Like many of my friends, I’m at that point in life where things keep happening.

Parents are sick. Kids are struggling to become adults. Jobs are lost and sought. Hormones shift and we vacillate between moods. Our outrage against social injustice rises and falls with the news cycle, leaving us emotionally spent. Deals fall through at the eleventh hour. Our friends and family begin to die off. Administrative errors lead to unnecessary paperwork. We get sick.

Some weeks it feels like we’re opening door after door after door only to have the contents inside tumble out and crush us. It’s oppressive, soul-stripping, and mind-numbing.

I was still so supremely confident in my own ability to accomplish any task and to outfox any bureaucratic hurdle that I felt a constant rush of adrenaline. I was experiencing my first “eldercare high,” a powerful sense of purpose. I spent days going between my mom’s house, the hospital and back again — ending up exhausted at my dad’s house and collapsing into bed.

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