Caregiving Expert Liz O’Donnell on Caring for Aging Parents While Making a Living (and Having a Life)
Show Snapshot:
Sandwiched! Today’s show dives into how to care for aging parents while balancing the needs of career, family, and life. Caregiving expert Liz O’Donnell, author of Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living and founder of Working Daughter, a community for women navigating eldercare, joins me to share real-world practical caregiving tools. We get into the nitty-gritty—how to have hard conversations with your parents, navigating sibling dynamics, what to know about “caregiving creep,” and what to share (and not share) with your workplace.
Bonus! We cover the #1 thing Liz thinks all caregivers should do to protect their energy and sanity.
In This Episode We Cover:
1. What’s “caregiving creep?”
2. When both of Liz’s parents were diagnosed with terminal illness on the same day, she got a crash course in caregiving that she’s now sharing with the world.
3. Caregiving 101- how to prep for when “caregiving creep” turns into “caregiving crisis.”
4. Think you are only one out there who can't get your dad to give up his car keys? Think again.
5. Tips for difficult conversations, why to avoid “magical thinking,” and how (and why) to build a caregiving support team.
6. How to help your parents see changes in circumstances as possibilities, not limitations.
7. Struggling to navigate sibling dynamics? Try playing to people’s strengths.
8. How to preserve your energy for the caregiving long haul.
Quotable:
My caregiving experience started with what I call the “caregiving creep.” It’s when you’re going along as a busy woman, maybe a working mother like I was, and you think your life is full and then all of a sudden, it’s getting fuller and fuller. My parents were in their eighties, they needed help with pills and bills and mowing the lawn, just little errands and tasks around the house until eventually it was one full weekend day every week. I remember thinking, “Woah, this caregiving stuff is crazy. I need to figure this out and no one’s talking about it.
There’s the caregiving creep and then there’s the crisis. And I got the crisis call; both of my parents were diagnosed with terminal illnesses on the exact same day, within hours of each other. My life was absolutely wild from that point on, and I felt alone, and I felt unprepared. and somewhere in that chaos, I vowed that when I made it through this, I was going to help other people not be in that same situation.
More Resources:
Follow Liz:
Liz’s Book:
Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty [00:21]:
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. Do you follow A Certain Age over on Instagram? If you do, you might have seen my recent Instagram poll asking listeners what show topics they want to see covered on the podcast. Hands down, the number one choice was caring for aging parents. Buckle up beauties, we are diving into that topic today.
I am joined by caregiving expert, Liz O’Donnell. A former marketing executive and mom of two, Liz is the founder of a caregiving community and podcast both called Working Daughter and she’s the author of Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living. If you are struggling to care for an elderly parent or relative, struggling to have hard family conversations or find real-world practical caregiving tools, all while holding down a job and raising a family, stick around, this show is for you. Welcome, Liz.
Liz O’Donnell [1:19]:
Thank you. I’m not surprised it’s the number one request. It is happening to everyone.
Katie [1:25]:
And if it hasn’t happened yet, it’s coming. So, I am really excited you’re here, I’m excited to be exploring this with you. Liz, in my open I called you a caregiving expert. But like many of my listeners, your expertise came from the trenches rather than in formal schooling. Can we open by having you tell us when and how you became active in advocating for women, looking to balance career and elder care?
Liz [1:51]:
Sure. My caregiving experience started with what I call the “caregiving creep.” It’s when you’re going along as a busy woman, maybe a working mother like I was, and you know, you think your life is full and then all of a sudden, it’s getting fuller and fuller. My parents were in their eighties, they needed help with pills and bills and mowing the lawn, just little errands and tasks around the house until eventually it was one full weekend day every week. I remember then thinking, “Woah, this caregiving stuff is crazy. I need to figure this out and no one’s talking about it, and I need to work on this.” I didn’t do anything about it, I didn’t know what to do about it. I was actually working on another book at the time, my book had just come out about working motherhood that I was promoting, so this was happening in the back of my mind.
