caregiver support stroke

When my friend Angie married Mark, she was a successful advertising executive and he was teaching high school history. They were both in their late 30’s, and their future looked bright.

Soon after the wedding Mark’s dad suffered a terrible stroke. He wasn’t expected to live long, which was fine with everyone, because he had been an abusive husband and a horrible father. Mark took the summer off to help his mother. When fall came, he didn’t go back to school. He thought if he could just help her get through his dad’s illness, that she could have a decent life and a little money after the old coot died.

As luck would have it, his mother died, and what Mark had anticipated would be a short-term hiatus from his […]

Have you ever cast your eyes toward heaven and cried out, “I don’t get it! What’s happening here? What is the lesson I’m supposed to be learning from all of this?”

I have sought answers in this manner numerous times, and I have yet to receive a clear, concise response from God. I have, however, come to the conclusion that we generally experience the greatest mental and spiritual growth when we are facing insurmountable problems and coping with crushing defeats.

Today I’d like for you to think about the challenges you have faced and the problems you have already overcome. Then let the knowledge that you survived those past problems provide you with the confidence that you will find the strength and courage to keep going now.

Trust in your […]

Every Memorial Day I am flooded with memories of going to the cemetery in McPherson, Kansas with my parents to decorate the graves of the “old people”. I know this sounds odd, but I’m pretty sure Memorial Day was my Dad’s favorite holiday. He had served in WWII, so the American flags lining the roads and decorating the veterans’ graves were especially meaningful to him.

Dad loved hot pink peonies. We’d buy them by the bucketful and then clip the stems short and divide them into a variety of jelly jars wrapped in foil. Dad always looked forward to visiting with the relatives who came from out of town. He spent a little time at each of his parents’ graves and the graves of various relatives reflecting on who they’d […]

For a few years after my divorce, I was a card-carrying man hater. Then one day I came to the conclusion that I really didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. I truly believed if I found the right man, I could have a happy marriage.

I decided to make a list of the qualities I wanted in a mate, so I sat down with a yellow legal pad and started to write. The first four traits were non-negotiable. He had to be:

Intelligent
Polished – I wanted to be with a gentleman
Leader – He needed to have a vision other people were inspired to follow
Faith – He had to believe in something bigger than himself

After I listed those top four qualities, I wrote down all […]

It came as quite a shock to me when I figured out that I couldn’t earn someone else’s love. It doesn’t matter how much you give, how much you sacrifice or how much you do. They either love you or they don’t.

If you are always taking on the responsibility for fixing someone else’s problem, and if you get caught up in the drama of their life and lose sight of your own, you may be in a co-dependent relationship.

After I’d been married to the father of my children for sixteen years (and unhappy for about fifteen-and-a-half) I said to him, “It occurs to me that for the last sixteen years both of us have always put your needs and wants first.”

You know how he responded? He said, […]

In 1994 my life was not going well. I had gone through a horrible divorce, lost a very good job and was in a constant state of conflict with my three teenaged children. It seemed as if every time I pulled myself up and recovered from one disaster, another one was eagerly waiting to take me down.

During my 19 year marriage to a raging alcoholic, I got tough. I learned to protect my feelings. I didn’t cry and I never showed vulnerability or weakness. I believed I was strong enough to handle any challenge, but I eventually reached a point where I couldn’t see how anything was ever going to work out, and I started to lose hope.

A friend invited me to attend a non-denominational Christian women’s retreat […]

I spoke at an event sponsored by the law firm of Marshall, Parker & Weber in Williamsport, PA yesterday morning, and I learned some things that I want to share with you.

Did you know if you are working outside of the home (full or part time) and you take a parent or a spouse to adult day care or hire a caregiver to come into your home to be with them while you’re at work, you can receive a Dependent Care Tax Credit of up to $3,000 a year? If you are caring for both parents, you can receive up to $6,000 in tax credits.

Vicky Trimmer, an attorney who is an expert in elder law and estate planning talked about a variety of ways she helps clients find […]

When we are caring for someone who needs a tremendous amount of help negotiating the basic activities of daily living, we think we should always be patient, kind, helpful and supportive. After all, we are stronger and in better shape than they are, and it’s easier for us to do things for them than it is for them to do things for themselves.

Taking on the responsibility of caring for another person’s physical and financial needs is an enormous responsibility, and it is often a 24-hour a day job. So why do we judge ourselves so harshly when we lose our cool and fall a little short of saintly?

Yesterday I mentioned that anger is a normal response to the situations, people and events over which we have little or […]

Anger is a normal and predictable response to situations over which we have little or no control. Usually when I come up against something that frustrates me, I look for the humor in the situation. I have discovered that finding the humor in absurd circumstances defuses my own feelings of anger and often helps relief tension in others.

It’s a great coping mechanism, but it doesn’t always work. Sunday evening I needed to pick up a prescription. I was in a hurry because I still needed to finish packing for my early morning flight on Monday, and my “to-do” list was still quite long. In an effort to save time, rather than parking the car and going into the store, I pulled into the drive-through lane of the pharmacy. There […]