How do I not lose my temper when caregiving for family elders?

Writing at the local coffee shop is always fun. Cora and I run into people we know, they ask questions, I ask questions, Cora wiggles her butt and smiles. If we're open to it, we then proceed to solve each other's problems in 2 to 15 minutes. We commiserate, sometimes we hug, we offer encouragement, we ask for and offer stories or ideas or connections, and then we get back to our busy lives. We don't really solve each other's problems. Not directly. But we do stay together long enough to make sure that we all feel a little bit lighter, or more supported and connected, and a little more confident in our own ability to handle these wild and wonderful and painful lives/times. We remember that we're not alone and that we're in this life together.

This week, a friend I haven't seen in 3 or 4 months stopped by my table at the coffee shop, told me her elder caregiving story, and then asked me this: "How do you not lose your temper when caregiving for family elders? You always seem so calm, grounded. How do you do it?" Umm, wow. What a fantastic perspective and what a fantastic question to show up this month of all months. If you read my post last week– Matriarchy Rising– you already know why.

To answer this question, here are seven things we came up with together, on the spot, in less than 15 minutes, plus one extra thing at the end that I wish I'd said, but didn't, at the time, and one last story from Cora the dog, who has also worked as a caregiver her entire fluffy 5-year life/career.

How do you not lose your temper when caregiving for family elders or family members? Here are nine ways of being and ideas from our community and family to yours. Lean on what works for you. Ignore what doesn't.

#1 - Offer people so much respect that you truly believe they can handle full transparency and hearing more about your current reality

Offer total, and even brutal, honesty about what's happening in your life– with any adult willing to stay present and listen. Everyone– friends, family, strangers, neighbors, people you run in to and interact with over the course of your day, dogs, cats, birds, trees, a river, the ocean, every living being you think can handle you. Be your whole self. Share how you're truly doing. Then notice. Who stays present? Who has time to listen without judgement? And who tunes out? Or blows up too? Then, spend more time with those willing to be fully present with you, as you truly are, right now. For me, some days, that's just non-judgmental trees, cats, a dog, a book, and Mom, who cannot speak anymore and who sleeps often, having lived with Alzheimer's disease for 23+ years.

My friend who mentioned how calm I always seem to be hadn't seen me in months or read my latest posts. I thought "Wow. We really haven't seen each other in while, my friend, so you haven't noticed yet that I'm a total f*cking mess right now." As someone who has been caregiving for elders for two decades, I find it's always best to start where you really are. Start with the truth when people assume that you're doing far better than you are or far better than they are. And also, start with where you really are when you've previously assumed that you need to protect others from what's happening, or you, or that other adults within your community cannot handle you or handle your experience and truths. We can handle quite a bit, you and I. Especially when we're together in person.

There are full-of-energy people younger than me– some holding less than me and some holding far more– who will say that you should always ask first. They'll say to always ask if the other person has the capacity and space to hold your pain today/right now, before you share. Good for them. What a lovely, kind, helpful, and inspiring idea and action. For those with the energy, capacity, health, and/or community support to pull that off, fabulous. Do that. Love that. And. That's not where I am this month. At all. Having the capacity to ask first– and presuming that everyone has the same capacity as you to ask all the time before you share your story or pain– demonstrates just how much space and energy and time privilege you actually have. Use that space and energy and time to walk away from me if you can't handle me exactly as I am this month. I need super soft/super strong friends now. Ridiculously soft/strong friends and community. People soft/strong enough to hear and handle hard things together no matter where we are. To weep together, and even break down in public, together, as needed, so we can build back up together from a stronger, more collective, more honest, more real, powerful place.

In 15 minutes, some days.

#2 - Dispense with "I'm fine." when you are not, in fact, fine. Replace it with "Here's where I'm at today..."

Here's where I'm at today...

