Caregiving

When you’re a caregiver it is easy to overwork yourself. Caregiver stress, fatigue, and overall burnout can be easy to dismiss as less important than undivided attention for your aging or disabled loved one. In other words, caregiving has the potential to be all-consuming. But it shouldn’t be so at the expense of your own well-being and vibrancy. There are other ways to be—progressive ways to manage your responsibilities to yourself as well as to the person in your care.

Christie was overwhelmed. Ever since her aging mother’s stroke six months ago, she had been her primary caregiver. Every day before work Christie would drive to her mother’s house to help her get out of bed and make her breakfast. On her lunch hour, Christie would dart across town to bring her mother lunch, eat with her, and help her around the house. And of course, on her way home each day Christie always stopped by to help her mother with dinner and get her ready for bed.

Being a caregiver for an aging or disabled loved one takes an incredible amount of strength. It takes strength to physically support them, to offer encouragement and positive perspective, to always be thinking ahead to their needs and strategizing better ways to live and thrive. But where does all that strength come from?

There are some decisions in life that are essentially weightless—what movie to see, what outfit to wear, where to go to dinner. And there are decisions that will echo through the decades. Choosing a caregiver for an older loved one can seem like it falls into the latter category: something with potentially life-altering consequences.