Secondary Caregivers Relieving Primary Caregivers Through Circles of Care
Caregivers Out Loud
How can building a circle of care around yourself help you continue to deliver the best care? Even the most devoted and capable caregiver needs support in their role. From weekends away to help around the house, letting another caregiver take some of the demands off your plate keeps you well enough, in body and mind, to continue your important work. Greer Rosequist has plenty of experience being a caregiver, from her former career as a nurse in long-term and palliative communities to offering respite to her sisters, who provide daily care for their mother. This experience led her to a...
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Juggling Roles: Finding Balance When Caring for a Parent
Caregivers Out Loud
How do you navigate the transition from child to caregiver of a parent while supporting both their dignity and your own wellness? Caring for an aging or ill parent comes with countless responsibilities, from prepping meals and scheduling medication to attending appointments and much more. While this shift to caregiver is, in some ways, a natural progression, it also requires you to navigate into a new relationship with your parent. As such, you need to learn how to balance respect and consent for their desires with your own health and happiness. Roma Palmer is a registered clinical...
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Caregiving for a Partner: Intimacy Reimagined
Caregivers Out Loud
How do you maintain an intimate relationship when you become a caregiver for your spouse or partner? Sharing life as a couple means facing and overcoming countless challenges. For so many, the ultimate challenge begins when an illness is uncovered, and one of you must become a caregiver to the other. Rene faced this transition when her husband of 20 years was diagnosed with Parkinsons in his mid-40s. In the two decades since his diagnosis, the couple has navigated a dramatic shift in household and relationship responsibilities and must constantly work at alternative ways to maintain intimacy...
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Planning Life's Final Choices: A Guide to End-of-Life Dialogue
Caregivers Out Loud
How do you begin the difficult dialogue around end-of-life wishes for your care recipient? When you are the caregiver for someone whose health is declining, the reality of death can be overshadowing and feel frightening to acknowledge. So often, it’s as though we fear that simply speaking about death will speed it to our door. Karla Kerr, a funeral director and death doula in Victoria, BC, sees things differently. She approaches conversations with families who are facing or have just experienced death in an exploratory and compassionate way that recognizes death is inevitable. Respecting and...
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Supporting Young Caregivers: The Overlooked Caregiver Demographic
Caregivers Out Loud
What difficulties develop when a child becomes a caregiver to their own parent? Studies show that young caregivers make up at least 12% of Canadian youth. One of these young people is Kristie Mar. At just 16 years old, Kristie set aside a significant part of her adolescence to become the sole carer for her mother, who was navigating schizophrenia and anorexia. The medical professionals, counsellors, and groups from whom she sought assistance, however, never gave her the title of “caregiver.” As such, it took her years to think of herself in this way or discover the resources that...
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A Contemporary Approach to Palliative and Hospice Care for Family Caregivers and Their Recipients
Caregivers Out Loud
How can you build a healthier relationship with death and dying that will benefit both caregiver and recipient? Aaron Yukich is an end-of-life doula, mindfulness practitioner, and hospice care worker. In his work with the Family Caregivers of BC Caregiver Support Line, Aaron incorporates meaning-making and self-reflection into his sessions with caregivers, helping them uncover new ways to provide support to their care recipients without overlooking their own well-being. The end-of-life process has many varied aspects. Aaron helps caregivers navigate this intricate spiritual and emotional...
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How Brooke Ellison Maintains Dignity and Individuality as a Full-Time Care Recipient
Caregivers Out Loud
How would you retain your sense of self if you required full-time care? When Brooke Ellison was 11 years old, a car accident left her a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic. Her mother Jean stepped into the role of full-time caregiver, and their familial and caregiving relationship balance has continued for over thirty years. Dr. Brooke Ellison graduated from Harvard, wrote two memoirs, and is a frequent public speaker on resilience, leadership, and hope. In this episode, she reflects on her experiences as a care recipient—both then and now. Specifically, Brooke shares how she navigates...
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Full-Time Caregiver and Mother: How Jean Ellison Balances Two Essential Roles
Caregivers Out Loud
How do you honour both yourself and your family member when giving full-time care? In this episode, Jean Ellison speaks about her experience as a full-time caregiver to her daughter, Brooke, whose story of life as a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic is well-known and inspirational. For more than 30 years, Jean Ellison has balanced the roles of full-time caregiver and mother. While it was always clear to Jean that Brooke would live at home and not in a care facility, accepting her new reality and career trajectory was not a simple process. Jean strives to find happiness and laughter in every...
