Our Delicate House of Cards

We want to protect what we worked so hard to build in order to manage our draining days.

In our Certified Caregiving Consultant training program, I teach about a concept I call The Family Caregiver’s House of Cards.

During a caregiving experience, you can feel like you’re watching the bad news ticker on the 24-hour cable television station. Except you’re living it. It’s like you’re living a 24-hour cycle of bad news.

To manage the bad news, you’ve built a House of Cards that includes whatever you can get from buying, bartering or begging. No one simply hands you what you need. You searched, asked, requested, demanded. You’ve pieced together a schedule, a routine, a team, a care plan, a way to keep the day together.

Because you worked so hard to build your House of Cards, you know how fragile it is. You also know that what you’ve constructed works as long as everything stays the same.

But, of course, everything can change without a moment’s notice during a caregiving experience.

So, you hold your breath, you pray, you walk on egg shells, you keep your hands ready to catch the next shoe that drops.

You also don’t want to be the one who makes the change that threatens to shatter that House of Cards.

Adding more help is a change.

To someone outside a caregiving experience, adding help seems like a no brainer.

Inside the caregiving experience, though, you know adding help could change the House of Cards. You hope the change will be a good one. But you’ve been through enough to know that sometimes help actually doesn’t help.

So, you wait to add the help. You think it through. You run through scenarios in your head. You ask others for insights and perspectives. You vet the help from every angle.

Sometimes, you may wait a few minutes. Sometimes, you wait a few days. Others don’t understand your wait.

You get it, though. You want to keep the House of Cards standing. Your considerate, deliberate decision-making about how and when to add help keeps the house standing.

To someone outside a caregiving experience, your studious choices look like resistance to help.

Inside the caregiving experience, though, you know that taking a moment to see the big picture ensures you can keep going because your House of Cards stands. It isn’t resistance. It’s wisdom.

The delicate dance you do every day because of that tender House of Cards is often done alone, in private. You take a beat because you’re in the middle of the most important work of your life.

Thank you for that dance. Thank you taking a beat.

When do you take a beat before adding help?

(Image by Willi Heidelbach from Pixabay)

Resources

• Our next Caregiving Listener Project will happen on March 22. Learn how you can provide support as a Volunteer Listener or receive support as a Story Teller.

• We’re in Month 3 of Take Time, our Caregiving Happiness Project. Join us.

• Join us in Chicago on May 15, 16 and 17 to Heal, Receive and Plan.

• Learn more about our Certified Caregiving Consultant training program.

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