Then I got a call that something was wrong with my parents and that’s the second entry point, oftentimes for caregivers. There’s the creep and then there’s the crisis. And I got the crisis call; both of my parents were diagnosed with terminal illnesses on the exact same day, within hours of each other. My life was absolutely wild from that point on, and I felt alone, and I felt unprepared and somewhere in that chaos, I vowed that when I made it through this, I was going to help other people not be in that same situation.
Katie [3:23]:
That must have been so incredibly traumatic. Did you have siblings? Were they able to help shoulder this load when you were trying to care for your parents during this really challenging time?
Liz [3:34]:
I do, I’m one of three girls, I’m the youngest daughter. And if you asked my sisters about the experience, they would say they were there every step of the way. If you were to ask me then I would have said, "They’re nowhere, they’re useless.”
Katie [3:51]:
[laughs] We’re here for honesty so put those cards on the table Liz, that’s what we’re here for.
Liz [3:57]:
Yeah, it helps to be honest in caregiving. Having written my book – and for me as a writer, that’s how I kind of work out my thoughts, and I’m like, oh that’s what I was feeling about this situation – I realized a couple things. One, my sisters were there every step of the way in the way that they show up. I show up like a steamroller when it comes to a crisis. I’m really great at logistics, I’m really great at advocacy, I am large and in charge and so my work pace was different than my sister’s. So, they were there. And that’s one thing I would say about siblings, your siblings don’t have to show up and sign up at the same pace and the same intensity that you do. We all get to choose how we show up, or not, for our parents. And then looking back too probably, and I hate admitting this, but I was also probably not making enough space for them because my way was the right way.
Katie [4:50]:
I am one of four, my husband is one of five. I’m very familiar with navigating family dynamics and different styles. This was something that I wanted to talk about with you. So, since it’s come up, let’s dive into it. If we are fortunate enough to have siblings – and maybe don’t need to be a sibling, maybe your partner or your adult children can help you with the grandparents, or maybe it could be a cousin or somebody else in the family – but if we’re looking to create equity in the caregiving workload, what might be one or two recommendations? I think maybe you touched on one which is, be accepting of other people’s styles. For our listeners who are thinking, I really want more help from my siblings, what are some tactical recommendations?
Liz [5:35]:
Yeah, I’d say two things. One is, play into people’s strengths. I had a sister who was out of state during this whole experience, and she is a talker, she’s the person you cannot get off the phone. And I was never the “call my mother every night” kind of daughter. So, she was calling me all the time, "What’s going on? What happened today?” I’m like, [exasperated tone] “Stop.” Because I was waking up at 6:00 in the morning, I had a spreadsheet at the time, at its height had 196 to-do items on it, like you know, call Verizon and cancel the phone at their house, because they’re moving to assisted living, pay the lease, go see the elder law attorney, all that stuff. So, it was like, “I cannot chat with you, but you know what you can do? You can call Mom and Dad every night, that’s your strength, you’re the emoter, you’re the connector and then when you hear things I need to know, you tell me.” So, that became her role, that was her strength.
My other sister was more of a, you know, I gave her long term tasks because she was the one, I call, with the pace problem. We joke that she doesn’t move slowly, she moves in reverse. [Katie laughs] So, we knew that when my mom was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer at the age of 84, so opted for no treatment. We knew, the doctors gave her about three months, that we were probably looking at about three months. She was not the person to take today’s action items, so I was like, “You know what? Go plan the funeral, you’ve got a couple months to do it, it's long-term, that’s your role.” So, play to people’s strengths. Like I said, I’m really good with logistics and really good with prices so I was like the intense drill sergeant, that was my strength.
