If you care for a family member, you’re a family caregiver. This month, we celebrate you! These self-care hacks will help you thrive.

“We can’t eat here,” I snapped at our daughters.

“But I’m really, really hungry!” Sarah whined.

“Me, too!” Laura said.

I just felt angry and at the end of my rope. And my snappy voice made things even worse. I hated when I sounded like a shrew.

The girls (8 and 10 at the time) and I had traveled by plane from Bozeman, MT to the airport in San Francisco. We had to find a rental car and drive out to Angwin, where the girls would see Pedro for the first time since he almost died in the hospital a month earlier. All of us felt stressed, and I didn’t handle it well. I felt nothing like a hero.

But in retrospect, I realize every spouse, parent, child, or friend who steps up to fill in where the medical community leaves off is a hero. Family caregivers administer medications at home, sometimes through ports using IV lines. We have to clean and sterilize instruments and do things we have no previous experience doing.

Up until Pedro’s bout with cancer, I’d only given shots to horses. Suddenly, the doctors wanted me to give Pedro a $3,000.00 shot in the stomach every day for a week. What if I did it wrong and squirted all that money around the hotel room?

As the duties pile on to our already busy lives, family caregivers start sinking without even realizing it. Let me throw you a life ring. Today’s podcast has six hacks to help you care for yourself during your caregiving journey. Without self-care, you’ll find your head underwater.

You can find out more about caregiver fatigue in this article from the Seniorlink Blog.

This episode of Self-Care Hacks has strategies for recognizing caregiver burnout in yourself or someone else.

These episodes feature family caregivers with great advice from a neuropsychologist SCH026 and the podcaster from Happy, Healthy Caregiver SCH 074.

Next week I’ll tackle Psalm 91 and what it means for family caregivers.

• Welcome to the Inspire Me Monday Community! The link-up opens Sundays at 4 pm, Arizona time.
  
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