What's a Mini-Vacation?

A Mini-Vacation is a brief count of moments to stop and smell the roses--literally or figuratively.

In the midst of caring, while facing the challenges of parenting, employment, eldercare, and living, we often become so enveloped in the “have to’s” and the “musts” that we forget to breathe. We don’t look up and notice that the sky is clear blue or that our children have just made a marvelous discovery or that the snow sparkles like glitter or that our spouse is looking particularly good that day.

Caring for elderly parents is not a sprint, but a marathon, and as a caregiver, you need to find the right caring pace that will allow you to thrive during the journey over weeks, months and perhaps years.

The most powerful technique I learned and used during my caregiving experience was one I learned from one of my spiritual teachers, the late Sister José Hobday, an American Indian nun who lived in New Mexico. She taught that the quality of experience we foster in our lives will ultimately give us more joy and peace than the quantity of tasks or things we do. She recommended a simple daily practice:

Take 20 mini-vacations a day.

Throughout the day, take regular micro-breaks in your routine to focus on something pleasant. All you need is a few seconds or a few minutes and your focused attention. When you shift your attention from your current concerns to something you truly enjoy, you briefly release your mind, body and spirit from stress and clear them to continue with renewed energy.

In her teachings, Sister Hobday encourages 20 of these breaks a day. That averages out to about two every waking hour. What does this mean? It means that as we look toward the future in our caregiving role, we don't have to see endless stress and tasks before us. We learn to divide our tasks for others into short bursts of activity interwoven with time for ourselves.

Mini-vacations may take a small amount of planning, especially if you wish to have pictures or music readily available. But for the most part, just look up, notice the world around you, move around in it a little. There are endless opportunities for a break in your routine.

Twice a week in this blog, we'll be sharing ideas for mini-vacations and reminding each other to take a break, take a breath, and care for ourselves.

Blessings on your caregiving day!

Returning to the "New" Blog

It's been a busy four months since I last posted, and I've missed my time out here in the Blog-o-sphere with you. I'm happy to announce that an updated version of my current work CARING FOR A DISTANT PARENT will be available during the next month. I'll let you know when that arrives.

I've also been working with my website provider to re-invent my website Parentcare 101, and that will launch in the next month, also.

I've spent a lot of time out and about, talking to caregivers like you at conferences and presentations, answering questions you've asked through the website, and considering how this blog can best help you.

The Parentcare 101 website provides the resources and links you need to help your parents. Time and time again, however, caregivers have shared that they feel overwhelmed and routinely forget to care for themselves. I'd like to let this blog be a reminder that if you don't take care of yourself, you cannot care for your parent.

So first and foremost, this blog will be a place to find ideas for daily mini-vacations and ways to take a break and take a breath. I'll occasionally revisit some topics on helping your parent, but I'll focus on those little ways that help caregivers thrive in this marathon we call caregiving.

Join me here every Tuesday and Thursday!

Blessings on your caring!

Information Is Good Care

During the next few weeks, we're going to discuss gathering the information that will help you during your caregiving journey. I've heard the saying "Information is Power", but in caregiving, "Information is Good Care". Having the right information at the right time is important in any aspect of life, but in caregiving that information becomes your bedrock. And you have an advantage. I know--and I'm sharing with you--the types of information you're going to need in advance. Even if you're at the beginning of the caregiving journey, you already have some idea of what you'll need. As a caregiver to your parent, at some point, you will need to know and be able to communicate:

• Your parent's physical status--health, abilities, mental acuity
• Where your parent's household, medical and financial records are filed or stored
• Who will be helping with your parent's care--family, friends, professionals
• Information about your parent's house
• Personal financial resources available for care--your parent's, yours, your family's
• Housing options for your parent
• Legal issues that will guide you handling your parent's affairs
• Insurance issues surrounding your parent's care
• Your parent's spiritual needs
• Your parent's wishes about their care, end-of-life decisions, living arrangements

In the long run, especially if your parent does not live with you, caregiving may be less about personal, physical, active care tasks but more often a series of information gathering expeditions and communicating decisions, managing resources, taking copious notes, and organizing others to provide actual care.

When you accept the job of caring for a parent, you do just that. You accept another job--at least part-time, and full-time if your parent has substantial needs and lives with you.

A lot of papers, e-mails, telephone calls, texts, websites, books, articles, information will be coming your way. Start thinking about how you might organize it so you can refer to it later.

Start now by thinking about the list of types of information listed above that you'll probably need for your parent. In each of those areas, what information about your parent do you already know? How much detail do you have? Do you need more?

What don't you know? In what areas do you feel a need for some serious information gathering? Can you suggest to the rest of us any areas that are particularly pressing?

Write a comment, send me an e-mail.

In the next few weeks, we'll start working through these areas and talk about what you're looking for and how to find it.