Sometimes my husband would get mad at me, “You’re doing everything.” Because I was stressed out, I wasn’t around much, there was a lot of tension in our relationship as I was dealing with all this. And he would say, "Why don’t you have your sister do it?” And then sometimes to appease my husband, I would give a short-term task to a long-term worker, and it would go awry, and I would be like, “That’s why!” And so, the second thing I say is, caregiving is no time for magical thinking. My husband was engaging in magical thinking, to think that my sister was going to work at a different pace than we knew she did. So, find out each other’s strengths, give up on the magical thinking. This is no time to wish your brother, sister, cousin, whoever is helping, was better or different at tasks than they are. And then just, accept it. Is caregiving for me? I believe it’s an energy game for people. So, protect your energy, be mad at people later, engage in drama later, but right now just focus on what you need to focus on.
Katie [8:03]:
Excellent tactical recommendations. I hear what you say about magical thinking because sometimes we wish our circumstances were different. I actually just sort of had an experience with something recently, very minor, but where I had to remind myself, I have to actually go through this. The way out of this problem is through, and me hoping or wishing it was different is not going to make it so. You really just need to recognize that what you need to do is what’s right in front of you.
How are you having the hard conversations with your parents though? So, your parents had a different situation. They were presented with a horrible medical diagnosis which made it clear. But if people are beginning that caregiving creep, how do you start having conversations with parents who might not want to give up or share control?
Liz [8:49]:
Yeah, that’s an excellent question. I did have the "creep years" where I knew my parents needed more and I was trying to have those conversations and I failed miserably. So, I would say two things about that. For any listeners who are failing miserably, I felt this way and people tell me they feel this way all the time. “I must be the only one who can't get my parents to move into assisted living. I think I’m the only one out there who can't get my dad to give up his car keys.” We’re dealing with human beings here, we’re dealing with older adults, who’ve lived their own lives, who, unless there’s cognitive decline, have autonomy. So, if you’re not able to get them to do what you want, I don’t want you to think you’re alone, you’re the only one, and you’re a failure. We’re dealing with other people’s established lives.
So, what I would say, and what I did not do myself, but you know, in researching the book I talked to as many people as I could about how to make this work, is approach these conversations like a conversation, like a negotiation. This is not a one and done type of conversation. I think of it like when you go and ask for a raise, rarely do we walk into the boss’ office and say, "You know what, I deserve more,” and they’re like, "Yeah you know what, here’s 10 grand.” [Katie laughs] It never happens that way. You build the case, you create the data set, you walk in, you broach the conversation, hopefully, your boss says they’ll think about it, they might ask you for more information, they might shut you down, you come back at a better time, it’s a process.
I think oftentimes we approach these things like, we’re home for Thanksgiving, or we pop in on the weekend to help them out with a task and we’re busy and we’re stressed and we’re like, I need to solve this now, like, "You know you can’t live here anymore.” Not going to work. So, approach it, like I said, as a process. And what I tell people is, open the conversation, push to the point where you realize it’s getting a little uncomfortable, and then retreat and come back another time. And look for small wins. So, you know, “Mom have you thought about moving?” “No, I’m never going to move!” Boom, okay. End that conversation today. But then Aunt Jane moves into some assisted living. “Hey, Aunt Jane is loving where she’s living. Have you seen the activities there? You want to go check it out?” “Fine I’ll go check it out, but don’t think you’re putting me in there.” Okay, it’s still a win, you’re still getting your mother to go check out a senior living facility.
The other thing I think we do wrong often times and I did it wrong every time [laughs] is we approach these conversations by putting limits on our parents. For me it was, “You know you can't drive anymore dad, you’re crazy on the road.” That didn’t go well.
Katie [11:29]:
[laughs] I can't imagine why Liz, I can't imagine why.
Liz [11:33]:
[laughs] You know what he actually said to me?
Katie [11:35]:
What?
Liz [11:35]:
He said, “I have 60 years of experience. No one has more experience on the road than me.” And I was like, Oooh.
Katie [11:41]:
How do you argue with that?
Liz [11:43]:
How do you argue with that except, yikes?
Katie [11:45]:
First of all, all the questions that you asked, the sense of making the analogy to a workplace, how you might lobby for a raise, I think that feels really familiar to people and really comfortable. The sense of picking the right time and not expecting one magical conversation.
