side of this.

Maybe that’s where we start.

Caregiver Hack of the Week: Notice the Clues

No assignment. No schedule. No new obligation. Just notice something that still makes a little part of you light up.

A song. Lipstick. Fishing. An old recipe. Power tools. A ridiculously expensive coffee. A motorcycle. Whatever. Notice it and tuck it away for the “next.”

Don’t ask whether it’s productive or decide what you’re supposed to do with it. Just notice.

P.S. If anyone has a 1965 Royal Albert Old Country Roses soup tureen they need to get rid of, I’m your girl. I am finding that some parts of myself require absolutely no rediscovery whatsoever. 🙂