Why You Can’t Relax After Caregiving

When Your Brain Is Always on High Alert When you’ve spent years being available for the next phone call, the next crisis, or the next decision, learning to slow down and be present in your own life can be harder than you might expect. Always Available, Always On Call...

When Your Body Stays in Survival Mode

What Happens When Caregiving Keeps You in a Constant State of Stress Caregiving changes your life. It can change your routines, relationships, priorities, responsibilities, and even the way you see yourself. Some of those changes happen gradually. Others arrive with a...

The Beauty of Letting Go

What the Trees Can Teach Us About Releasing As we slide into November, nature reminds us that releasing what no longer serves us can make room for what comes next. The Beauty of an Eastern Kansas Fall The trees are dispersing their leaves as we slide into November....

When Keeping Going Becomes What Holds You Back

Caregiving teaches us how to keep moving through the hardest moments. Finding ourselves again may require learning when it’s OK to stop. When Someone Depends on You, You Keep Going I think part of what keeps a caregiver going is the simple fact that you have to keep...

You Don’t Have to Be a Caregiver in a Desert

Finding Connection When You Feel Alone As a caregiver, I sometimes felt like I was living in a desert. Alone. As if no one really understood what I was living. At the time, I lived in rural western Kansas, so it was easy to feel that way. There weren’t many people...

When Good Enough Lets the Light In

What happens when we stop waiting for everything to be perfect? I had a decision to make. It was late Tuesday night, and I still hadn’t finished writing this blog post. Monday had been a long day—an appointment in Kansas City, lunch with my mom, taking John to get...