The Silver Haired ChooChoo

“Turns Out, I Still Get a Vote”

October 18, 2026

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When Mom moved into the care home, I knew life was going to change for both of us. After seven and a half years of caregiving, I’d become exceptionally good at figuring out what needed to happen next, although what I wanted rarely entered the conversation. Suddenly, many of the daily responsibilities I’d managed for years belonged to someone else, and I found myself wondering what this next chapter might look like.

Now, before anyone thinks caregiving ends when someone moves into a home, let me clear that up. Oh, honey. No. Mom still needs me, and in some ways, I believe she needs me more than ever. I’m her advocate, her connection to family, holidays, special occasions and the familiar pieces of a life she still loves. I’m her anchor to the world she knows, even as dementia makes that world increasingly confusing.

The wonderful people caring for Mom now handle many of her physical needs, giving me more time to focus on her emotional well-being. What an amazing opportunity that has been! We can laugh, share stories and enjoy each other’s company without my constantly calculating what needs to happen before bedtime. I get to spend more time simply being her daughter, a joy I’ve written about before.

Another beautiful change is that it’s easier for other people to be part of Mom’s life. Someone can stop by for fifteen minutes, bring a treat or share a little conversation without taking on the enormous responsibilities of caregiving. When I was out of town, my kids stepped in and spent time with their grandmother. Mom got to enjoy their company, and they got to enjoy hers. Frankly, after seven and a half years of listening to my material, I’m sure she appreciates a few guest performers.

Research confirms that family caregiving continues after residential placement, although our roles change. We remain advocates, companions and important connections to the people and experiences that give our loved ones a sense of belonging.

While I’ve been learning how to care for Mom differently, I’ve also begun thinking about how I want to live differently.

I’m making choices that have very little to do with emergencies or obligations. I’m thinking about making my home more comfortable, building Real Grace Co., walking, improving my fitness, studying the Bible and spending more time writing. I’m also discovering the extraordinary appeal of freezer meals, because apparently finding a homemade dinner already waiting in the freezer now qualifies as a thrilling personal achievement.

Some people want diamonds. I’d like six portions of chicken and rice that I don’t have to cook on a Tuesday. (Okay, and some diamonds for good measure. There will be no lowering of standards in this house.)

I’m not looking to fill every available hour. In fact, I’m wholeheartedly avoiding that approach. I’ve had busy, thank you very much, and I believe we’ve spent quite enough time together. I want a slower pace, meaningful work, room for faith and creativity, and the freedom to enjoy something without turning it into another responsibility.

I don’t necessarily want to return to the woman I was before caregiving. I can’t undo everything these years have taught me, but I can decide what to carry forward and what to leave behind. I couldn’t choose what dementia would take from Mom, and I still can’t control every challenge tomorrow might bring. But I can help fill her days with family, friendship and laughter while building a fulfilling life of my own. Those choices don’t have to compete.

For those of you still providing around-the-clock care, I know the idea of having time to make personal choices may seem about as realistic as winning the lottery while being struck by lightning. Those days are not distant for me, trust that. I’m not suggesting you can rearrange your calendar and create freedom where none exists. We both know that’s a lie. But circumstances can change, and when they do, I hope you’ll find a little excitement in choosing what comes next.

And here’s the bittersweet part of this journey. Someday, our loved ones won’t be here. As crazy as it sounds, I suspect we’ll miss some of the very things that drove us absolutely bonkers. The questions asked seventeen times, the constant need for our attention, even hearing our names called when we’d just sat down for the first time all day. I know I’ll miss those things about Mom, because underneath every interruption was someone I love dearly. Knowing that makes me want to enjoy the time we still have, even as I begin building a life of my own.

Caregiver Hack of the Week:

When an opportunity comes along, however small, ask yourself what you would choose. Maybe it’s inviting someone else into your loved one’s day, returning to something you enjoy or trying something entirely new. You don’t have to reinvent your life by Thursday. Just remember that your preferences deserve a vote, too.

Mom and I are both living differently now. She has new friendships, more family involvement and people who care about making her days meaningful. I’m building new routines and discovering what feels right for the woman I’ve become. Neither of us knows exactly what comes next, but after years of responding to whatever life demanded, I’m discovering something rather wonderful.

I get to help choose it. And that feels like a pretty good beginning.

Research Resources
- Family Caregiver Alliance — Residential Care Options: Caregiving Doesn’t End When Your Loved One Moves
- Davies & Nolan (2006) — “Making it better”: Self-perceived roles of family caregivers of older people living in care homes, International Journal of Nursing Studies.
- Lee et al. (2022) — Unmet needs and health-related quality of life of dementia family caregivers transitioning from home to long-term care: A scoping review, Geriatric Nursing.
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“Sometimes Feelings are Truer Than Facts”

October 4, 2026

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Mom lost one of her besties at the home this week.

It was rather sudden, and since it happened, she has been sad, confused and in a bit of a fog. I’ve been trying to figure out how to help her through it, which is an interesting assignment for someone whose natural response to nearly every problem is, Okay, what do we need to do? Apparently, grief has declined my request for a checklist.

I’m learning something else, too. Tablemates in a care home matter more than I ever understood. Mom and two other women sat together every day, three meals a day—breakfast, lunch and dinner. They shared devotions and prayer time. They talked about their problems and became confidantes. They laughed, worried and knew what was happening in one another’s lives. That table became the central point of their day.

There were three. Now there are two. And the two who remain are grieving together and comforting each other.

Feelings have always led Mom’s personality. She is happy almost all of the time, and when she isn’t, there is rarely much mystery about it. The woman has a face that can communicate an entire paragraph without saying a word. Happiness, worry, irritation, sadness, surprise—it’s all right there.

