November is National Family Caregivers Month, a time to honor and recognize the millions of Americans who provide care to loved ones and raise awareness for resources and services that can help the millions of caregivers across the country.
As former First Lady Rosalynn Carter famously said, “There are four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need a caregiver.”
No matter which of those four stages you may find yourself in today, or in the years to come, we must embrace and recognize the need for some challenging conversations that can provide massive benefits to us all. Not only can the caregiving journey become easier to navigate, but by embracing difficult conversations now, you have the potential to create beautiful memories with your loved ones in the path ahead.
Amy Cameron O’Rourke is a dedicated care manager passionate about helping people and their loved ones find peace and joy as they age. She is a best-selling author, a licensed nursing home administrator and a certified care manager with 40 years of experience helping families and individuals navigate the caregiving journey and these important, yet challenging, conversations.
“Give up the idea that you are reversing roles,” O’Rourke advises. “We’re not reversing roles with our parents, we’re just in a new stage of the relationship. It requires open, honest communication that is managed with your own feelings and your own desires.”
O’Rourke says the caregiving experience gives us a chance to share our feelings, desires, and fears and learn about one another. When we admit the challenge of this life stage, it can become a collaborative journey instead of a combative one.
“The older adult knows that their kids are talking to them as if they were a child, and it’s annoying. But the worst thing a parent can do is react to them by yelling at their adult kids and saying, ‘Don’t talk to me like that!’” O’Rourke shares. “What the older adult can say is ‘I don’t know how to be in this stage of life either. I don’t want to be a burden to you, but I need help.’
“We all are in this together. It’s a life stage that if we open it up to a more collaborative process, the older adult can teach their kids still, and share thoughts like ‘I want to tell you what my fears are, what my worries are, what my needs are, how hard it is to ask for help, how scared I am that I’m going to run out of money and I don’t want to leave it to you to fix.’”
While you embrace the opportunity to share your fears, wants, needs and emotions in the caregiving journey, use this as a chance to examine how a loved one needing care would most like their next living situation to transition, too.
Does the older loved one want to age in place? Do they want to join a retirement community? Do they anticipate needing extra care that would be best suited in an assisted living facility? Do they want to move closer to family and friends, or perhaps to a state with a warmer climate?
No matter what the answers are, the good news is that you never have to tackle a life transition alone. There are more than 350 Caring Transitions franchises located across the country, full of experienced senior relocation experts who care about their community and have years of wisdom from helping others in the same journey.
Whether it is downsizing, relocating, managing an estate sale, helping set up a new home to avoid falls and hazardous home setups, or just performing a home cleanout, the experts at Caring Transitions of Metro Milwaukee can create an individualized plan for your family, and take care of all the heavy labor so you can focus on what matters most: each other.
Caregiving can be frustrating and difficult to navigate, but it can also be one of life’s greatest blessings, allowing us to create precious moments of joy for loved ones in our care when we learn to celebrate what remains instead of solely focusing on what’s been lost.