Grief doesn’t just come with sadness and loss. Grief can also come fully-loaded with guilt, anger,...
Category: After Caregiving
Caregiving roles don’t stay the same for long. Our responsibilities as a caregiver may come to an end due to death, estrangement, changed care arrangements, or recovery. Even after the official end of caregiving, there is often a significant amount of work for us to do coordinating care, filing paperwork, and managing an estate.
At 82, My Grandmother Has Lost Her Husband — And The World As She Knows It
The disarray and social upheaval caused by the virus took a life event that’s already fraught for...
How to Deal with a Career Gap Due to Caregiving
No one expects that at some point in your life you’ll have to pause your career to take care of...
What I never knew about my mother
Soon we will mark the five year anniversary of my mother’s death. Soon it will be five years since...
10 Rules We Can Learn From Aging Parents Now
We watch elderly parents make choices we swear we would NEVER do. Yet so many of our aging loved...
One month — no schedule, no internet, no electricity
Annabelle moved home for the last few weeks before her mother died of cancer. She focused on the...
The Surviving Spouse’s Guide to Surviving a Hallmark Holiday
This will be my second Valentine’s Day without Tim, my love of 12 years. Red jelly hearts cling to...
Coping with Cancer Caregiver PSTD
Coming down from taking care of someone with cancer is like an addict going cold turkey. Every day...
I was my dad’s caregiver through his fatal illness. I had no idea I’d be at risk for PTSD.
I was 32 and living in Los Angeles when I became my father’s caregiver, following his diagnosis of...
Your most valuable possession
The release of Disney Pixar’s The Incredibles 2 seemed a perfect time to revisit an important...
Dealing with the stuff they leave behind
It's not something I wanted to become an expert in, but I've got quite a wealth of experience in...
Alzheimer’s and the World’s Saddest Comedy Club
After his father dies of Alzheimer's, Chris Garcia and his fellow comedians accidentally formed...
Is this what acceptance feels like?
This morning I was drinking my coffee and I realized I felt...normal. It's been weeks since I've...
My boyfriend died
A few months after we began dating, I found out he was sick. He didn’t look sick then, like he...
Stop telling me to be grateful I’m a caregiver
When people find out I take care of my mom, a certain percentage of people tell me how lucky I am...
Picking Up the Pieces After the Person You Have Been Caring for Dies
When you are in the midst of being a caregiver you build your time and your life around managing...
Karen
His wife has cancer. And is pregnant. The baby is born early. His wife starts treatment. They're...
One more day
I thought it'd be a relief when it was over. Not that I wanted it to end, but I wanted the...
Looking back on 2017
What was my life like a year ago? I spent my whole day in front of the television. I didn't have a...
Missing the hard days
I never would have imagined that I'd be nostalgic for the worst days of my life. In my husband's...
This is How You Say Goodbye
Some of us pretend that we’re fine. And maybe we are. We grieve publicly, but mostly privately. It...
When there’s no space for memories
I moved to be closer to my mom once her health started to decline. She lived in an affordable...
Living in the Aftershock of Someone Else’s Earthquake
I see my mother as a woman whose life had been bottlenecked by pain. First, her trauma was...
After losing a son to opioids, one dentist is fighting to change how his profession deals with addiction
RICHMOND, Va. - On an unseasonably warm Friday morning in October, Dr. Omar Abubaker paced in...