Dementia has affected her memory, her reasoning and her ability to process some things, but it hasn’t taken away her feelings. Mom still feels things deeply, and if you’ve ever seen her face, you know she still shows us exactly how she feels. That’s why this week has made me think about something I don’t want us to overlook when we care for someone with dementia: cognitive decline does not mean emotional decline. They are two different things.

We can become so focused on what dementia is taking from someone’s brain—the memory, reasoning, words and ability to understand—that I think we can accidentally underestimate what the person can still feel. People living with dementia can and do grieve. Dementia may affect how someone understands and adapts to a death, but that does not mean the loss or the grief isn’t real.

The feelings are still there.

I’m seeing that with Mom in a way I didn’t expect. She keeps relating the loss of her friend to losing my dad. She isn’t confusing the two deaths. She knows Dad died years ago, and she knows it was her friend who died this week. What she is connecting are the feelings.

Losing Dad is the deepest grief Mom knows. When she tries to explain how much this new loss hurts, that’s the place she goes. She recognizes grief because she has been here before. She knows this feeling. She has felt this kind of ache before. Her heart knows exactly what grief feels like.

That changes the way I think about helping her. My job isn’t necessarily to make sure Mom can explain her grief to me correctly. I don’t need to give her a pop quiz on what happened, and I certainly don’t need to explain why losing her friend isn’t the same as losing Dad. She isn’t telling me they are the same. She’s telling me the ache feels the same in her heart.

So I can listen. If she talks about Dad, we can talk about Dad. If she tells me she misses her friend, I can tell her I know. If she’s sad, I can let her be sad. And when she doesn’t have the words, maybe I can pay attention to what she’s telling me without them.

That last part may be especially important. As dementia affects communication, people can have more difficulty finding words, organizing thoughts or putting what they are experiencing into language. Facial expressions, gestures and other nonverbal communication can become increasingly important, too. Sometimes the words may fail long before the feelings do.

Maybe helping Mom through this isn’t about making her understand grief exactly the way I do. Maybe it’s about honoring the grief she already feels.

Caregiver Hack of the Week: Look for the Feelings, Not the Words

When someone we love has dementia, it can be easy to focus on the words because the words are often where things stop making sense. They may struggle to explain what they mean or simply not have the language to tell us what is happening inside them.

Look for the feelings instead. They are there.

What is the person trying to tell you underneath the words? Are they sad? Frightened? Lonely? Frustrated? Do they need reassurance more than they need correction? We may not always get it right, but perhaps the goal isn’t to perfectly interpret every word. Sometimes it is simply to recognize the emotion and meet them there.

This week, I can’t fix this for Mom. I can’t put her friend back in that chair at breakfast or make her heart hurt less. What I can do is sit beside her while she misses her, listen when losing one person reminds her of losing another, and be grateful that the two friends who remain have each other to lean on while they grieve.

There were three friends at that table. Now there are two.

And the empty chair matters.

Resources:

Alzheimer’s Society — Supporting a person with dementia during a bereavement

Alzheimer’s Society — Grief, loss and bereavement when a person has dementia

National Institute on Aging — Communicating With Someone Who Has Alzheimer’s Disease

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“Love, Resentment and Other Inconvenient Truths”

September 26, 2026

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I read a comment from another caregiver this past week that stopped me cold.

“I really wish I loved my mom. But the longer she lives, the more I resent her.”

Before anybody in my small town gets halfway through that sentence and starts a rumor before lunch, let me be very clear: Those are not my words about my mom. They were written by another caregiver about her own experience. Noted? Good! I believe we’ve notified the appropriate grapevine.

But those words from the caregiver stayed with me.

I don’t know this woman. I don’t know what her relationship with her mother was like before caregiving. I don’t know how many years she has been doing this, how much help she has, what her mother’s disease looks like, or what has been lost along the way. So I am not going to tell her what she should feel.

What I do know is that caregiving can produce feelings we aren’t particularly proud of.

Anger. Frustration. Resentment. Sadness. Exhaustion. Sometimes all of them before breakfast.

And I think this is another place where two things can be true at the same time.

You can love someone deeply and hate what their disease has done to your life. You can have enormous compassion for what is happening to them and still be angry about what it requires of you. You can know they aren’t choosing a behavior and still desperately wish they would stop doing it.

One truth doesn’t cancel out the other.

Research backs up some of what caregivers experience here. Alzheimer’s and other dementias can change far more than memory. Changes in the brain can affect behavior, communication and personality. Fear, confusion, pain, poor sleep, hearing or vision problems, medications and even the environment can affect behavior, too. The National Institute on Aging makes an important distinction for caregivers: sometimes it is the disease, not the person, causing the change. (National Institute on Aging)

Knowing that helps. It does not necessarily make living with it easy.

I’ve had plenty of moments during these past seven years when I’ve been angry. I’ve been frustrated, impatient, exhausted and completely over it. There have been days when I have resented what caregiving required of me. Pretending otherwise wouldn’t make me a better daughter. It would just make me a liar.

But that caregiver’s comment made me think about something I want to remember in my own relationship with Mom:

Where am I aiming my anger? Because the cruel thing about dementia is that the disease doesn’t have a face. The person you love does.

I can’t put dementia in a chair and tell it what I think of it. I can’t ask it why it took something else from Mom. I can’t tell it I’m tired. I can’t demand that it give back the memories, abilities or pieces of our relationship it has changed.

Dementia isn’t sitting across the table from me. Mom is.

And sometimes I think that makes it terribly easy for the anger we feel about the disease—and everything caregiving has cost—to land on the only person standing there.

That doesn’t mean every difficult feeling a caregiver has is secretly about dementia. Relationships are complicated long before caregiving enters them. Research has found that the quality of a relationship before dementia can affect the caregiving experience later. We don’t all begin this journey with the same history, and I don’t want to turn “blame the disease” into one more rule caregivers are supposed to follow perfectly. (PubMed Central (PMC))

Sometimes we really are angry with the person. Sometimes we’re angry with the disease. Sometimes we’re angry because we’re exhausted, scared, grieving, financially stretched, lonely or doing a job that was never meant to belong to one human being around the clock.And sometimes it’s probably one giant casserole of all of the above.

