“It takes a village to raise a child.” That’s an African proverb meaning it takes a community to provide a healthy and safe environment for a child to grow.
But what happens when you grow up? Does the village disappear? As adults we don’t realize there are a myriad of situations where we need our families and communities to have our backs.
An estimated 53 million Americans are acting as unpaid caregivers to loved ones, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP’s Caregiving in the U.S. 2020 report. That means 1 in 5 people you know have had their lives upended to ensure the health and safety of loved ones. This often comes at the expense of their own mental, physical and emotional health.
As a former (paid) caregiver myself, I thought it was important to talk to Jacqueline Revere of momofmymom.com, a website that chronicles the caregiving journey between Revere and her mother. I also spoke with multidisciplinary artist Trezure Empire, who has been a caregiver to her mother for two decades. We get into how they manage caregiving emotionally, mentally, and what they need the most from their village and from themselves.
Here are four pieces of advice for caregivers, from caregivers.
1. Be gentle with yourself.
Your life is changing, and you only know what you know. There is no blueprint for caregiving, so be gentle with yourself.
“Forgive yourself because when you’re starting out, you will make mistakes. You will get short-tempered,” Revere says. “You will build up resilience over time. And so you sitting in a corner completely having a meltdown will happen one year, but in Year four, you’ll be like, oh, just another…
Read the full article here
