Caregiving is a journey. I wish you all the best. It is filled with such complex emotions... there is the concern for someone's safety and how their actions and attitudes help or hinder that. There are all the unresolved issues that can lay under the surface at a point when they are not necessarily able to resolve those issues in your relationship. There are the competing emotions – wishing your loved ones to stick around, but the practical concerns that make you wish for their demise sooner rather than later – and the guilt that naturally comes from those feelings popping up in the first place. (Thoughts are not actions – don't beat yourself up).
All this swirls around with finances and health and housekeeping... and the creeping reality of one's own mortality. And when they do pass... there is a strange untethering... one strand that defines your existence slips away. So many complex feelings.
I have found it important to breathe deep and to have friends who keep you rooted ... people who remind you that joy exists. That, yes, this is temporary. Life will go on.
Caregiving is a journey. I wish you all the best. It is filled with such complex emotions... there is the concern for someone's safety and how their actions and attitudes help or hinder that. There are all the unresolved issues that can lay under the surface at a point when they are not necessarily able to resolve those issues in your relationship. There are the competing emotions – wishing your loved ones to stick around, but the practical concerns that make you wish for their demise sooner rather than later – and the guilt that naturally comes from those feelings popping up in the first place. (Thoughts are not actions – don't beat yourself up).
All this swirls around with finances and health and housekeeping... and the creeping reality of one's own mortality. And when they do pass... there is a strange untethering... one strand that defines your existence slips away. So many complex feelings.
I have found it important to breathe deep and to have friends who keep you rooted ... people who remind you that joy exists. That, yes, this is temporary. Life will go on.