gerontology and caregiving

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 […]