We are going to be heading into a break but when we return, I want to explore a little bit about this work analogy and how you actually get your boss or your colleagues to understand the strain that you’re under as you are caregiving. We’ll be back after this quick break.
[Ad break]
Katie [13:42]:
Okay, Liz, we’re back from the break. When we went into you shared a wonderful analogy about having a hard conversation with your parent and thinking of it as like, "How do I lobby my boss for a raise?" When we were young, how did we lobby our parents to let us stay out later? You have to wear people down, essentially.
Your book actually focuses not simply on elder care but also on how to care for yourself and your career, and how to manage your life while you’re being a caregiver. How do we show up for ourselves in our work environment when we’re feeling under great stress? Is there a way of getting your boss or colleagues to understand your caregiving burden? Is that appropriate at work? Where do you land on this?
Liz [14:28]:
Yeah, I am full of really hard definitive answers like, “It depends,” and “Maybe.” [Katie laughs] Because in the work I do and what I care about is making care and career compatible. I wish for, again there’s that magical thinking, right, I wish for a world where we could bring our whole selves to work, and people would recognize that your employees have lives and you better make space for them. Having said that, I think, do I tell my boss what’s going on? You need to read the room. I don’t know what’s happening in your workplace environment, in your career. So, I just caution everybody to look around at the corporate culture and make that decision with as much sort of, emotional intelligence as you can.
Ideally, I think you want to operate: never surprise the boss. That’s just, whether you are caregiving or not, we should all operate like, you don’t want to ever surprise your boss. So, if things are starting to get busy on the life front, on the parent care front, then yeah. I think it’s great to say, “Look, my mom has been having a series of falls, I’m filling in for her. Maybe we can talk about what it might look like you know if I get that phone call and I need to run out the door.” I think that’s the ideal.
And what I encourage both employees and employers to do is have a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. I think if we create an environment in the work world where I say to you, “I need to leave next Friday at 3:00,” you don’t ask me why. And I don’t offer, because I’m taking my mother to the podiatrist. Instead, I say, “Here’s what I have going on, here’s how my work is going to be covered, Suzie in the next cube offered to fill in for me, and here’s how you might be able to reach me.” Or “You won't be able to reach me but here's when I’ll be back online.” So, what are you accountable for?
Katie [16:26]:
Right, coming with solutions. You’re recommending that you come with solutions versus coming with asks. I think that’s a great model.
Liz, we can't talk about caregiving without talking about the pandemic. The pandemic has completely changed the calculus of how we experience work, how we experience caregiving, and how we experience the sandwich generation. There are people who are caring for their aging parents who are also managing the needs of children. Do you feel that we’re having more honest conversations around caregiving because of the pandemic? Could this be a silver-lining? Or did the pandemic just create unmanageable situations that people have not yet recovered from? Or both?
Liz [17:10]:
Well, both. I mean, definitely... The pandemic has been brutal for caregivers and the elderly and like you said, working parents. So yes, I think we have to recognize that people are grieving; whether you lost someone during the pandemic, whether you lost time due to somebody being isolated due to the pandemic, or you know, even if that’s not that case, all of us I think are grieving what life used to be like and what we could kind of count on. So, grief is among us right now, so I think we need to be aware of that.
But there are silver linings. I think when so many people went home and went on Zoom, we went into each other’s homes. I know for me as a working daughter, I was always so cognizant of, was I showing up professionally even though my life was a complete disaster? I think when we all kind of Zoomed into each other’s homes, we all saw that our lives are all disasters. [ Katie laughs] Whether it was, like you said earlier, “If somebody knocks on your door while doing this Liz, we’ll figure it out.” Whether the neighbor just showed up and didn’t understand that you’re still working but you’re on a computer, so many of us got pets, and all those pandemic puppies were barking in the background. So, I think there was a great leveling of the playing field from that perspective and that is only going to help because we witnessed through these computer screens that, “Oh yeah, we all have lives.”
