The Lapse

It's really hard to hold onto quality of life for two. It's why we lapse.

It all seems to lapse.

As your caree declines, your ability to keep up gets lost. Paying the bills becomes too much so you pay too late. Taking the daily walk takes too much energy so you sit too much. Washing the fruit for a healthy snack seems to take too much time so you unwrap the candy bar.

Your healthy ways lapse because the declines take too much toll.

You feel bad about the lapses. You regret them, hope you can turn them around.

The lapses make sense, though. You have too much to hold when you do whatever you can to hold on to your caree's quality of life. You have too much fight when you fight the systems to maintain your caree's quality of life.

It's really hard to hold onto quality of life for two. It's why we lapse. 

Our lapse doesn't have to lead to a judgement of ourselves.

Our lapse is temporary. We can give ourselves another chance to hold on to our quality of life, too. We can decide what quality of life means right now and then tweak that definition as needed. We can know we will figure this out because we will.

We can correct with kindness. We can let compassion wrap us.

We can let forgiveness be the laps we run.

Resources

• Listen to this Caregiving Comfort as a podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/56543424

• Read and listen to our Weekly Caregiving Comforts in our Encyclopedia of Family Caregiving.

• Imagine connecting to a Caregiving Mentor when caregiving began for you. Your experience may have been much better with the support from a volunteer Caregiving Mentor who understands your stress and challenges. You can make the difference you wish you had received; become a volunteer Certified Caregiving Mentor. You can Pay What You Want for this 15-hour training.

• We have one more Nomo Smart Care to give away. Reach out if you’d like to test this product.

• A journalist would like to interview family caregivers about the cost of home care. Reach out if you’d like to share your experiences.

(Image by annca from Pixabay.)

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