I haven't been sleeping well for a month, and I'm run down. My Mom is likely in her final year on earth, we feel that, and zero family besides me and Dad want to visit her, and that weighs on me. My dad's health and memory are getting worse too, and his decision making abilities have slipped (such as deciding to push a friend in a wheelchair up to her room in an assisted living building tower earlier this week--a floor where people have Covid), and we just learned that he now has Covid, again, so my caregiving responsibilities will go into overdrive for two weeks, again. Unexpectedly, again. When I was finally going to get to take a true vacation– a full 5 days with no responsibilities– again. And, I have far less family and friend support now than I have ever had in my life. After decades of elder caregiving and running my business and not prioritizing myself enough, I'm often isolated, alone, and it often feels like nobody outside the walls of our home truly gives a rat's ass about us, about me, anymore.

I deeply appreciate the different perspective on me that my friend offered to me. Me? Always calm and grounded? LOL. I'm not always calm– far from it– though I was calm-ish today because both Mom and Dad are being helped by other people today as I now sit here alone taking my second Covid test in 4 days because Dad got Covid. Here, calm is a direct result of how deeply I am able to breathe and how deeply they, and D, are able to breathe, too. It often feels like only one of the four of us gets to breathe deeply each day and that they're all good at taking turns. Skipping me entirely. I have arguably one of the best partners on earth– the man could be up for sainthood if he were Catholic– but one man cannot possibly take the place of the village I need now. No one person could.

I'm definitely not always grounded. Although, if you come to my home when I'm not caregiving, you'll often find me face down on the grass, or face down in a lounge chair outside, listening to the wind, or on the couch inside, under a blanket, holding and soothing my hurting self and seeking comfort and momentary escape from the human world, my unending and lonely responsibilities, and the real, in-body downsides of being an empathic being– who feels what people are feeling even when they themselves never say a word about it– during difficult times for almost every living body on earth. Some people are tree huggers. Twenty years into caregiving, I hug the ground. The moss. The soil. The lawn chair, the couch, and the bed. There I let go of my own grief and also decades of family caregiver grief and community loss, and cross-generational female-body and mind attacks and fears, and settler/colonizer/white supremacy horrors and grief and guilt and genocide, and online attacks from men and fake accounts/bot farms who target me because I appear to be female and I speak my mind without the fear I'm supposed to hold for them, which really pisses them off. I release it all into the ground. I let go of it all, into this land I love like kin and whose trees and grasses wave to me and speak to me and lift me up on my very worst days. So, yes, I guess I am pretty damn grounded. Thanks for noticing, friend. Thanks for noticing what I myself couldn't see this month.

That people only see me sucking down iced matcha lattes– like they're the last, best, and only medicine for all that ails this world and me– at the coffee shop I'm hiding out in twice a week to feel the community-level presence and voice I need to write, doesn't exactly give a well-rounded picture of me. On top of my writing work, and my tending of our immediate family and home and the land here, and my spouse's recent terrifying pile up of health scares, and selling my business this summer to have more time for my family, and supporting the new family/new friends running my former business, and holding the intentionally cruel and violent state of the country and the human world (because it's profitable for an apparently heartless, cruel few), and having dear friends in and near a genocide zone whose hearts and sorrows I try to help hold (almost 2 years in and 500,000 people lost now), and several local friends struggling, and worrying about how we'll afford health insurance next year, and wondering why I seem to mean so little to people who once loved me dearly, I have also been an almost full-time caregiver for elder family members for 12 years and a care partner for Mom for 20+ years. All our other relatives, and all my parents' friends from the first 75 years of their lives, live more than 1,000 miles away.

Most of my own friends– made when I had time for friends– live on the mainland. We live on an island. Literally. And metaphorically. Alzheimer's Island. Talk about a reality TV show that will never be made. There's far too much reality here.

No matter how much I try to stay on top of life, I fail. I fail all the time. Every day. I've failed at something every day for 12 years now. I'm really good at failing some days. And, I'm regularly exhausted, isolated, and angry to full of rage (for me, just angry, without rage, is a really good week). As the years pass, friends and family who once helped have drifted away. And I let people drift away because I don't have time or energy to not allow those who want to drift away, to drift away. I'm now alone most of the time and/or with parents who aren't great listeners anymore. Dad has hit the age (an 84-year-old who has been a caregiver for 30 years himself: first his own mom and then his wife) where his own pile of health issues and worries get the best of him now and then and he takes out his frustration on me, yelling at me simply because he's in pain or confused and I'm the only person present. So, I'm resentful often now. Hurt, often. Jealous of others often now, too. I'm even jealous of myself and who I was before caregiving. And I'm also worried, often, now. Not just about the state of the world and the family, but because this summer I became the same age that Mom was when her earliest changes from Younger Onset Alzheimer's began to show up. And. I have screamed at more than one person I love in the past few weeks.