Katie [18:30]:
Exactly, and that they’re not always pretty. If you could Zoom into my life right now you would see piles of laundry because my washing machine is broken. They’re like, “We can fix it next week,” I’m like, “Next week?” Anyhow... Life is quite often full of piles of dirty laundry. You’re right, the pandemic made us more mindful of our shared humanity.
For people who are listening to this and who are already in the thick of caregiving, they know exactly what you’re talking about. But right now, both sets of my parents, and really my in-laws are healthy and independent and I’m grateful for that but I’m cognizant that that could change. What steps should I be taking, what steps should listeners be taking for this day when we inevitably need to step up? Because I’m not even fully at the creep mode yet. You’re talking about creep and crisis, you know. What should we be doing so we’re not shocked if the crisis does erupt?
Liz [19:34]:
I think it’s having those conversations that we were talking about a few minutes ago. And the other thing I would say about those conversations is to approach them with equal parts courage and compassion. So, the courage to have conversations that as a society, we have been conditioned or not comfortable or nice. Like, “Hey mom, you’re going to get old and sick and die one day, let’s talk about it.” Obviously, that’s not the approach, but as a society, we’re not comfortable with it. It is such a gift if you can have that conversation, so the courage to start it, and the compassion to understand that it’s you know, it can be a scary prospect for you and your parent to think about these phases.
One of the other things I would say about those conversations is to approach them as possibilities, not limitations. So, not the way I said, "You know you can't live here anymore, you know you can't drive anymore.” But “Have you thought about your next phase of life and what’s most important to you?” And maybe they say, "it’s living in this home forever.” “Excellent. So, should we talk about grab bars in the bathrooms and taking up the rugs for falls? And would you someday be open to someone coming in and helping around the house?” If we phrase these conversations more compassionately as what’s possible as opposed to what’s limiting, then that will really help. And then, if you can open the door to those conversations, then you can get into the nuts and bolts.
I would say if you’re thinking about that planning phase, it’s healthcare proxy, it’s do you know who your parents’ doctors are? Are they willing to give you passwords? Are they willing to add you to a bank account or make you a power of attorney? So, what are the legal implications, the medical implications, and can you talk to them about living? Are they going to age at home or are they going to move out?
Katie [21:17]:
And your book covers some of this. but for somebody who is thinking, “I need a crash course in caregiving, I need Caregiving 101.” You’ve outlined some of the things that are on the syllabus, where can people educate themselves about what they need to be asking?
Liz [21:32]:
Working Daughter actually has a program. It’s only $26, it’s all delivered via video and online and it’s called “Caregiving 101” and it answers the question: where do I begin? And it takes you through, this is the medical information to pull together and how, and this is the legal information... I mean, the where to begin is so hard. Or, you can also, in the book, there’s a chapter that takes you through that. The book is pretty much available, not only on Amazon, of course, but in any library. So, the content is accessible and free as I could make it.
Katie [22:07]:
First of all, I love that I asked you, where can we find Caregiving 101 and you’re like, “My website.” [both laugh] I should have spent some more time on it! I was on it, and I missed that. So, I love that you already created that syllabus that I was asking about. Super, super smart.
What happens if somebody is sitting here thinking, “I wish I had a sibling to have a difficult conversation with” or “I feel very alone”? I have several friends from high school who are only children that really had to shoulder the elder care burden themselves and it was really difficult. What advice, other than to be kind to yourself, would you give somebody who is navigating this relatively solo?
Liz [22:49]:
I would say, figure out how you can build yourself a team. It can be the friend that you can vent to all the time that’s never going to get sick of you whining because you deserve to. Is there someone on your parents’ team, whether it’s the nurse in their primary care physician’s office or at their specialist’s office who is on the same page as you, who you know you can advocate with and you can bounce ideas off of? Or if your parents are living in senior living, is there one particular staff member who you feel really gets your parent, really gets you. And really cultivate those relationships. So, build the team.