What matters to me is remembering that Mom is not dementia.

Dementia may make her repeat a question she asked five minutes ago. It may cause confusion. It may change what she can understand, remember or do.

But it doesn’t get to become her identity. This is still the woman who raised me. The woman with the wicked sense of humor. The woman who can still make me laugh when I least expect it. The woman who tells me she loves me. The one who prays for me every day.

I hate dementia. I don’t hate Mom. Maybe that’s an easy distinction for me to make today and a much harder one for another caregiver to make after a different history, a different disease progression or a different kind of day. That’s why I keep coming back to compassion—for the person living with dementia and for the person caring for them.

Caregiver Hack of the Week: Name What You’re Angry At

When resentment shows up, maybe don’t immediately judge yourself for feeling it. Get curious about it.

What am I actually angry about?

Is it the person? The behavior? The disease? The lack of sleep? The loss of freedom? The fact that nobody else showed up to help? The grief of watching someone you love change? The fact that you have answered the same question so many times that Jesus and you are once again discussing your attitude?

Naming it won’t necessarily make the anger disappear. But it might help us remember where some of it belongs.

I don’t know the woman who wrote that comment, and I won’t tell her what she should feel. Her road may be very different from mine.

But her words reminded me of something I want to hold onto.

Dementia has taken enough from Mom and me already.

I don’t want to give it her identity, too.

Mom is not the disease.

She’s my mom.

See you out on the rails. Keep showing yourself and your loved one grace. You both deserve it.

Until next week!

References:

National Institute on Aging. “Alzheimer’s Changes in Behavior and Communication.” National Institutes of Health. (National Institute on Aging)
National Institute on Aging. “Alzheimer’s Caregiving: Managing Personality and Behavior Changes.” National Institutes of Health. (National Institute on Aging)
Alzheimer’s Association. “Caregiver Stress.” (Alzheimer’s Association)
Williamson, G. M., et al. “Caregiver Attribution and Resentment in Dementia Care.” (PubMed Central (PMC))
Steadman, P. L., et al. “Premorbid Relationship Satisfaction and Caregiver Burden in Dementia Caregivers.” (PubMed Central (PMC))

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“Dementia Didn’t Read the Handbook”

September 20, 2026

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Last week, I wrote about repetition – Mom asking the same question again and again, me answering it again and again, and the fact that it is a very good thing Jesus knows my heart.

The column brought responses from people whose experiences with dementia and their response to it that looked very different from mine. It reminded me of something important: there really is no universal dementia experience.

Not for the person who has it. And not for the person who loves them through it.

We use the word dementia as though it describes one thing, but it doesn’t. Dementia is an umbrella term for several diseases and conditions that affect the brain. Alzheimer’s is the most common, but there are others, and people can have more than one type. Symptoms, behavior and progression can vary tremendously from person to person.

Even on different days, the same person can behave differently. The National Institute on Aging says changes in behavior can be influenced not only by changes in the brain, but by fear, sadness, pain, lack of sleep, medications, hearing or vision problems, hunger, thirst and even a noisy environment.

In other words, dementia apparently did not read the handbook either.

One person may repeat questions. Another may struggle to find words. Someone else may wander, become suspicious, have trouble sleeping or eventually stop communicating. One person may still be cracking jokes and fooling casual acquaintances into thinking nothing is wrong while another needs help with nearly every part of daily life.

We aren’t caring for a diagnosis. We’re caring for a person.

And here’s the part I find particularly interesting: the person doing the caring is a person, too.

We bring our own personalities right through the door with us.

Some people are naturally patient. Some roll with chaos. Some need order. Some talk things out. Some need quiet. Some ask for help easily, while others would apparently rather chew off their own arm than admit they could use a hand.

Me? I’m a doer. Give me a problem, a plan, a deadline and preferably a box I can check when I’m finished. I’m not a patient person – at all.

Dementia looked at my personality and apparently said, “Oh, this should be fun.”

Turns out, there is science behind this, too. Research on family dementia caregivers has found connections between personality and the ways caregivers cope with and manage caregiving challenges. Researchers have also found that people facing similar caregiving circumstances can experience the emotional burden differently. Personality isn’t the whole explanation-far from it-but it is one piece of a much bigger picture.

That matters because it means there isn’t one correct emotional response to caregiving, either.

What overwhelms me may not overwhelm you. Something you handle beautifully may send me straight toward DEFCON 1. What worked wonderfully with your dad might fail spectacularly with my mom. And what worked with my mom yesterday may apparently be complete nonsense by Tuesday.

None of that means one of us loves better.

It means we’re different people caring for different people while dealing with diseases that don’t follow one tidy script.

I think there’s freedom in knowing that.

Other caregivers have taught me a tremendous amount, and good professional advice matters. But we don’t have to turn someone else’s experience into a measuring stick for our own. We can listen to each other without comparing and learn from each other without assuming there is only one right way through this.

Your road doesn’t have to look like mine for me to recognize that you’re carrying something hard.

Maybe instead of asking, “Why can’t I handle this the way she does?” we can ask better questions: What is hard for this person? What is hard for me? What might help us today? Because tomorrow may be different. Actually, let me rephrase that – tomorrow WILL be different.

Caregiver Hack of the Week: Take What Helps. Leave What Doesn’t.

Listen to other caregivers. Ask what worked. Read. Learn. Talk to professionals. Try things. But if someone else’s brilliant solution crashes and burns in your house, that doesn’t automatically mean you’re doing it wrong. It means the diseases you are dealing with – and the person – and YOU – are different.

