Caring for an older adult with whom you have a relationship can be a profoundly rewarding, humbling, and life-changing experience. It can also be among the most challenging, isolating, and stressful times in your life. Regardless of how good your relationship has been with an older person you are now caring for, there are aspects of the caregiver role that can be quite complicated.
The emotional and physical demands of caring for older adults are often overlooked and underestimated. Living in a society that does not recognize the importance of informal caregivers can further perpetuate confusion, stigma, and loneliness for caregivers.
Adult children, siblings, partners, other family members, friends, and neighbors who provide care for the older adults in their lives often experience a variety of feelings, and tend to carry a mental load that is invisible to others, even the people they are closest to. My role is to support caregivers in working through the complexity of their caregiving role while also maintaining their sense of self-worth, integrity, and identity. My goal is to help you move through these experiences while maintaining a sense of self so that you can continue to care for the older adult in your life and for yourself.
Grieving the loss of a person, whether or not you cared for them, is also a life-changing experience. Navigating your own identity after a loss, whether anticipated or sudden, requires tremendous physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and logistical energy that no one is ever prepared for. My role in offering bereavement support is to support people (who are in any stage of their grief) create a space to honor themselves and make room for the multidimensional aspects of loss. My goal is to help you learn ways to adapt to your life that has now been forever changed, retain the parts of yourself that keep you whole and grounded, and relinquish aspects that may not be serving you well in your time of mourning. I ultimately hope to help people reclaim a new love for themselves, as loving ourselves may feel impossible without the love of the person who died.