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Rayna Neises, ACC, host, and Aly Neises, RN, cohost, reflect on the conversation with Nancy Bouwens who provided a helpful analogy as she discussed her caregiving journey with her mother.
- Caregiving can feel like juggling pumpkins – responsibilities come in all different shapes and sizes and it is exhausting to keep them all ‘up in the air’. Everyone is doing their best not to drop one and create a big mess!
- We cannot juggle a lot of heavy pumpkins for long, so it helps to stop frequently and think about each pumpkin: Is it still important enough to keep juggling? Can it be switched out for a lighter pumpkin? Can it be handed off to someone else to juggle? Can it be set aside now and picked back up after the journey?
- Feeling forgotten is common for the elderly so giving of your time, providing care, and offering encouragement helps to improve the quality of their lives.
- Teamwork is a wonderful way to reduce the number of pumpkins and spouses are an important part of the team. Acknowledging their participation and working to value that relationship while caregiving is critical.
- When a loved one insists that you must be the one to help them, approach with respect and kindness, but honor your own boundaries. You cannot juggle all the pumpkins all the time.
- Asking for help is difficult . . . Avoid this by anticipating your loved ones' needs and offering solutions in a respectful, generous, and loving way that hopefully will not add more pumpkins.
