NYT Opinion Piece on Caregiving Crisis

The part about the emotional and cultural space it occupies keeps replaying in my mind:

"Caring for seniors, while a labor of love, can nonetheless be grinding. It is often compared to parenting, but the emotional and cultural space it occupies is very different. With a frail parent, there is no sense of guiding someone toward a bright future. Quite the opposite. There is no senior equivalent of mommy-time play groups, much less an ocean of lighthearted books, movies and social media posts chronicling the experience. A diaper disaster involving your toddler makes a great party story. One involving your mother? Not so much."

Yep

When my co-workers attempt to dismiss my stress and my general unwellness with stories of raising their children, I would like for them to see this. I've attempted to articulate pieces of this idea before, but the article gives more fullness to it than I am able to at this moment in my life. Stress has changed my story telling abilities... and my desire to even "fight" for the attention to have someone stay with me long enough to begin to grasp what this has been like for me. I end up just saying that "I am not on my A game right now". But I haven't been for months and months now and I feel like I am losing myself and my "spot" in the social fabric.

It's only because we are on break from school right now that I have the bandwidth to read this article and ponder it… but oh how I needed to do so. My capacity for anything that seems extra or not required just isn't there like it used to be and I miss it. I am glad that I took the time to read this.

Thanks again for sharing, HB. I hope by bumping it up in the posts someone else like me who really needs this will get a chance to bump into it and give it a try.

Grateful for this share, HB.

Adding this screenshot that crossed my Instagram feed from a geriatrics physician reminding me to revisit the article:

💜 May we be well,

jht