Caregiver anger and resentment are normal
Is it okay to feel angry? Is it okay to occasionally hate the person I’m caring for? What did I do to deserve this? How do I process these feelings? What do I do with them, and how do I move beyond this hell? You ask yourself these question and then feel guilty and...
When My Wife Developed Alzheimer’s, the Story of Our Marriage Kept Us Connected
In December 2012, at age sixty-one, Judy received a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s. The news was deeply distressing, igniting within me a burning anxiety over how I, a wheelchair user born with a spinal cord malformation and living with bunches of body parts...
Reframing Guilt as Regret
Let’s talk about guilt. Ever since Adam and Eve ate the proverbial apple men and women have felt guilty. Sometimes that guilt is justified – we all know someone who has done something awful that they should feel guilty about – and sometimes it is just us being...
Helping is Making Me Feel Helpless
Have you ever felt helpless trying to help a loved one? We know the stories: the alcoholic mother/brother/friend who keeps getting in trouble. The father who has been borrowing money from his adult children with the intent to pay it back but never following through....
Who Cares
Nurses must meet the complex and diverse needs of the people they care for—washing, dressing, meal times, medication, counselling, liaising with social services—at the expense of lunch breaks and evenings. Feelings of guilt and panic pervade the working day. If you...
Managing the Guilt that Arises From Caregiving
Guilt is an emotion that so many caregivers experience. It is one of the major challenges associated with caregiving. As caregivers many of us do all we can for the person we are caring for but sometimes it feels like that is not enough. There are a complexity of...
A Life Outside of Alzheimer’s
My husband and I are currently under contract on a beautiful house here in Florida. For the first time, I am actually excited about living in Florida. Hell, this is the first time in a very long time that I’m actually excited about anything at all. I’m just not a very...The Day Our Lives Changed Again
It was July 5th of this year and I had canceled my appointments for the day because sometimes it’s just too much. Life is too much. Being ‘on’ is too much. Sometimes I just need a few hours alone to recharge. My dad hasn’t been well for years. Since I was in college...
Tragedy in a love story
Being put in the position to make a life or death decision is something I would have never dreamed of having to do in this life. My husband and I had so many conversations about what we wanted and our beliefs in what helps a human heal. Even when I had a cold or we...
Moving on, with Claire Bidwell Smith
Why do so many of us feel guilty after the death of a loved one? A writer is overcome with guilt for causing her mom’s death — and suspects her dad blames her, too. She fell while walking the writer’s dog and broke her hip. A year later, she died of...
What living with food intolerance taught me about dependence
For the last eight months, I haven’t had a job. But my husband continues to do his share of the housework. We don’t have a schedule or count pennies. I do some cooking and most of the laundry when I’m feeling well; when I’m not, I stay in bed and become depressed and...
Why a Memory Care Facility was the Right Choice for my Mom at 56
The first thing my mom said to me when she was diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease was that she never wanted her children to have the burden of caregiving. She couldn’t have stressed it more. Even though the disease had already taken pieces of her, she was...
How to care for the caregiver
One patient, Dana (name has been changed to protect the privacy of the patient), helping her mother care for her brother who has leukemia, told me, “my life right now doesn’t matter.” This is an extremely self-destructive attitude. With 2015 figures...
I Yelled at my Dying Husband And I Can’t Forgive Myself
George had always taken care of everything — doing the cooking, paying the bills, deciding what we should do for fun and driving us there to do it. When he was diagnosed with metastasized male breast cancer in 2009, he chose to handle his treatment on his own. He... I Was A Caregiver to Three Relatives at Once
In the space of one year, I became caregiver for my dad, aunt and husband. It didn’t happen all at once. First, there was the phone call from Dad’s neighbor, letting me know Dad had fallen and been taken to the hospital by ambulance, Aunt going with him. I knew then...
Clutter: when caregiving doesn’t wrap up neatly
This is part one of Notes from the Problem Child On my father’s 92nd birthday, my mom, brother and I marked the occasion by getting rid of all his clothes. He wouldn’t be needing them anymore. By that time, he’d been dead nearly 5 weeks. Two thoughts echoing inside...
Managing caregiver’s guilt
February 13, 2014. The day I became a caregiver. That was the day Jeff came home following nearly seven months spent in three hospitals after his spinal cord injury. Of course I had been preparing for my role of caregiver for months. The nurses, therapists, and staff...
My guilt and its impact on caregiving
It is one of the hardest things to admit: how we feel about caregiving. This mom cops to it all.
Coping with caregiver guilt– before it crushes you
They were all getting good care. The problem was not with them, it was with us. The caregivers. The ones who try to do it all and can’t.
The Debt
What do we owe our tormentors? It’s a question that haunts those who had childhoods marked by years of neglect and deprivation, or of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of one or both parents. Despite this terrible beginning, many people make it...Top Posts
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