Myths of Eldercare

I'm wrapping up this week of blog introduction with a reality hidden beneath the fuss and flurry that is often a caregiver's life. A reality that affects how you and your parent react to the dynamic caregiving situation you both have entered. A reality of which you may be totally unaware.

After the first months of caregiving, as I recognized that my relationship with my ailing mother was more complicated than I ever imagined, I spent a lot of time reading and talking to others about the emotional and relationship side of parentcare.

What I learned along the way was that I had bought into the Myths of Eldercare:

MYTH 1: In all families, parents and children love each other unconditionally.

MYTH 2: No matter the quality of the parenting, parents deserve a child’s unquestioning devotion, duty, love and service.

MYTH 3: Every child is obligated to care for his parents as they age.

MYTH 4: A person honors her parents only if she sacrifices her own life and mental health for the sake of the parent. Without total sacrifice, the child can not be judged as “good”.

Note the "all-or-nothing" quality of each of these myths. They are rarely stated outright and never written down. We breathe them in from our families' actions, conversations with friends, from newspapers and television. The myths invade us as easily as secondhand smoke and become a part of us. And in living, we act as if these myths were immutable laws. They become the bars of a cage, restricting the options we have in life. Often we don’t even think about what we are doing. We just act.

What are the Facts of Eldercare?

FACT 1: Parents and children should love each other unconditionally. But let's be honest, dysfunctional families exist. Even in "normal" families, love's depth and expression are different and different even between each parent and child.

FACT 2: Parents are human, and their love is not always given in a fair or evenhanded manner. Some parents are abusive; some have abandoned their families. Being a parent is no guarantee that a child will offer unquestioning devotion, duty, love and service. (Talk to a teenager sometime for clarification on this point.)

FACT 3: There is no contract or rule that obligates a child to care for an aging parent. The Bible says, “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother,” but it’s vague on how to do that. In any case, you can not mandate love or respect.

FACT 4: Sacrificing your own well-being in caregiving does your parent no good. It drains precious energy away from caregiving and weakens you. To care for someone else, you must first care for yourself.

What I'm asking you to do now is to be honest with yourself. Have you accepted any or all of the myths as Truth? If you have, how might your belief in the myth affect how you talk with your parent, decide priorities in your life?

And just as important...does your parent believe in any of the myths? Does that belief bring with it expectations that you might not be able to meet?

A counselor once told me that 80-90% of our behavior comes from the subconscious, from our instincts, from beliefs deep within us. Until we pull the myths up into our thinking, conscious decision-making brain, we will act on them instinctively, perhaps to our detriment.

What myth do you believe? Is your belief filling you with guilt or with joy in your caring? Do you need to discard that myth for something more realistic, more positive? Is your myth helpful?

Welcome to Parentcare 101!

My mother lived in the small town in which she had been born. When I began caring for her, I lived over 250 miles away. My sister, my partner in caregiving, lived another 500 miles away from me. The geographic distance promised to add logistic difficulties to an already difficult situation. Within weeks, I recognized another sort of distance that would play a tremendous role in my caregiving--I didn't particularly like my mother.

These were the facts of my situation. They were unique to me.

What are the facts of your caregiving circumstance? I'm guessing they are different. What can you recognize as challenges? What about your situation makes you breathe a sigh of relief that, at least that one thing is working among everything that you deal with on a daily basis? Do you view your caregiving as a duty, a sacred trust, payback or a little of all three?

In Parentcare 101, you and I will take a look at your unique situation and offer tips and suggestions. These ideas will be perfectly valid if you care for an elder who lives with you or with whom you have a loving, supportive relationship. But in Parentcare 101, I acknowledge that for many of you there is distance in parentcare...either because your parent does not live with you or because your relationship with your parent is not perfect. Together, we'll explore what needs to be done, how best to get it done and whom you should ask for help. Although all of your situations are different, caregivers deal with three areas of care:

• Providing Basics for Your Parent: food, shelter, clothing, health care, transportation and a social environment;
• Caring for Yourself: placing yourself at the top of your priority list so that you will have the energy and stamina for caregiving; and
• Preparing for the Future: gathering information about your parents, their home, available resources, always looking forward just a little.

Each week in Parentcare 101, I'll focus on one of these areas. I plan to post twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. With this schedule, you'll know when to check in for something new, and we'll have time for comments and processing one topic before moving on to the next.

An integral part of the service of this blog is the Parentcare 101 website. The website and this blog will work hand-in-hand to share tips, resources, and advice. I know that those of you caregiving now have a lot of great ideas. Bring them on.

To get us started on our journey together, on Thursday, I'll talk about the "Myths of Eldercare" and how those myths can block good care for your parent and for you.

See you on Thursday!

Coming Soon!

On Tuesday, April 21, 2009, Parentcare 101 will launch. Looking forward to sharing CareTips and resources for caring for your aging parents. See you on Tuesday!