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Grief as a Healing Gift

Release Date: 02/02/2021

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

More Episodes

13 million Canadians or nearly half of the total population have provided care at some point in their lives. Yet caregiving may be a new term for many people. And often, unpaid caregivers do not identify with this title, as they feel it is part of their relationship with family or friends.

In today’s episode, we speak with Pat, who acknowledges that she was initially unfamiliar with the term caregiver, but learned more about this important role as she supported her husband, also named Pat, through his journey with Parkinson’s Disease and dementia.

Pat was engaged in a caregiver “learning process”, where she listened to her husband to better understand the effects of Parkinson's Disease in his daily life. Because of the value of their partnership, Pat’s relationship with her husband during his changing health conditions was sustained through humour and care.

You will gain insight into her caregiving journey, awareness of the caregiving role, and the unfolding responsibilities; including end of life care and her current caregiving stages of grief, bereavement, and honouring her husband and life-partner.

Highlights:

Caregiving was a new term for Pat and then she was full-in caregiving mode.
Supporting her husband with humour and care for their relationship was very apparent.
Loss and grief - knowing he is still there with her by showing up in signs or thoughts.
Giving back by supporting others in a caregiver support group.

Resources on Grief and Loss: