Soon after my 50th birthday, 10 years ago, I started keeping a list of “Things I will do/things I...
Category: Caregiving Relationships
Taking on care work responsibilities change all of our relationships, not only the relationship with the person we’re providing care for. Care work pushes us to re-prioritize our relationships, sometimes temporarily, sometimes forever.
Sandwich Generation: How Do You Decide Whose Needs Come First?
Your parents need your help right now, and so do your adult kids. But what about saving for your...
Wash
She showers once a week, and for the next six weeks—approximately four months into our new...
Some young adults with disabilities are stuck in long-term care. They say that’s discrimination.
For the past decade, [Victoria] Levack has lived, reluctantly, at the Arborstone Enhanced Care...
Friend to healthcare worker
I am currently helping friends with their severely disabled child. The child needs round-the-clock...
Should I Help My Aging, Ailing Dad Access His Toxic Web Feed?
My father and I have not been especially close for all of my adult life because of his inability...
Queer Millennials Are Becoming Family Caregivers. We Aren’t Ready
The ache of watching a loved one grow smaller was hard enough. But I also wasn’t prepared for the...
Beyond Britney: Abuse, Exploitation, And Death Inside America’s Guardianship Industry
BuzzFeed News has scoured hundreds of thousands of court documents, obtained confidential mental...
Caring and Grieving in the Shadow of COVID
When my mother had brain surgery to remove a tumor in May 2020, I thought that was the most...
Healthy Helping for Family Caregivers of Senior Parents
Gerontologists and psychology of aging experts say that “aging well” in your 60s and 70s is about...
The staggering, exhausting, invisible costs of caring for America’s elderly
Some older adults have diligently prepared for their future. They purchased long-term care...
Children With Disabilities Need Sex Ed Too
Currently, only three states in the country explicitly include special ed students in their sex-ed...
A Mother’s Steely Portraits of Her Daughter’s Life with Down Syndrome
For as long as Grevenitis can remember, being in public with Lulu has brought about a less welcome...
What I’ve Learned Over a Lifetime of Caring for the Dying
Some of the hardest conversations I have in my work involve telling families managing the...
A Marriage Stressed by Obsessions and Compulsions
As soon as we learned a new baby was on the way, Mike’s anxiety became more than an occasional...
America isn’t taking care of caregivers
Dementia had not robbed Lillian of her fiercely independent spirit, but it had made her verbally...
A moment that changed me: my mother died – and I became my brother’s legal guardian
It was in Stansted airport’s Pink Elephant car park that I realised all the adults were going...
‘You’d walk out if your husband hit you – you can’t when it’s your child’
Most parents never have to worry about being attacked by a violent child, but if it happens, they...
My Mother, Before She Drank
My older sister and I eventually decided to involve our aunt to help figure out a way to save her....
The Autism Mom: Why Is She Like That?
The Autism Mom is an infamous villain in the autistic community. We are outraged that she wants to...
He Couldn’t Remember That We Broke Up
To break up with someone is to lose the imagined future you would create together, but you would...
How Much Must I Give Up for My Schizophrenic Brother?
One of my brothers is moderately schizophrenic; he does well on his medication but is increasingly...
Benefits and disability: ‘I’ll never cohabit again, to protect myself’
Benefits exist to support people in times of need. But for some disabled people, household...
Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Is a Disability Rights Issue That Deserves More Attention
Under conservatorship, disabled adults face restrictions on a wide variety of rights: Where they...