More and more, I hear stories about the aging parents that many of you are busy taking care of. It can be frustrating, painful, and exhausting.

I want to share a tip my group of volunteers got a few years ago from a very smart social worker.

The social worker said that if a family can afford to pay for physical care, she urges everyone to do so. By that, she means the bathing, dressing, preparing the bed, and other physical responsibilities. When these are covered, the caregiver can be free to give the emotional support their patient needs most. When we are physically tired, we cannot give emotional support.

But it’s not that simple. We may start to feel guilty and things can get messy. We feel we are the ones that need to do everything so that those cared for won’t feel abandoned. We even feel guilty taking breaks and push ourselves harder and harder.

The opposite is the truth. If we don’t take good care of ourselves, there is no way we can be good caregivers. We should let professionals take care of the physical work. They can probably do it better than we can anyway.

Here is a prayer my teacher gave us as caregivers:

“On behalf of the helpers, we must take care of ourselves – we must care for this being our parents poured out their energy to protect. For their sake, we must honor their efforts, and keep ourselves alive and well.”

Happy Monday!
Yael