The rhythm of caregiving and the moments that help us stay steady inside the chaos
The horses have always helped me stay centered. Photo by Rhonda Abell
When Life Is on Cruise
Sometimes it feels like we’re cruising through life.
Sometimes it feels like we are on high alert.
If you’ve ever been a caregiver, you know this rhythm well.
The cruise moments are the ones when everything seems to line up. Appointments fall into place. Doctors are where they’re supposed to be. The next step in the treatment plan is clear. For a little while, it almost feels like life is on autopilot.
Then something shifts.
Maybe it’s a hospitalization.
Maybe it’s a new diagnosis.
Maybe it’s an unplanned surgery.
And suddenly you move from cruise straight to alert.
The Hospital Routine
When Mike was inpatient at KU Med Center, life had its own kind of cruise pattern.
Each morning I would drive from Lawrence, hoping to arrive in time to catch all of his doctors on their rounds. After that, I would settle into his room and work on whatever needed to be done that day. Emails. Calls. Notes. The things that keep life moving even when everything feels like it has stopped.
I would stay most of the day and usually leave in the late afternoon when I thought the doctors had finished their rounds.
In the midst of all of that, I learned something important about survival during hard seasons.
You have to build in moments to pause.
The Power of a Pause
One of the best forms of self-care I had during that time was staying in Lawrence with our son.
Some evenings we would sit down for dinner together. Other nights it was takeout and a silly movie. Nothing profound—just normal life for a couple of hours.
But those pauses mattered.
They meant sleeping in a real bed instead of on the hospital couch that folded out into something pretending to be a bed. They meant stepping away from the constant sounds of monitors, hallway carts, and intercoms.
Sometimes the smallest breaks are the ones that keep you going.
Music in the Hallway
Most days, I would also put on my headphones and walk the loop in the hospital hallway.
Round and round.
Listening to music.
Those walks became their own kind of therapy. The music helped quiet the noise in my head while the movement reminded my body that it was still alive and functioning outside the hospital room.
It was simple, but it helped keep both my sanity and my physical well-being intact.
When the Alert Switch Flips
Life at home looked very different.
There, the rhythm wasn’t cruise. It was alert.
An unexpected trip to the hospital in Colby—twenty miles away—for a chest CT or an X-ray. A sudden call saying we needed to be in Kansas City sooner than expected. Trying to coordinate everything around my work schedule and John’s school and activities.
It felt like controlled chaos most of the time.
There was one stretch in particular that summed it up perfectly.
We went to KU Med so Mike could have his feeding tube moved. Because of a scheduling mix-up, we were told to arrive the day before the procedure. After the blood work came back, the surgeon refused to operate—his white blood count was too low.
Meanwhile, John had state music contest and state shooting sports that same weekend.
I had already arranged for my parents to take him because I wasn’t sure I could get back in time.
In the end, Mike and I drove to Salina on Friday night—halfway between Oakley and Kansas City—so we could attend both events the next day.
Then John and I drove home through a late-April snowstorm.
In the following days, the entire town lost power. Mike and the boys spent Sunday and Monday helping people dig out and taking older neighbors to my parents’ house where Mike had set up his generator.
Meanwhile, I was on the phone trying to get an appointment with the hematologist so we could reschedule the procedure.
That appointment landed on Wednesday—our anniversary.
The procedure was Friday.
And the next Wednesday, I needed to be in Colorado for training.
It was, without question, controlled chaos.
Learning to Find the Steady Place
Caregiving often feels like living between cruise and alert.
You learn to function inside uncertainty. You learn to adapt quickly. You learn how to move forward even when the plan changes every few hours.
But you also learn something else.
You learn that the pauses matter.
The music in your ears.
A quiet meal.
A moment to breathe.
Those small anchors can make all the difference.
If you’ve been living in that place of constant alert—whether as a caregiver, a healthcare professional, or someone carrying more than your share of life’s weight—you don’t have to navigate it alone.
Sometimes the most powerful way to pause is to step outside the noise for a while.
Working with horses offers a unique space to slow down, breathe, and reconnect with yourself in ways that are hard to access anywhere else.
If you’re curious whether this kind of work might support you, I invite you to schedule a Zoom conversation with me. We can talk about what’s going on in your world and explore whether spending time with the horses might be the right next step for you.
Sometimes the most important thing we can do is simply pause long enough to find our way back to ourselves.
Every story needs a soundtrack.
This is the one I’ve chosen for this post—sometimes because of the title, sometimes the lyrics, sometimes simply the feeling it stirs in me.