Different brain. Different person. Different caregiver. Different day. What we can do is support each other along the way – no matter the differences.

References & Resources

National Institute on Aging. “Understanding Different Types of Dementia.” National Institutes of Health. Updated June 5, 2025.
Understanding Different Types of Dementia — NIA

National Institute on Aging. “Alzheimer’s Caregiving: Managing Personality and Behavior Changes.” National Institutes of Health. Reviewed July 11, 2024.
Managing Personality and Behavior Changes — NIA

Simon, Darby, et al. “Relationships Between Dementia Caregiver Personality, Outcomes, and Management and Coping Strategies.” Innovation in Aging, vol. 7, suppl. 1, 2023.
Caregiver Personality, Coping and Outcomes — PubMed Central

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“I Love You. I’m Still Irritated.”

September 13, 2026

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There are certain things in caregiving that can wear you down faster than others. The medication alarm. The phone ringing when you’ve just sat down. Your name being called from another room approximately fourteen seconds after you were just in that room.

And then there is the repeated question. It stands alone, doesn’t it?

Mom asks me something, and I answer. A few minutes later, she asks again, and I answer again. Then she asks again, and I answer again, although perhaps with slightly less “sparkle.” By the fourth or fifth round, I can feel my patience pack a small bag and quietly leave the premises.

It’s a good thing Jesus knows my heart.

I know Mom can’t help repeating herself. I know the answer I gave her five minutes ago may simply be gone. She isn’t trying to irritate me, test my patience or see whether she can make my left eye twitch. I know all of that, and sometimes I still cannot stand to answer the same question one more time.

There. I said it. Maybe somebody needed to hear that today. Was it you?

I think caregivers sometimes believe that once we understand why something is happening, we should somehow become immune to its effects. If we understand dementia, surely we should be able to answer the seventeenth repetition with the same sweetness we managed the first time.

Ummmm, no.

I’d like to meet the person who can do that. Actually, no. I probably wouldn’t like her. By question seventeen, the Mother Teresa patience might be more irritating than the repetition.

Understanding helps. Compassion helps enormously. But compassion does not give us endless capacity. You can understand why someone is doing something and still be worn completely slick by it. That doesn’t mean you’ve stopped loving them. Sometimes it just means your compassion is intact and your last nerve is not.

Today, though, I looked at Mom and saw the other side of it. There was sadness in her eyes. She knows her brain doesn’t work the way it used to. She may not remember every conversation or realize how many times she has asked me something, but she knows something is wrong. While I’m over here thinking, Please, Lord, not this question again, she’s living inside a brain she can no longer completely trust.

Well, crap. Nothing ruins a perfectly good bout of irritation like that realization. But that’s caregiving, isn’t it? I can be frustrated by Mom and heartbroken for her at exactly the same time. I can know she can’t help something and still desperately wish she’d stop doing it. I can answer too sharply, regret it and promise myself I’ll do better next time—only to discover that “next time” has arrived four minutes later, which seems a little aggressive if you ask me.

Just yesterday, she asked me at least five times in an hour and a half about a bottle of water for her walker. Today, I specifically brought her a new one, and she didn’t want it. Repetition and hyper-focus is insane-making to the logical brain. To theirs, it is not.

The other truth is that underneath all of it, I love her. Love doesn’t magically make the hard parts easy. Sometimes it simply gives us a reason to keep showing up. And I’ve learned that beating myself up when I don’t handle every moment beautifully doesn’t restore one ounce of capacity. It just adds guilt to an already crowded room. None of us need that!

If I’m too sharp, I can apologize – and I do – a lot! If I need to walk into another room for a minute, I can. Sometimes I can redirect her or find a different way to answer. And sometimes I’m just going to answer the question again.It may be with a sass mouth, but I’ll answer. Rest assured, I’ll answer.

And, then, I’ll show up the next day, and try to do better – because that’s what we caregivers do. Remember, be kind to yourself (and your loved one) even when it’s hard – especially when it’s hard.

Caregiver Hack of the Week: Answer the Worry, Not Just the Question

Sometimes a repeated question may be carrying a worry underneath it. Instead of answering, “What time is my appointment?” for the twelfth time, try, “You don’t need to worry. I know when we need to leave, and I’ll make sure we get there.”

If that doesn’t work, write the answer somewhere they can see it or try redirecting the conversation. There isn’t a magic solution for every repeated question because dementia apparently did not come with an owner’s manual. The goal isn’t perfection. It’s finding something that makes the repetition a little easier on both of you.

And if you find yourself praying for patience, as your friend, I’m telling you – JUST DON’T. Remember Job? Right. Don’t. Do. It.

See you at the next station!

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“Excuse Me, Did You Just Ask My Mother About Credit? My Inner GI Jane Would Like a Word”

September 6, 2026

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This past week, I took my almost 95-year-old mother to have her hearing checked and one of her hearing aids repaired. She hasn’t been hearing well lately, and one of the aids had been dropped and broken. I expected we’d get it repaired, find out whether her hearing had changed and talk about what could reasonably be done to help her hear better.

It seemed like a pretty straightforward plan. Apparently, I am a wildly optimistic person.

What followed was a hearing-aid sales pitch that continued despite my making one thing abundantly clear: there was no money for new hearing aids. NONE. I said it before the sales conversation even started. Mom’s first hearing aids had been gifted to her. There was no magical hearing-aid fund tucked away somewhere, and financing something you can’t afford does not suddenly make it affordable.

That information didn’t seem to slow things down much.

After repeatedly explaining that Mom could not afford new hearing aids, I finally asked the salesman, “Would you show your daughter the nicest Barbie doll on the shelf and then tell her she couldn’t have it? Don’t do that to my mother with hearing aids.”

Because this wasn’t a Barbie doll. This was her hearing.

