caregiver speaker

I have a new itch that just has to be scratched. I’ve been thinking about writing a play for a number of years, and recently scenes from it have started waking me up in the early morning hours whispering, “It’s time. Write me!”

I have learned if I don’t listen to the voices in my head when they are whispers that they eventually they turn into screams that will not let me rest. So for the next few months my “Word of the Day” will be “encore” posts. I will also be upgrading and increasing the content on our website, CaregiverHelp.com, so please be sure to visit there if you are in need of more information or support.

Even though […]

I am a huge Apple fan. My husband finally understood the depth of my love for him one day when I declared, “Alex, I love you more than my Mac!”

I admired Steve Jobs for his genius and innovative spirit, but more than anything, I respected him for never giving up. In a commencement speech he gave at Stanford University in 2005, he talked about “connecting the dots” and seeing the opportunities in all of life’s setbacks, including death.

He said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. […]

I’m going to be speaking at the 19th Annual Caregiver Conference in Tucson on November 21. The theme is “Being a Resilient Caregiver”, so I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of this word.

Elizabeth Edwards, who once had realistic hopes of becoming our country’s first lady, learned about resilience the hard way. She buried a son. She suffered public humiliation when she learned of her husband’s infidelity and his “love child”. She cared for her father through his lingering illness and death and then, she faced what she knew was going to be a losing battle with breast cancer as a newly divorced woman. No one would have blamed her if she had chosen to sink into a deep […]

The Chinese Philosopher, Lao Tzu said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

This statement made me think of a caregiver – care receiver relationship. It takes a lot of love to put your own needs and desires on hold in order to care for someone who is recovering from an illness or accident. When you know that recovery isn’t possible, it takes an amazing amount of courage to see the journey through to the end, especially when pain, disease, depression or dementia causes your care receiver to act in a manner that is anything but lovable.

When care receivers are feeling weak and needy, it can be hard for them to believe […]

Henry Ward Beecher said, “Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.” I like this quote because of the message, but also because Mr. Beecher was a Congregational clergyman who was born in 1813.

It occurs to me that life has always been hard. It is inevitable that we will go through periods of turmoil, stress, loss, and pain, especially when we’re caring for those who cannot care for themselves,. The trick is to decide how we’re going to handle it.

I don’t believe that turning our troubles and worries over to God will instantly fix our problems, but when we can release our grip on the handle […]

This morning as I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of the projects that I have going on and all I need to get done, I came across this quote from Buddha: “I never see what has to be done. I only see what remains to be done.”

I like this perspective. It occurs to me that as long as we are breathing, we will never get it all done. So maybe we should just take a deep breath, relax our bodies and our minds and accept that there will always be something new that demands our time and attention, especially when we’re caring for someone who can’t care for him/herself.

The trick is to feel peaceful about this. We […]