This Caregiver Life ™

Hello!

We had hoped to drop a podcast every month this year. We started strong until we hit February. Sound familiar caregivers?

We did record this one, technically, in February. It's taken a few days to get back to writing show notes and publishing.

In this podcast we focus on eating well. It's an overall way of caring for ourselves every day. Eating nutritious meals and snacks has a way of helping us feel better even under stress. It doesn't take our stress away but can often help us manage it better.

Neither of us is a dietician or nutritionist. We do, however, have to eat. We have a collective experience of over a hundred years of eating. Often during those years, we have cared for others who need guidance and assistance with eating, which includes food choices.

We hope you will learn a thing or two from us. More than anything, we hope we have encouraged you to take care of YOU through good eating because you matter.

Dietary Guidelines for Americans is a good place to begin!

Feel free to drop us a note at either or both of our emails.

[email protected]

[email protected]

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thiscaregiverlife/message

Jenn and Mar welcome in 2024 with a new podcast episode!

In "Give Your Mind a Rest" they chat about the usefulness of developing a meditation mindfulness practice. Food meditation is one of their favorites because, you know, why not. Food is a source of joy at times, so why not incorporate it into your daily practice?

There are a variety of meditation practices to employ. It is our hope you will find one that works for you and it becomes one of your many supportive tools in your caregiver toolbox. See below for links to meditation mindfulness resources.

Reclaim Yourself

The Power of Meditation

Tara Brach - Guided Meditations

Calm App

Koru Mindfulness

We would love to hear from you if you enjoy other mindfulness meditation resources and would like to share them.

Mary's email: [email protected]

Jenn's email: [email protected]

This Caregiver Life Facebook page

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thiscaregiverlife/message

Mar & Jenn are excited to reconnect with you. We have all new episodes coming for 2024, but of course our episodes are always evergreen. We look forward to hearing from you on our social media pages on Facebook and LinkedIn. Please let us know what’s important to you as you live This Caregiver Life. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thiscaregiverlife/message

As we near the end of 2023 Mar gives a quick update and a look ahead to 2024. We look forward to posting more episodes in 2024. As always we hope to hear from our listeners on ideas for future content, questions they may have, and thoughts they'd like to share. Our Facebook page can be found here: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/thiscaregiverlife⁠ Mary's email: [email protected] Jenn’s email: [email protected] --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thiscaregiverlife/message

We're back! After a year-long sabbatical, Mar and Jenn return to discuss #thiscaregiverlife. In this episode, we chat about good sleep, good maintenance tips for caregiving, and ways we have learned to cope with all things caregiving. Interested in a Meditation Mouse? Find one for yourself here: https://amzn.to/3J19dVl Coming soon: Navigating the NICU Jenn explores tiny miracles of life inside the hospital's most precious, and sometimes scariest, ward: the NICU. Want to connect with Mar & Jenn on social? Follow Mar's lavender adventures and more via @thecottageatmarehaven, and find Jenn on all the channels as @caregivertalk. As always, until next time! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thiscaregiverlife/message

Are you a caregiver looking for meaningful employment? Is your company making room at the table for caregivers? In this episode, we discuss the challenges caregivers face in the workplace, how employers can support caregiving employees, and the many assets caregivers have that can add to, not take away from, a company’s culture and productivity. Our guest is Sharon Grassi, a caregiver who has experienced workplace roadblocks. Whether you’re a caregiver or an employer, you won’t want to miss this episode! If you’re an HR professional or work in the C-suite and want to share your company’s wins for caregivers, send us an email: [email protected]. We’d love to have you on the show. And if you’d like a guest speaker for your organization, Jennifer is available. Email for details: [email protected]. luHgYrzgLmhp9SsaEWyn --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thiscaregiverlife/message

Jenn and Mar take a deep dive into caregiver burnout and distrust. Between them, they have 50 years of caregiving. Over the years they have had their emotional, and physical, ups and downs as caregivers. They have had, and still have, periods of burnout. Burnouts are more quickly resolved now than in years past. They talk about essential coping strategies that have shortened burnout periods and have developed, and encourage others, to use their list as it is or as a starting point for developing one of their own: 

• Use a "Feelings Wheel" to help identify what you are experiencing. 
• Allow yourself to share your vulnerabilities with someone with whom you are comfortable. 
• Identify your caregiver tribe who will understand you without judgment. 
• Identify your support system - family, friends, community organizations. 
• Develop a care plan for yourself: Care Plan for the Caregiver. The Care Plan is specifically for the caregiver to remain as healthy as is possible on all levels: physically, emotionally, and spiritually. They both believe wholeheartedly that their Care Plan helps them in the short term, on a daily basis, and the long term, over their lifetime. 