I wanted to know what the hearing test showed. I wanted the broken aid repaired and the existing ones adjusted to give her the best hearing possible with what she already owned. Instead, the conversation almost immediately wandered into credit cards.

Credit cards? Who exactly was going to make those payments? I looked at him and asked, “Are you?”

By this point, the whole situation felt like I was being pranked by a street-corner grifter selling flood-damaged Buicks to little old ladies. To me, the sales pressure felt predatory. Maybe some would argue. I say, “If the shoe fits, lace it up and wear it.”

Frustrated, I told mom we were leaving.

Before we left, out of curiosity, I asked him to write down the prices in case Mom ever received a gift or some miraculous windfall fell from the Wyoming sky. Maybe we’d reach out (as if)!!!

That paper says:

$3,998 — 5 percent

$4,998 — 10 percent

$5,998 — 20 percent

$6,498 — “40% Better”

Better at what? I don’t know. It wasn’t explained. But nearly $4,000 for what was written down as five percent better? Five. Freaking. Percent. I believe I could get more hearing improvement out of a couple Campbell’s soup cans with string between.

I was upset, and I’m not denying mom could benefit some from some new top of the line hearing aids, but what happened afterward is why I’m writing this column. In the car, I asked Mom if she understood how much $6,500 was. She didn’t. Then she asked if all that money they wanted was because of her. Something she’d done.

And suddenly, none of it was funny anymore.

My mother had been part of a conversation involving thousands of dollars and credit cards when she didn’t understand what $6,500 meant or that borrowed money would need to be paid back. I had made her financial circumstances clear. Yet she left wondering whether she was somehow a burden.

I found that heart breaking, and I am still mad enough to spit nails. But it also made me think about how vulnerable our elderly loved ones can be as consumers.

A friend made an excellent point when I was discussing this topic with her. She said, “Many people of older generations spent their lives trusting the experts. They listened to the doctor, the banker, the lawyer, the mechanic, the insurance agent. Expertise carried authority, and you generally assumed the person sitting across the desk was going to deal fairly and honestly with you. For many older adults, trusting the professional isn’t foolishness. It’s a lifetime habit.”

Now add hearing loss, dementia, memory problems or difficulty processing complicated information. That lifetime habit of trusting authority can collide with a world in which we’re constantly being told to read the fine print, compare prices, question recommendations and watch for scams.

And the research says we should be paying attention. In 2024, Americans age 60 and older reported losing $2.4 billion to fraud, according to the Federal Trade Commission—about four times the amount reported in 2020. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has an entire program designed to help older adults and their caregivers recognize and prevent fraud and financial exploitation. Even the FDA advises hearing-aid consumers to ask about total costs, features, warranties, repairs and trial periods before purchasing.

I’m not calling what happened to Mom fraud. I’m saying the vulnerability is real, and caregivers need to recognize it.

We need to go to the appointments. If you’re not going, GO! Yes, I know. Add that to the approximately 7,462 things caregivers already have to do. But we’re not always there just to drive. We’re there to hear what our loved one may not hear, remember what they may forget, ask questions they may not know to ask and recognize when something simply doesn’t add up. We are their protectors. They need us.

And that means more than medical appointments. Go to the audiologist. Go to the dentist and eye doctor. Pay attention when someone is recommending an expensive product or service. If cognition is declining and somebody is talking to your loved one about thousands of dollars, financing or credit, there needs to be another set of ears in that room. You may be the only defense they have.

This isn’t about taking away an older person’s independence or treating them like children. It’s about recognizing when someone we love needs backup. My mother didn’t understand what that amount of money required. I did. That’s why I needed to be there.

Caregiver Hack of the Week: Be the Second Set of Ears

As our loved ones age—especially when hearing, memory or cognition begins to change—go to the appointments. Listen. Ask questions. Take notes. Know what things cost and what the alternatives are. You aren’t there to take over. You’re there because they may not hear, remember or fully understand everything they’re being asked to agree to. Sometimes the most important thing you bring to an appointment isn’t the insurance card. It’s you.

Most professionals are there to help, but our elderly loved ones can be vulnerable, and loving them sometimes means becoming a colossal pain in somebody’s backside on their behalf. Love doesn’t always look like hugs, holding hands and quiet moments. Sometimes love looks like GI Jane on a mission, sitting across the desk from someone who sees a sales opportunity where you see someone you love. When greed for a sale outweighs the reason our loved one walked through the door in the first place-to get help-we must stand in the gap.

Protect their money. Protect their choices. Protect their dignity. And when they need you beside them, lace up your boots and handle business. They are our loved ones, after all.

Resources:

Federal Trade Commission — Protecting Older Consumers 2024–2025 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — Money Smart for Older Adults FDA — How to Get Hearing Aids

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“Don’t Forget: You’re Coming With You”

August 30, 2026

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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. 🙂

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“Plot Twist: There’s a Next”

August 23, 2026

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Part Three of the Capacity Series

Last week I promised we would dig into what happens when the demands of caregiving finally decrease – for whatever reason. Can we rebuild what we’ve depleted? How long does it take? What now?

After three months away from my own 7 year quest of daily caregiving, I thought I would have a very different answer to those questions.

I wish I could tell you my tank is full, my brain has rebooted and I’m now bounding through life with the energy of a Labrador puppy. I’m not. One full day with my mom recently showed me just how quickly some of those old demands can drain the tank again, and that surprised me.

Mom is happy. She’s safe. I’m no longer responsible for every moment of every day. Surely my capacity should have come roaring back by now.

Except it didn’t.

So naturally, I wanted data. How long is this going to take? Three months? Six? A year? Surely somebody has a chart that will tell me exactly where I should be by now.

Drop the calculator. Close the spreadsheet. Apparently, there are no performance metrics for this chapter.