Thanks to my connection to friends in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem– may peace be upon every last one of them– I'm also 100% aware of how lucky I am– how lucky many people here are– and how remarkable our home planet herself is. I have spent years witnessing people make the best of humanity within genocide, within cities turned to ash, all farms and trees destroyed, and snipers targeting children, even as they and their kids are terrorized and separated and starved to death on a scale that boggles the mind. So. I am grateful, now, too, for every breath, every footstep, and every moment that I and those I love are not receiving intentional violence. Not hearing drones 24x7. Not losing neighbors to snipers, bombs, fire, gases, and man-made starvation and disease daily. Not living in tents and fighting off diseases because our water and food and sanitation and hospitals have all been taken from us. ICE is also not coming for my family right now. And when/if they do, I want it to be me they come for first. Because they will not be getting past me without rethinking the wisdom of coming after anyone in our community. So, I am grateful for being a living being– with a heart that gladly holds the whole world– who still works and plays and lives for a better tomorrow for herself and others.

That is where I'm at today.

I am holding unimaginable loss and horrors and abandonment, and I am still full of playfulness, wonder, sass, tears, and belonging. But I am definitely not fine. Settling for fine is not in me anymore. There's no room for settling left within me. Thank God.

Where are you at today? It's time to move beyond "fine" together.

#3 - If you're caregiving for someone(s) with whom you can't lose your temper because they wouldn't understand or truly couldn't take it, find a designated person(s) to scream with, or at, elsewhere in your life.

Holding your temper can be a necessary quick fix. I do it often myself. Hell, a lot of women are trained to hold and moderate everyone's temper, not just their own. We tend to be good at it, until we're not. Until we snap. And, holding your own temper is also, ultimately, a fool's game when you're caregiving for others long term. You have to let the frustration and pain out somewhere. You have to share it. If you don't, you will eventually fail to hold your temper spectacularly, and when you fail, then weeks, months, years, or decades of anger building from having to hold your temper, and hide your feelings, and not be your true self, will explode outward from you in all directions. Drenching all who can hear or feel you. Some will understand– having had volcano moments like that themselves. Some will stand there drenched in your pain, blinking, shocked, and almost completely clueless about your apparent overreaction to one small thing.

In the past year, there were months when I was caregiving for Mom, and Dad, and D, on top of running my small business during the busiest months of my business: during the two months during which I make 60 to 70% of my annual income. In those months, the once-difficult decision to sell the business was made for me. Because I literally could not do it all. And there was nobody present, in person, to help.

This is why friendship circles, support groups, great neighbors, mutual aid networks, good therapists, and punching bags are all so great. It's especially powerful to release those feelings in the presence of others who've felt the same– people who will nod along and whisper "Yep, me too." and not judge you for feeling how you feel– that's a lifesaver. Also, screaming together feels so much better than screaming alone. I'm pretty certain that before this year is over here in the U.S., we're all going to need to have support groups or designated screaming buddies. Especially those of us who can't afford, don't have time for, or don't want therapists, paid full-time help, or trips to the other side of the planet to escape from the pain of here.

Ideally, warn people ahead of time that you're going to scream with them/at them because you really just need to scream about what is. And, we don't live in an ideal world. For the past month, I haven't had the energy or desire or ability to warn people anymore. This month, I'm stuck with relying on just screaming, and the kindness of strangers, and the forgiveness of friends, family, and brand-new friends. Which sucks. And, it is what it is. As a result, though, I'm making a new set of friends again. Brave AF friends. People who hold global genocide, community loss and pain in person, and family loss, too– messily, and together. I already think of them as the Huge-Soft-Hearts-Hold-All-of-Us gang. You can't tell who we are by looking at us, our homes, our cars, our jobs, our genders, our religions, or anything else on the outside of us. You can only feel us, and join us, from within. I find myself part of an emerging-yet-constant group whose only truly distinguishing features as a whole are our willingness to love the whole world and our willingness to scream our grief and sorrow and loss openly and publicly, now and then, so we don't stay bogged down, and we have the collective strength to keep refilling our wells, becoming loving again and again, and keep living and going.