YOU are every bit as important as the person you care for.  

Comments or suggestions for This Caregiver Life? Please email us at [email protected]

--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thiscaregiverlife/message

Dr. Naomi Baum joins Mary and Jenn to talk in-depth about resiliency. Self-care is an overused phrase today. It's so common that it's easy to overlook its value and to be intentional about it. The same can be said for resiliency. The term, the concept, is used frequently though not necessarily effectively. Dr. Baum breaks it down for us.

Dr. Baum is a psychologist and resiliency expert. Over the last twenty years, she has dedicated herself to "creating and implementing resilience-building programs for those exposed to trauma, be it terrorism, war or natural disaster." (https://www.naomibaum.com/about). Dr. Baum is also a  published author, and resides in Israel with her large, and growing, family. To learn about Dr. Baum, please visit her website: https://www.naomibaum.com/

Mar and Jenn are reading Dr. Baum's book, IRESILIENCE: What Israelis Can Teach the World. In upcoming episodes, they will share their thoughts on the book. We encourage our listeners to do the same, read it, and share their thoughts with This Caregiver Life either by email: [email protected] or by dropping us a voice message using this link: https://anchor.fm/thiscaregiverlife/message.

Resilience resources 

IIRESILIENCE: What Israelis Can Teach the World: https://www.amazon.com/ISResilience-What-Israelis-Teach-World-ebook/dp/B08H8GHP5F/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=iresilience+dr+naomi+baum&qid=1630923589&s=books&sr=1-2-spell

Building Your Resilience: https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience

Resilience: Build skills to endure hardship: https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/resilience-training/in-depth/resilience/art-20046311

Resilience: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/resilience

--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thiscaregiverlife/message

Jenn and Mar took some time off to tend to their gardens. They each have two gardens. One is where they grow their indoor and outdoor plants. They share the ways in which gardening, toiling in the soil, has positively impacted their mental health and how it lends itself to mindfulness. It helps to lighten the load. It took Mar quite a while to embrace gardening, she wasn't an easy convert...feel free to drop a line of encouragement for her. 

The other one, the one closest to their heart, is their families. Each of their families has had growth over the past few months. Jenn shares her family's abundant growth with us! We think you will agree that she is at the top of the abundance chart. We are so excited for her! If you would to send her a message of congratulations please do so. We love voice messages that we can share on the podcast or written ones that we can read on our next episode. Send us a message at [email protected] or go to our Facebook page "This Caregiver Life" to send us a message.

In addition to their personal experiences the following articles were used to inform them of the positive value of gardening: 

Gardening is Self-Care: The Health Benefits of Gardening

How Plants Can Help People Grow

How Gardening Became the Self-Care Staple I Never Knew I Needed

The Healing Power of Gardens: Oliver Sacks on the Psychological and Physiological Consolations of Nature

--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thiscaregiverlife/message

We're so excited to have Theresa Coomer join us for this episode in celebration of #MilitaryCaregiverMonth. You may remember we read an excerpt of Theresa's writing during episode 63. She's a mother, educator, caregiver, and author of the blog "Peanut Butter in My Purse, Vitamin C in My Pocket".  Theresa is an example of a caregiver who knows she has limits, but also knows she can set them super high because she also has boundaries.  It's not easy to set boundaries for yourself. As caregivers, we are programmed to say yes, to help others in any way we can, but boundaries are a necessary part of our own self-care. And we aren't just talking about boundaries with others, we're also talking about setting boundaries with yourself! Along with boundaries, caregivers need to weigh and adjust their expectations - boundaries and expectations go hand-in-hand. By setting AND keeping them, caregivers can find more enjoyment in their own lives.  Does this happen overnight? Not a chance! It takes ongoing practice to acquire the right tools to build boundaries and realistically set expectations. And there will be trials and troubles along the way to finding yourself "well-adjusted", in fact, none of us really has the capability to maintain "well-adjusted" 100% of the time. This caregiver life is fluid, but the more we train ourselves to recognize the ebbs, the more easily we can go with the flow.  ---- Thanks to everyone who is participating in our writing challenge! Don't forget to email your submissions for on-air reading to [email protected]. We just might have you as a guest on our show. Here's this episode's prompt: -List the cultural texts that informed your childhood. (examples: nursery rhymes, lullabies, books, films, poems) -Pick 1 and write about the significance it's had on your family storyline.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thiscaregiverlife/message