Three months does not magically undo seven years. My body is still recovering from everything it carried. I had pneumonia in June, bronchitis this month and, as I write this, I’m dealing with nerve pain in my shoulder. I’ve even wondered if my shoulders are literally starting to come down from around my ears after years of carrying so much tension. I can’t prove that, of course. Maybe I just slept like a pretzel.

My brain has been reminding me, too. I used to be able to write for sixteen hours at a stretch. Now, when my brain has had enough, it simply shuts off, sometimes without warning. Apparently, it has unionized.

So how long DOES rebuilding “capacity” take?

Longer than I thought.

That is the most truthful answer I have right now. But I’m beginning to realize I may have been looking for the wrong signs. I’ve been waiting to feel dramatically different when the changes are showing up in much quieter, albeit more powerful ways.

I notice pretty flowers again. A song comes on the radio and I actually hear it, sometimes catching myself singing along. I take a nap because I’m tired without spending twenty minutes negotiating with guilt about everything I should be doing instead. Sometimes, I go for a drive simply because I want to, with no doctor, dentist, pharmacy or grocery store waiting at the other end. Sometimes, there might even be a root beer float calling my name.

I’ve also eaten popcorn for dinner. More than once. Before anyone alerts the nutrition police, I am fully aware popcorn does not represent all the recommended food groups, but for today we’re calling it a solid (starchy) vegetable.

These things seem small, but I don’t think they are.

For years, so much of life was dictated by necessity. What needs to happen? Who needs me? Where do we need to be? What can wait? What absolutely cannot wait? Even while running my business, there was always another full-time job waiting when the workday ended.

Now, every once in a while, an hour appears that doesn’t already belong to someone else.

And newsflash: those hours can be surprisingly uncomfortable.

My first instinct is to put them to work. I could clean something, answer something or catch up on something. Give me an empty hour and I can have three obligations, a project and possibly a committee living in it by Thursday. One might think I thrive on stress.

But what if the empty hour doesn’t need a job? What if some of this returning capacity doesn’t have to be immediately reinvested in responsibility? What if a little of it gets to be spent on something or someone simply because it makes me happy?

I’ve decided to call this delightful irresponsibility.

Not call-the-bail-bondsman irresponsibility. Take the nap. Eat the tacos. Go shopping because you want to look around. Drive nowhere with the windows down. Turn up a ridiculous song and sing badly while the dishes remain scandalously unwashed. Somewhere in all of this, I also feel strongly there should be chocolate chip cookies and a tiara. I do like (love) sparkle and sass.

See? Those little moments bring joy, and I know in my soul that joy is fuel for capacity.

Soon after I noticed those moments, something else started showing Meet curiosity. I wonder where that road goes. I wonder if I’d enjoy doing that? I wonder what else I might want to try?

I’m dreaming again.

Maybe, just maybe, this is my Under the Tuscan Sun moment. You know the dream—Tuscany, sunshine, beautiful food, a gorgeous old villa and the delicious possibility of a life you never planned. Underneath all that beautiful scenery is a woman whose planned life disappeared. She found herself standing in an unexpected one and began building from there.

My current version is considerably less Tuscan villa and considerably more Wyoming driveway, but that’s okay.

Tuscany may be the dream, but happiness doesn’t require a passport.

For years, life was about what had to happen next. Now I’m beginning to wonder what could happen next. Those are two very different questions, and I’m dazzled by the second one.

What could I try? Where could I go? What could I create? Who could I meet? What if this completely unplanned season eventually lands me somewhere I never expected to be—and I love it there?

Maybe the life waiting for me isn’t the life I always wanted. Maybe it’s one I hadn’t even thought to want yet.

Caregiving changed my life in ways I never planned, and I won’t pretend every part of it was some wonderful gift wrapped in a pretty bow. It wasn’t. But I came out of those years carrying an incredible amount of hard-earned wisdom, and I don’t regret the life I shared with my mom or the choice I made to care for her. Make no mistake, I would do it all over again – if for nothing else than love. My mama is precious to me – even when she makes me cray.

So, back to those questions.

Can we rebuild what we’ve depleted? I think we can. I’m beginning to see pieces of my capacity returning, although much more quietly and differently than I expected.

How long does it take? Longer than I thought. My preferred timeline is apparently irrelevant, and yours is too. We are not on deadline anymore.

And what now? For once, maybe we don’t need to know.

That may be the ultimate opportunity. To dream again. Get curious. Have adventures. Try something ridiculous and discover we love it. Build a life we couldn’t see coming.

Plot twist: there’s a next.

Before I leave this series, though, I want to talk to the caregiver who isn’t where I am yet. Maybe your days still belong almost entirely to someone else. Maybe an empty hour sounds about as realistic as that villa in Tuscany. Maybe you’re reading about delightful irresponsibility while reheating your coffee for the fourth time and cussing at me under your breath. I get it.

I remember. I’m not removed from it, now it’s just different.

I am not telling you to find more time, try harder or add another thing to your already impossible list. I simply want you to know that there is a next, even if you can’t see it from where you’re standing….YET.

For now, maybe all you can do is protect one tiny piece of yourself inside the life you’re living. Twenty minutes. One song. A chocolate chip cookie eaten while it’s still warm. Something that reminds you that underneath all the responsibility, you are still in there.

Someday there will be room for more. And when there is, I hope you will let yourself dream. There is so much more to come.

Caregiver Hack of the Week:

Commit One Act of Delightful Irresponsibility

Do one thing this week for no reason other than it delights you. Don’t measure it, improve yourself with it or turn it into something productive. Take the drive. Eat the cookie. Turn up the song. Wear the tiara. Dance like a crazy fool.

And if twenty minutes is all you have, take the twenty minutes.

No performance metrics. No guilt. Just delight.

And if your delightful irresponsibility happens to involve a plane ticket to Tuscany, call me. Let’s go.