#4 - Try not holding your temper

Another option is to just allow yourself to lose your temper. Lose it. Try it. See what happens. (She says, as if we always have a choice.)

One reality I've lived is that if I'm honest whenever my patience is being tried or I'm being hurt, then my anger still happens, but it's not overwhelming. "Dad! I'm 55, not 5. If you don't like the way I park/set the mirrors/use the windows in your car, then we'll be taking my car from now on." or "Are you sure you don't need hearing aids? You're talking over me, again." or "Ahhhh! I'm going outside to get a few minutes to breathe!" is usually enough, at the moment, to wake him up enough out of his extreme self-focus to see that he's hurting others, or me. Another reality I've lived is trying to protect someone from my pain for so long– years– that one day I just lose it, explode, and tell them to fuck off and that their absence would be preferable to their current presence in our lives.

See? Not calm all the time.

Now and then, when no community help or family help or friendship help or paid-for help or neighbor help is present at all, and, in fact, we're being hurt by those we love most, then losing our temper may be the only choice left to us. (If you don't know that yet, then lucky, lucky you.) If you've tried countless other things and nothing else you've tried is working, and no other help is offered or present, then yes, no matter who you are, you may hit the day when all you can imagine doing is losing your temper. Sometimes your temper is all you have left to give. In that case, definitely lose your temper. Lose it. (Always, if its physically safe for you to do so. Getting really angry isn't a privilege everyone has.)

Sometimes when we lose our temper, we feel bad or guilty or embarrassed or like a complete failure or loser. You may fear that you'll be rejected from the family or friend-group or community or from the human race herself. Other times, though, it's like the sky opens up, and, in that moment, you see that you've just become your own bright and shining beacon. Your own advocate. Your own caregiver. You realize that you should do onto yourself as you do for others. Or that you should have spoken up sooner, or louder. Or maybe openly lost your temper months or years ago. Should have let more help in or demanded more for yourself and others. Chronically protecting others from your true feelings definitely hurts you over time. Bottle up enough pain, for long enough, and it can fester and morph into chronic illness and even self-hatred, self-abuse, or violence. That pain eventually becomes un-bottle-up-able (I'm a poet: we're allowed to make up words.), and it eventually practically oozes out of your pores– and it definitely seeps into your words and actions toward others on its own– hurting loved ones and strangers alike. Whether you intend to, or mean to, or try to stop it, or not.

I'm not judging. I'm describing my own experience. What I myself have done.

If you're caregiving for adults who are so frail that you believe they cannot possibly understand or tolerate you losing your temper now and then or take responsibility for their part in the relationship anymore– or if you believe it's not safe for you to do so– you then need more help, right now. So that you can vent elsewhere and so you can tap someone else into the caregiving role when you need to tap out for a while. Start finding role models of amazing human beings– or other living beings or other families or communities or collectives– who ask for help. Start listening to and watching– and feeling– what they do and say together. In person. Online. At the local community center, senior center, library, coffee shop, garden center, weekly protest, assisted living community, or pub. Wherever you go. Watch for what you need, learn, and step into your new self. The self you need to be now.

Become the self who loses her temper, survives, accepts more help, grows, and lives to tell the tale.

#5 - Create something or celebrate creation

We agreed that creating helps. The act of creation, itself, helps. And when you don't have the energy for creating, another way to moderate your temper as a tired caregiver, or just as a big-hearted human being in a needlessly isolating and violent human world, is witnessing, helping, or sharing other people creating things they/you love. Celebrating creation.

I love to create, yes. And I also love helping others create and love witnessing others create things– yay makers markets and farmers markets! yay potlucks, protests, school recitals, county fairs, and soup kitchens! yay activities directors! yay Instagram!– especially on the days I'm caregiving all day and on the days I'm too exhausted to create anything at all but a well-rested, feels-like-me-again self.

