Sustaining Myself in the Caregiving Role
/I left my home in Missouri on November 15th and have been learning to be the caregiver my parents need at this point in their lives until my sisters and I can transition them to a new living situation that will meet their needs into the future. Now that it has been more than a month, I realize that some of my strategies developed during my career to reduce my stress and maintain my overall mental health are still serving me well:
Writing about something stressful as a way of letting it go…moving from anxiety to acceptance for things that cannot be changed.
Creating a little work of art every day (Zentangle)…focusing totally on it for the short time it takes to create it…a break from everything else going on.
Continuing a daily blog post that not only documents my journey…but produces something separate from the caregiving part of the day
I have discovered that little things that remind me that my other life still exists and is waiting for me to return are important to me – a telephone call with my daughter or husband (they have both been very supportive)….a walk outdoors even if it is just for a few minutes…photography. At the same time, finding bits of time for these activities can be a challenge. There is a similarity to caring for a young child: nap times for them become ‘me time’!
As I write this post, I am realizing that I am not fully sustaining myself for an indefinite period of caregiving and neither is my sister that is sharing caregiving with me. We are not as sleep deprived as we were during the hospitalization but we are not storing up reserves either; when little things go awry we are instantly feeling the stress of the situation and consciously staying focused exclusively on what our parents need. We already have started the process to change my parents’ living situation in January that will shift much of the care giving role to assisted living staff; our interactions with our parents will shift to frequent visits and shared activities. We are preparing ourselves and them for the transition.