Until next week, hold on, look in the remember and be proud of who you are and what you are doing. I am standing with you, proud of you, too. With love from the tracks…

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“World, Meet Capacity: The Little Word That Explains A LOT”

August 15, 2026

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Part Two of a Three-Part Series

Last week, I told you about spending an entire day with my mom after being largely removed from full-time caregiving for about three months. It was a perfectly ordinary caregiving day—a dentist appointment, three hours in the car, hearing issues, repeated questions and a little mother-daughter sniping—and yet I came home feeling like I’d been hit by a truck.

I was tired, frustrated and, if we’re telling the whole truth, mad. What bothered me most wasn’t how I felt, though. It was that Mom and I had gotten short with each other. I love that woman more than I can possibly explain, so why did one day together leave me wanting to crawl into a quiet room, shut the door and hang a “DO NOT DISTURB UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE” sign on it?

Then I realized something that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

I wasn’t reacting to one day. I was reacting to seven years.

That sent me looking for answers, and somewhere between the research and replaying that day in my head, I landed on a word that has become my new favorite.

Capacity.

Brilliant.

We caregivers hear an awful lot about patience. We’re supposed to have more of it, find more of it and apparently manufacture an endless supply somewhere between the medication organizer and the grocery store. When we lose our patience, we feel terrible because we assume it says something about our character or, even worse, about how much we love the person we’re caring for.

I’m beginning to think we’ve been looking at this all wrong.

Patience is how we respond to a moment. Capacity is how much we have left before that moment ever arrives.

Think about an ordinary caregiving day. You wake up with whatever energy you managed to gather overnight, and then the withdrawals begin. What’s for breakfast? Did you take your medicine? Where are my glasses? What time is the appointment? What did you say? You explain something and then explain it again because it wasn’t heard, wasn’t understood or wasn’t remembered. You make appointments, manage medications, solve problems and keep one part of your brain permanently assigned to someone else’s well-being.

Meanwhile, your own life apparently didn’t get the memo that you’re busy.

Many family caregivers are also working full-time because mortgages, groceries and electric bills remain remarkably unsympathetic to our caregiving responsibilities. In my case, I’ve been running a business while caregiving, which means there have been plenty of days when I finished one full-time job only to discover the other full-time job standing in the kitchen wondering what we were having for dinner.

Then there’s the rest of being human. Homes need attention, bills need paying, friendships need nurturing, and spouses, children and grandchildren need us, too. Somewhere in there we’re supposed to take care of our own health, go to church, see our friends, have interests outside of caregiving and occasionally do something simply because we enjoy it.

And relationships? I’m single, and to my chagrin, I may have to call that divine intervention. I genuinely don’t know where I would have found the time or emotional energy to build a healthy relationship during some of these years. “Hi, it’s lovely to meet you. I own a business, I’m a full-time caregiver, I’m exhausted, and there’s an excellent chance I’ll cancel dinner because something happened with Mom.”

Apparently, romance thrives on mystery.

I’m joking, but only a little. All of those things require pieces of us—our attention, time, energy and emotions—and every one makes a withdrawal from the same account.

That’s capacity.

And this is where burnout belongs in the conversation, because caregiver burnout is real. Exhaustion, irritability, trouble concentrating, sleep problems, resentment and feeling overwhelmed are all associated with prolonged caregiver stress. I don’t want to minimize burnout by simply giving it a shiny new name.

But burnout has always felt like the end of the conversation to me.

You’re burned out. Great. Now what?

Capacity helped me understand how I got there.

I didn’t wake up one Tuesday morning suddenly burned out. I got there one withdrawal at a time. One interrupted night, one doctor’s appointment, one repeated conversation, one work deadline, one cancelled plan, one meal eaten on the fly and one more day of putting myself somewhere near the bottom of the list.

Eventually, there wasn’t much left to withdraw.

Now, anyone who knows me well knows patience has never exactly been my spiritual gift. (Fine, I barely have any at all). I stopped praying for it years ago because I’ve read the book of Job and have no interest in voluntarily requesting additional character-building opportunities. Mom often reminds me, “Remember Job.”

Trust me, Mom. I remember.

I think God made me this way for a reason. I’m a doer and a fixer. I like solving the problem, checking the box and moving along. Coaxing (and a cattle prod) makes much more sense to me than patiently waiting for enlightenment to descend from above. After nearly sixty years I’ve accepted that I’m probably not winning “World’s Most Patient Woman.” No chance at all.

What I’m beginning to understand is that some of the moments I’ve labeled impatience may have been moments when I simply didn’t have much left to give. That doesn’t give me permission to be unkind or sassy to my mom. Her hearing loss isn’t her fault. Cognitive decline isn’t her fault. Repeating a question because she doesn’t remember asking it isn’t her fault, and when I snap, I still need to own that. We all should – but we need to understand it.

But reaching my limit isn’t a moral failure either.

Thankfully, Mom and I have another weapon in our arsenal: we’re both smart-alecks. She had many brothers growing up and her wit is second to none. (So are her toe-stepping abilities but we will save that story for another day).

Laughter has saved us more times than I can count. There have been days when one of us has said something completely inappropriate, the other has fired back, and suddenly we’re laughing so hard we’ve forgotten what irritated us five minutes earlier. I’m fairly certain our shared sarcasm has saved us thousands of dollars in therapy.

Laughter doesn’t fix dementia or fix chronic stress, but it reminds us that we’re still us. We’re not simply caregiver and care recipient. We’re mother and daughter, and sometimes we’re just two sarcastic women who find the same ridiculous things funny.

I’ll take the laughter.

Maybe protecting our capacity isn’t always about adding another task to our already ridiculous to-do lists. Maybe it’s also about leaving some room for laughter, faith, friendship and the parts of ourselves that have absolutely nothing to do with caregiving. It’s pure gold.