Create when you can create. And don't be a snob. Count everything you create as creation– be inventive as you have to. I call cooking and cleaning "Being a personal assistant and chef for a writer." Create things together too. Rest and witness or share other creators when you can't create.

Writing, making jams and pickles and health-supporting syrups and infusions and honeys and teas, and home canning for/with my Dad (for our family, neighbors, and fundraising for families in Gaza), and me showing up for a protest now and then in person when I'm not caregiving and online are me creating this month. Locals with heart connections to Gaza, the West Bank, or the region, join us Saturdays at Bayview Park & Ride (corner of 525 and Bayview Road) between 11 am and 1 pm to stand against genocide and fundraise for families there. You don't even have to protest– just stop by for homemade cookies or bread or jam and donate to families in need. Or, join the community at the Open Tables' Gaza Soup Kitchen Benefit– art, auction, music, and poetry– September 27, 4 to 7 pm, at the Langley United Methodist Fellowship Hall. Come meet the Huge-Soft-Hearts-Hold-All-of-Us gang. Literally everyone present in these locations is a member of this gang that lives both within my imagination, and around me, in person. Their presence alone is healing. See, Cora dog? I am learning.

I also love watching others write, make music, sing, cook, bake, paint, garden, do standup comedy, act (especially live theater), dance, create more space and time to hold pain, weave communities together and expand community, mend and repair things, create gifting and bartering and mutual aid networks, run small organizations and businesses, organize to protect selves and others, run racist lawbreaking rogue ICE agents out of their communities, play well enough that both kids and elders laugh, work to improve the lives of families in need, and come up with creative new twists on old ideas for throwing wrenches into the workings of violent, fascist regimes around the world, including our own.

#6 - Throw something, destroy something, or let something or someone– possibly including a past you– go.

I aspire to love running until I'm entirely out of breath, like Cora. I'm not there yet. But I do love throwing beach rocks and driftwood back into the ocean. This time of year, I occasionally throw small fallen branches and the odd piece of rotting fruit from beneath the fruit trees as far as I can possibly throw them, down an embankment and into a vast blackberry bramble below where no humans and only the smallest animals and rodents ever go. I love taking a load of branches and weeds and other yard waste to the places that turn them into mulch. I love flinging big branches up into that giant pile until my shoulders ache.

I love decimating our closets and bringing boxes to local thrift stores. I love gifting things away in our local Buy Nothing group. I've also posted online about the genocide in Gaza for years on social media– knowing that both by choice and also by the online algorithms' programmed tendencies that I'm actively letting go of both a less-brave self and some old friends who have no desire to hold this pain on top of their own pain: a pain that I choose to hold with our friends in and near Gaza. My writing work is also mostly about letting go. For every essay and poem that I publish here, I also write, tear apart, reimagine, delete, and/or otherwise let go of at least three or four others. I also sold a business in May that I built from scratch across the past 7 years. Let things go into memory, history, or into the hands of those who'll love them better than I can now is easier for me than it used to be. And, it's still much harder to let go of beloved people, and what we once were to each other but can't be anymore. Twenty years into care partnering/caregiving for elders, we've built a bit of throwing things, destruction, and some physically and emotionally releasing what needs to go next– every week– into our practice and lives here. And even with practice, letting some people go feels almost impossible.

Destruction doesn't have to be World War 3. Doesn't have to be trapping yourself online in a manosphere of blame and hate and lies and delusion. Doesn't have to be death camps, for-profit prisons, weapons manufacturing, or genocide.

One of my friends makes collages that start with the act of ripping paper to into tiny shreds. Another friend digs a deep hole in her garden when she's really angry. I know people who hike miles into the mountains or woods to scream or throw things. Some people beat the holy crap out of drums and guitars. We know many people who play video games or cosplay sword battles or play fiercely competitive tabletop games to release their destruction from within. We know others who create and/or destroy angry, provocative artwork to release the pain and violence the human world asks them to hold. One friend throws all her pain into weekly therapy sessions. Others into clay and pottery and letting broken things, sometimes, just go. I'm also part of many online groups for women and nonbinary folks where we can vent and scream and yell and say out loud, with/to sympathetic strangers, things like "We don't fucking care about that anymore!!!" and "We're not doing that anymore!!" And "That's not our work to do for you anymore, gentlemen!!" All day long if we want to. And wow, do we want to right now.