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Financial Decision Making for Caregivers with Shannon Lee Simmons
Caregivers Out Loud
At some point in our lives, we’ll all be faced with a tough decision we didn’t see coming. In most caregiving situations, people enter the caregiving role with love and passion. Then pretty soon, they begin to see some of the bigger implications, such as how finances are a big factor in the choices that affect the care recipient OR the caregiver themself. In today’s episode, we chat with Shannon Lee Simmons, a Certified Financial Planner and the author of a new book “No Regret Decisions: Making Good Choices During Difficult Times”, to tackle some of the anxiety and emotional stress...
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Caregiving From a Distance - a Long Distance Care Panel
Caregivers Out Loud
Many caregivers are supporting care recipients from a long distance. This form of caregiving brings with it a unique set of challenges as we try to provide support from afar. In this episode, Bill guides a panel of long distance caregivers, Mary Chan, Karla Wilson, and Victoria Lougheed, through a dynamic conversation filled with positive energy and laughter. The foursome came together to talk about their challenges of caring while not being able to physically be there, and to share some insights including some beautiful moments along the path that have made their caregiving journey a...
info_outlineIn a healthy relationship, the needs of both people are important - it’s a two-way street. Good communication is the key to making sure everyone’s needs are met. Whether it is between you and a spouse, or with your friends, successful relationships are all about communication. In today’s episode, we share how for caregivers, relationships with others can be more complex than usual. It can be hard to find ways to speak up for your own needs. If you are the primary caregiver, recognizing your own need for support might be difficult - particularly if the care receiver is uncomfortable with the idea - but still, you need to make these choices for yourself.
Highlights
- Relationships are complex, so resentment, sadness, and guilt can still exist in any happy relationship; which is all very normal when you are a caregiver.
- It’s not uncommon with men to be uncomfortable with diagnosis and want to keep that a secret.
- The whole caregiving relationship depends on the caregiver being well.
- There is joy in caregiving, but there’s also the sadness.
- Caregivers focus a lot on the practical aspects, but what’s the hardest part is doing the emotional work or anticipatory grief.
- Through talking about the caregiver’s feelings and needs as well as the care recipient, helps the recipient see the importance of letting people help.
- 8:15 Strategies for caring for yourself as a caregiver.
- Caregivers can still be responsible for their own experience while balancing the need for others.
- Choosing freely to be a friend caregiver.
- The learning curve of being a caregiver is like being in medical school.
- 11:59 How a friendship can change when a friend becomes a caregiver.
- Caregivers don’t know what to do and how to ask for help because it’s all so new.
- Community shows that we can do things better together than individually and alone.
- Real challenge is finding out what the caregiver friend needs and then matching what friends are willing to do and give.
- 21:04 How the trust relationship by telling the truth restores the sense of equity or equality before being a caregiver.
- 22:57 Lots of Helping Hands to have an organized approach to caregiving by using an online care calendar.
- Opening up a conversation with anybody can be helpful because people need to give as much as they need to receive.
Quotes
“Relationships are complex, so resentment, sadness, and guilt can still exist in any happy relationship; which is all very normal when you are a caregiver. It takes work to overcome the negatives by seeking help, communicating with your loved one, and having the self-awareness to put it all into perspective.” - Jodie
“I have to take care of myself. Because if I'm not taking care of myself, who's going to take care of you?” - Nancy to her husband Ted
“You are free to ask for anything. But you must also ask for everything that you need. And we agree to only give what we're capable of giving.” - Jim’s principle to share the truth
“The agreement is you tell us the truth about what you need. We will tell you the truth about what we can deliver. Once we got to that point, everybody relaxed, and we got back into the normal rapport because we have a model that we can talk to.” - Jim
“I felt a little uncomfortable in intervening in what could have been seen as a family affair, a family issue. But I overcame that because I realized the benefit of us all working together, rather than working independently and duplicating some efforts and leaving gaps and others.” - Jim
Links Mentioned In the Episode
Lotsa Helping Hands - online care calendar
Connect With Us!
Family Caregivers of BC Website
Visit us at our office:
#6 – 3318 Oak Street,
Victoria, BC
V8X 1R1
Hours are Monday through Friday, 8:30 am and 4:00 pm.
Telephone: (250) 384-0408
Toll-Free Line Within BC: 1-877-520-3267
Fax: (250) 361-2660
Email: [email protected]
Thank you!
BC Ministry of Health - Patients as Partners Initiative