Give the Gift of Listening
Our Caregiving Listener Project matches Story Tellers with Listening Artists.
When you care for a family member, you may struggle to find an empathetic listener, someone who receives your story with compassion and then engages in a conversation about your experience.
That struggle leads to a feeling of being disconnected, of not belonging within a community.
Through our Caregiving Listener Project, we want to ensure every family caregiver can connect to an understanding and empathetic listener. We’re hosting our second Caregiving Listener Project on October 19 and would love for you to join us as a Story Teller, Listener or both. (I was both a Story Teller and a Listener when we held this event in January.)
As volunteer, you’ll listen to 4-minute stories told by family caregivers and former family caregivers. After you hear the story, you’ll engage in a conversation about the story and the experience. In total, you’ll spend about 20 minutes in a private Zoom room with each Story-Teller. When you volunteer for an hour, you’ll hear two stories.
We’ll also teach you how to listen in a way that energizes you and removes the pressure to do more than simply being present as you hear a story. When you volunteer to be a Caregiving Listener, you’ll receive our two-hour training, The Art of Listening, at no cost. At the end of the training, you’ll be a Listening Artist.
When you volunteer to be a Caregiving Story-Teller, you’ll tell a four-minute story about a caregiving moment, experience, situation, challenge or relationship. You choose the story and then tell it from memory or from your notes.
Our event will take place on October 19 for one hour at Noon ET (11 a.m. CT, 9 a.m. PT) and then again for one hour at 7 p.m. ET (6 p.m. CT, 4 p.m. PT). You can choose a one-hour slot to join us as a volunteer or to share your caregiving story.
To learn more about our Caregiving Listener Project, watch the archive of the informational meeting I held on Thursday evening.
Then, join us:
Story-teller sign up: https://careyears.typeform.com/to/Van01Jjx
Listener sign up: https://careyears.typeform.com/to/biVnxTme
Join our Caregiving Listener Project group: https://join.caringourway.com/spaces/8908698
Thanks for all you do!
Resources
We do our best to keep our career on track as we manage our caregiving responsibilities. Sometimes, though, we need to take a leave because of a crisis, our caree's decline, our caree's transition to a different care setting or our caree's end of life care needs. On September 22, we'll help you think through when you may want to use either a paid leave benefit or Family Medical Leave. We'll also help you effectively manage your leave so you're ready to return to work. Register to join us for Planning Your Temporary Leave During Your Caregiving Experience, a two-hour event on September 22 which begins at 11 a.m. ET.