Then there are those who intentionally show up to break down the walls of fear between people they were/are taught to hate, fear, and blame. To give faces and share stories across the lines we're told we cannot cross or we will surely be destroyed. These days, everywhere on earth is the front lines for that work. Letting go of past selves– terrified selves– and leaping toward something better together that we can feel we need but can't fully see yet.

Geniuses! Courage! I am surrounded by genius and the courage to let some people and some things go!

I am already gearing up for the day that Dad can't drive the boat or his car anymore. I have imagined throwing car keys into the impenetrable blackberry bramble behind our home and the boat keys into the ocean to clearly, strongly, end those arguments. Some days, even imagining destruction works wonders. ;-)

Being older helps too. Lucky, lucky us. We've also had to let go of friends and family (both living and those who died), pets, countless opinions, and countless unhelpful or even cruel comments on our work, our caregiving, our perspective, our way of life, and on my body. I've let go of many former selves too. In the past few years, I've completely let go of Silenced Me– the part of me still willing to stay silent in the face of men blaming or mocking or belittling women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community– even unintentionally in hurtful old language, unexamined assumptions, and not-funny humor meant to keep people in their place. I've let go of the part of me that stayed silent in the face of violence, up to and including, genocide. I also let go of I Want to Be Popular Me– the person worried that speaking up will hurt feelings and lose her friends, family, readers, business, and work/jobs/future work/future friends. Alzheimer's disease gave me that gift. The only way I find new friends these days is by speaking up. By not staying silent. Wow is that a fun way to find friends.

As we get older and we have less energy, sometimes we realize that the self that has to go is someone else. But often, the self that really has to go is who we used to be and the expectations that that person had and the behavior that person exhibited. A self whose presence was once needed, to get us here, but who is no longer needed in the same way now that we've made it here. This month I ungraciously let go of Big Sister me. I should have let her go years ago. My sister is competent AF. She doesn't need a big sister. Like me, she needs friends to lean on. And even if she does need a Big Sister– a Mama Bear-like protector– sometimes, this month I don't have it in me to be that me anymore. Not with limited emotional support, having to caregive for three family members at once this past year, the new energy-draining behavior of elders I caregive for, and just the realities of supporting aging elders while aging yourself. Big Sister me is already gone. The part of the story where I could offer a lot of support without receiving a lot of support is done. We'll have to become something new together or move apart so we can each find the in-person support we most need.

#7 - Spend more down time with playful, generous people– in person

For me that's more time with women, nonbinary and LGBTQ+ folks, and folks interested in creating mutual aid networks. In person, not just online where Writer Me loves to be.

This one came to me right off the top of my head as we talked about what it takes to not lose our tempers all the time with the sometimes-difficult family members and the herding of people through the scary or dangerous-to-self-and-others aspects of very late elderhood. For the first time in 84 1/2 years, my Dad has begun losing his temper with me. And I've been losing both my joy and my temper more often lately too, so it feels like I'm losing both my family and the self I most love to be all at once. Selling the business was step one in my plan. See who naturally shows up for me and who I naturally show up for was the next step. And this summer I've also been thinking about what I personally need most this year. To survive now. Stay generous and loving. Stay playful. Stay me. Not get sucked into the world of hate and blame my government, large corporations, the media, and others centered on fear create. For the first time in many years, I'm thinking about what I need. And this– #7– is it.

I spent the past 7 years either alone in my studio or mostly alone in the wilderness doing my herbalist work and building the business, selling at markets and online, and caregiving for my folks, and driving to and from caregiving for people 45 minutes away, and with my husband and pets– who are all just lovely. I'm lucky. And. I've been either alone, or with cis straight white men, 99% of the time for many, many years.