And then I would say, yeah, you mentioned being kind to yourself. We need to be cognizant of the fact that people are living longer. Often, when people live longer, they’re living longer with chronic illnesses. So, this is a new phenomenon that we’re going through, and we are figuring out in real-time how to create and support life for 100 years, say. And it is all falling to the family members. There’s a shortage of paid caregivers, and we haven’t done enough in this country to support our seniors, and I won't get on the soapbox.
So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, I really encourage you to look in the mirror and remind yourself that you did show up, and what you did do. Because we are being called on to be nurses, financial advisors, social networks, errand runners, and daughters and sons all at the same time. So, it is easy to get caught up in what you didn’t get to, so you have to train yourself to give yourself a pat on the back for the fact that you did do something.
Katie [24:30]:
I remember when I was in high school, this was years ago, I used to go volunteer for community service at Mary Manning Walsh which was the assisted living facility in upper Manhattan, and we spent time with seniors who were lonely. While I do a lot of volunteering in my community, I have not done anything with the elderly community, or the maturing community, in years. Are there organizations that you would point our listeners to that they might not be aware of that are providing some of the social support or that give caregivers resources or might help create this sort of social fabric and important, the crucial social network for our aging communities that we’re not aware of?
Liz [25:16]:
There aren’t any that come to mind for seniors. Everybody has an area on aging, an area agency on aging so that’s a great place to start. If there is a senior living facility in your neighborhood, they are often looking for volunteers to come to bingo, to create a multigenerational environment. That obviously shut down for a couple of years but is opening up again.
And then for caregivers themselves, I think it’s really important that you find some kind of online community like ours, and there are others, where you can go online 24/7 and you can talk about things that you don’t necessarily talk about in polite company like bathroom incidents. Or you can say, "I can't take it one more day,” without somebody coming back in your face and saying, "You should be grateful that your mother is still alive.” Places where you can just hold two thoughts at the same time, speak freely, and talk about the good stuff and the bad stuff. But I think community is so important for caregivers.
Katie [26:14]:
Absolutely. And how do we model this for our children? You went through caring for your parents during their decline, with managing your own family life. How do we get our kids pulled in? Where do you land on having them be helpful, be an important part of the family unit, and also giving them space not to be consumed in the way that... I’m asking this question because my mother, when her own father was in his final year, he spent a year at a home in Rhode Island and she spent every weekend driving to Rhode Island and back. And we would go with her sometimes. But I’m sitting here now in the cheap seats thinking, “God, I probably could have done more.” How do we get our adult kids involved? Where do you think the boundary should lie? Or is it again, it depends?
Liz [27:06]:
I think it definitely depends on our kids. We have to trust that we know our kids and we have to trust that our kids are resilient, and they know what they’re capable of too. I remember when the crisis happened, and I was really in the thick of things and I was meeting with this hospice nurse to determine if my mother was ready to be a hospice candidate and she kind of made this assumption that I didn’t work and I could just be at my mother’s side 24/7, and I pulled her out into the hall and I was at my wit’s end and so I was very blunt and I just said “I have a dad who is locked in memory care down the hall. I have a husband and two kids I haven’t seen in weeks. I have a job that’s going to hell, and I don’t appreciate that you’ve made all these assumptions that I have nothing else going on.”
She was really compassionate, and she heard me, and she said, "Okay, I get it.” She happened to be a single mother of two teenage girls, and she was like, “Let’s rework this. Your dad, you don’t worry about him right now. Your mom has three months to live, you can deal with your dad later, but you have to focus on your mom. Your dad is being handled by professionals. He’ll be okay for the next couple of months. Your job, you can’t lose that job, so we’re going to come up with a new plan...” and we talked about that. She said, “Your husband and kids, don’t worry that you haven’t been home in weeks and that you won't be home for dinner in weeks. You are modeling for them what unconditional love looks like, and that is so much more important than being home for dinner right now.” So, that just moved me and struck me, and I realized, you know, you talked about modeling, I was modeling for my kids what being a family member, what loving and caring looked like.
