Advocate For Yourself

             I’ve learned so much in my role as Andy’s caregiver. The learning isn’t actually a surprise but it feels surprising to me because it was never an intentional choice, like other big parts of my life.

I graduated from high school in three years and didn’t go to college right away. I became a ski instructor and lived in Aspen. I met Andy and started a business and we lived in unconventional ways, got married, had two children and followed our dreams, realizing many of them. All of these life events were choices I’d made and I knew I would grow from experiencing them.

Being a caregiver felt like it was thrust upon me. Rather than a choice in life, it felt like a burden, a disappointment- a dead end path with a lot of potential pain and sadness ahead.

All this is true but it isn’t the whole story.

Allowing  my role as Andy’s caregiver to be one I love is perhaps my greatest achievement in truly being free.

Advocating for myself- learning how to do that- learning not to feel sorry for myself or Andy- is part of that freedom we enjoy now. When I first became Andy’s caregiver, life was too busy for me to reflect on what it all meant. My life became just doing one thing after another. This was the ‘chop wood, carry water’ phase of my caregiving experience. After a while, I knew I had to do something differently or I’d lose myself completely in the work caregiving required of me at that time.

I had the double edged sword of needing to work to earn money while also being a full time caregiver.

I say ‘double edged’ because it was a huge job to patch together care for Andy when I went out of town to Chicago for a week each month to see massage clients and earn money. But also, this was the week each month that I found myself again without the miasma of never ending chores a caregiver faces.

I’d work as much as possible during that week away and I stayed with my mom and dad. When I’d interact with clients each day, I’d be reminded that I was a valuable person for many reasons-not only to take care of Andy. Giving massage requires deep focus and I found a safe place to be myself in that work.

I’d have dinner with my parents, who face their own health struggles, but somehow I felt light hearted when I heard their stories.

Sometimes, while on a massage work trip, I’d have an opening in my schedule, and I’d rent a bicycle and bike the Chicago lakefront trail or stop in at the Lincoln Park flower conservatory or The Art Institute.

These personal field trips became something I began doing at home too.

I discovered that part of advocating for myself was keeping one eye out for times I could do something that was rejuvenating for me, without compromising Andy’s care.

It seemed there were all kinds of opportunities if I looked out for them.