Because here’s what that drive to Colorado finally helped me understand:

My love for my mom hadn’t changed. My capacity had.

Those are two very different things.

Next week, we’re going to tackle the question I immediately had once I understood that difference. If burnout is where we can end up after operating beyond our capacity for too long, what happens when the demands finally decrease? Can we rebuild what we’ve depleted? How long does it take? What now?

After three months away from daily caregiving, I thought I’d have a very different answer to that question.

Apparently, my brain has other ideas. We will dig in next week. In the meantime, pay attention to our word of the day.

Caregiver Hack of the Week

Before you decide you’re impatient, resentful or simply lousy at caregiving, ask yourself a different question:

How much capacity do I actually have today?

Maybe you woke up with a full tank. Maybe you’re starting at half. Maybe the little gas light was already blinking before your feet hit the floor.

Knowing where you are doesn’t excuse how you treat the people you love. It simply gives you information. And understanding that you’re running low might be a whole lot more useful than beating yourself up because you couldn’t magically manufacture more.

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“I Thought I Was Better. Spoiler Alert – My Brain Disagreed!”

August 7, 2026

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Part One of a Three-Part Series

Three months.

That’s how long it’s been since my mom broke her hip after her ill-fated attempt at Olympic stair diving. (The good news is she’s healing beautifully. The judges, however, deducted points for the landing.)

Somewhere during those three months, I convinced myself I was getting my life back.

The mental fog I’d been living in for years had finally started to lift. I was making decisions again instead of putting everything off until tomorrow. My business had my attention instead of whatever crisis might be unfolding in the next room. I wasn’t constantly listening for movement or wondering if I needed to stop what I was doing because Mom needed something. For the first time in a long time, life felt…lighter. I honestly thought I was getting better.

This week, Mom had a dental appointment in Colorado, so we loaded up for the hour-and-a-half drive. This wasn’t just any dentist. He specializes in patients who are terrified of the dentist, which sounded perfect because the last time I tried taking Mom, she cried so hard in the waiting room that I finally looked at her and said, “We’re going home.” There wasn’t a filling in the world worth putting her through that kind of fear.

So imagine my surprise when the dentist smiled and asked if she was doing okay and Mom laughed, and cheerfully announced, “Oh, I’m not afraid of the dentist.”

I just sat there blinking in astonishment. Ma’am…that is the biggest story you’ve told all day.

Apparently dementia has a way of editing out memories you’d just as soon forget. The woman who had been absolutely hysterical at her last appointment had no recollection of it whatsoever. I decided right then that arguing with dementia would be like arguing with Wyoming weather. Nobody wins. The appointment went wonderfully, and we have a plan. Snap!

The drive, however, was another story.

Ninety minutes each way in the car gives you plenty of time to discover there is no perfect volume setting for a 94-year-old. The music was too loud…until it wasn’t loud enough…until it needed to come back up again. I’d ask Mom a question and she’d stare out the window as if I’d never spoken. I’d ask again because I assumed she hadn’t heard me, only to get a sharp answer that caught me completely off guard. Now, if you know my mom, that’s not really who she is.

By late afternoon, we were both tired. We even sniped at each other a little. It wasn’t some dramatic argument. It was simply two women who love each other trying to communicate through hearing loss, memory loss, road noise, fatigue, and years of accumulated caregiving.

It didn’t feel good. By the time I pulled into my driveway, I wasn’t thinking about the dentist anymore. I was mad and I was thinking about us.

What bothered me wasn’t that we’d gotten short with each other. What bothered me was how quickly it had happened. Three months ago, this had been my everyday life. Why did one ordinary day leave me feeling so emotionally drained?

I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Somewhere between pulling into the garage and getting ready for bed, the answer quietly found me.

I wasn’t reacting to one day. I was reacting to seven years.

That realization has stayed with me all week because, if I’m honest, I’ve spent years believing I simply needed to become a more patient person. Now, anyone who knows me well is probably laughing because they also know I quit praying for patience a long time ago. I’ve read the book of Job. I’ve seen how that particular prayer tends to go, and let’s just say I’ve had enough “character-building opportunities” to last a lifetime.

The more I’ve thought about our day together, though, the more I’ve begun to wonder if I’ve been asking myself the wrong question all these years. Maybe patience was never the issue at all. Maybe there was something else happening that I simply didn’t have words for.

That realization sent me down a rabbit hole of research. What I found surprised me. Researchers at the National Institute on Aging, the Family Caregiver Alliance, and Neal Shah at CareYaya have spent years studying what prolonged caregiving does to our brains. Difficulties with concentration, decision-making, memory, emotional fatigue—even something Shah calls cognitive overload– are all well documented.

For the first time, I realized I wasn’t imagining what I was feeling. There was a reason. I just hadn’t discovered it yet. And I have a feeling it’s going to change the way I look at caregiving…and maybe the way I look at myself.

We’re going to unpack that statement over the next couple of weeks because this is far too important to rush through. I’ve stumbled onto something that has the potential to free a lot of caregivers from carrying guilt they were never meant to carry. And that is BIG!

Get ready, I think this will provide some relief that we all need! I’m not being coy, it’s just a lot to unpack in one sitting. I’m already on it! In the meantime, here’s a small assignment.

Caregiver Hack of the Week

This week, don’t try to fix anything. Don’t promise yourself you’ll be more patient tomorrow. Don’t spend another week criticizing yourself because you lost your cool.

Instead, ask yourself one question.

What if I’ve been asking myself the wrong question?

Don’t answer it today. Just sit with it for a few days.

Sometimes the questions that change our lives aren’t the ones we answer immediately. They’re the ones that quietly stay with us until we’re finally ready to see ourselves differently.

Sources: National Institute on Aging (NIA); Family Caregiver Alliance; Neal Shah, CareYaya, on cognitive overload and prolonged caregiver stress.

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