And then, with my kids, I would just ask them, and I think this all started when they were like, I don’t know, 8 and 10 and all the way up through 14 and 16 or something. “I think it’s time to say goodbye to Papa, he’s really sick, do you want to come in? There’s no judgment. You’re going to have so many different feelings. If you’d rather go play kickball, I will never judge you, that’s what you need right now. If you do want to go see him and say goodbye, then I’m going to support you.” But everybody does this differently, it looks different for all of us, there is no one right way.
Katie [29:16]:
If you hadn’t had that honest conversation with the nurse, you would never have received that generous and supportive answer, and I think that’s been the thread of everything that you’ve shared during this conversation today, is that you have to be willing to be brave to have those difficult conversations. We don’t get a lot of practice in it and we get kind of... It’s like we’re pulled up at a very important inning in the baseball game. That’s why I’m so delighted that you came on the show today to talk about this with people who may be on the precipice of this or are beginning to navigate it.
I want to continue to explore this topic on this show because I know that there are so many different elements that we could talk about and different angles. I’m going to encourage everybody who is listening, who does not yet have a copy of the book Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living, or I would add, just having a life, or whatever you’re doing, that you find this resource and have these honest conversations. Liz, I have really appreciated this.
We’re going to move into our speed round because our time is coming to a close. This is pretty simple, it’s just a lightning round with a one- or two-word answer, all right?
Writing Working Daughter was _____.
Liz [30:35]:
Cathartic.
Katie [30:36]:
A tech tool that helps with elder care needs: _____.
Liz [30:41]:
For me it was Excel. It’s the camera on your iPhone. Take pictures of the healthcare proxy, and the insurance cards, it can be that simple. You don’t need complicated apps.
Katie [30:50]:
I love that. Okay, a caregiving book or podcast you recommend as a resource: _____. I’m obviously putting yours in the show notes but is there something else?
Liz [31:00]:
Thank you. The book Being Mortal by Atul Gawande gets you thinking, and gets your head in the right place.
Katie [31:06]:
Fantastic. Every day people are facing the same steep learning curve on caregiving. Once they are thrown into it, that crisis moment happens, what’s the one thing you wish they knew to do?
Liz [31:18]:
To have their own life, even while they’re managing somebody else’s.
Katie [31:23]:
Fantastic. We need to demand this elder care resource from our elected officials: _____. So, this is your soapbox chance, what should we be demanding of the people who represent us?
Liz [31:33]:
Paid leave.
Katie [31:35]:
Paid leave. All right, fantastic. Caregiving is a marathon, what lifestyle choice or hack fuels you for the long run?
Liz [31:44]:
Meditation.
Katie [31:46]
And finally, your one-word answer to complete this sentence: As I age, I feel _____.
Liz [31:52]
Grateful.
Katie [31:53]:
Grateful. All right, thank you, Liz, this has been such an important and special conversation. Thank you for coming on and sharing more about your work, your book, and your community. Before we say goodbye, how can A Certain Age listeners find you and all of the resources that you offer?
Liz [32:10]:
It’s so simple, workingdaughter.com takes you to Working Daughter the book, Working Daughter the Facebook group, Working Daughter the membership. So, workingdaughter.com.
Katie [32:18]:
All right, thank you so much Liz, this has been terrific.
This wraps A Certain Age a show for women who are aging without apology. Join me next Monday when I talk with stylist Dacy Gillespie of the Mindful Closet. We dive into editing your closet, building capsule wardrobes, and mindful consumption in a world of excess.
Before we say goodbye, I have a favor to ask. Please take a minute to rate or review A Certain Age pod over on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. This is so easy to do, just find A Certain Age on your podcast app, scroll down to the bottom, then tap on the stars to rate or leave a written review. Both help the show grow.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then: age boldly, beauties.