My parents need my full attention. The business needed my full attention too. My husband and pets need some of my time too. Until this year, I haven't made much time for writing or friends or community building outside my reach as a sister and aunt and running a small business. For the women and nonbinary and LGBTQ+ folk in my life. For others like me deeply interested in mutual aid networks. People who bring joy and energy simply with their presence. I shifted years ago to mostly connecting with women, nonbinary, LGBTQ+, and activist folks by talking via text, reading books, listening to podcasts, and watching, listening, or talking to them online. Or talking to other makers at makers markets: places where having fun together can happen but it's usually not the top priority for people there to make a living.

What if fun was our top priority? I've had little time and energy for in-person gatherings just for fun and for making new friends: not just acquaintances but actual friends to just hang out with. People who want to just be together. For fun. To relax. Drink tea. Go out. To play. For being with people who just get me– and I get them– without having to work hard to be understood or translate so damn much. And it shows. I've been feeling like I'm completely alone in the world. Feeling like nobody around me cares deeply about what I care deeply about. Feeling never fully seen and never fully heard. And angry at myself for letting this happen.

What if fun was our top priority?

These are my new goals now:

• Being present, with friends, in person, for the fun of it.
• Making new friends and re-prioritizing the friends I do have but haven't made time for in a long time.
• Re-finding my most fun self. Laughing more with everyone I'm with.
• Contributing to making the community here really strong, really soft, really brave, and really fun.
• Joining/starting/becoming a mutual aid collective where fun and supporting each other outside the "always make and pay top dollar for services but rarely have time to grow closer and more trusting" U.S. model is a core priority. Because none of the above will happen if I don't get some in-person help and I don't offer some in-person help too.
• Letting go of the remaining parts of me that stand in the way of all of the above.

#8 - Name emotions out loud then sit with them & wonder about them until new insights emerge

Not everybody who is an elder caregiver has the privilege of the time and energy to do this one, so I didn't offer the idea in person. But it's been really useful, so I offer it now. To those who do have the time and energy. This is definitely something I've learned to do across 20+ years of both supporting a caregiver (being a care partner) and then being an elder caregiver. I name emotions and sit with them all the time now, out of habit.

The more you notice and name your emotions out loud– even if only to yourself at first– the more comfortable you become with emotions in general and about living and working and even playing with your own emotions, specifically, and also becoming more comfortable with the emotions of those you're a caregiver for or care partner with and others around you.

As a caregiver, the more you sit with emotions, the more you realize you hold, and the more nuance emerges, which leads to new emotions being named, and new insights. Is this anger born of temporary exhaustion that will pass or is this chronic enough that it's the beginning of resentment, contempt, or separation? Is this fear? Frustration? Envy? Jealousy? Grief? Sorrow at not being noticed? Where does joy live now? How can I find joy again? Where is playfulness? Surprise and delight? Is there space for curiosity, wonder, or awe? Can we come back from feeling ignored, abandoned, neglected, abused? Come back from outrage? What about contempt? If so, how? If not, what do we do then? When I resort to blaming, what does that say about my emotional state? What am I actually doing? How does understanding that help me hold pain when I'm the one being unfairly blamed?

Here's the really powerful part about this one. If you sit with your emotions regularly, you get to feel all your feelings– you get to be a fully human being in an often inhumane world– and you get more comfortable with all your feelings, and then you get more comfortable with other people's feelings, even the tough and uncomfortable ones. Getting to be a fully human being, regularly, actually tends to help keep your temper in check. Nobody else on earth may be prioritizing you this month, but YOU still are if you sit with your emotions. And. If you do this– #8– regularly, and you still lose your temper a lot, then you know. You need more help. Period. Now. Do what you have to do to get more help. For example, say "Yes!" when people offer help, meet up with other caregivers, ask someone else to cover for you for a whole week, set up a mutual aid/support swap with neighbors, lean on local senior centers and adult care centers, accept less-than-perfect offers of help and support, let go of more energy-drainers for you, walk away from all other people who hurt you if you're determined to keep helping this elder who now sometimes huts you too, spend more time with the completely non-judgmental (birds, sky, dogs, trees, horses, fields, parks, bodies of water, for example), and/or figure out how to notice or bring more you-specific energy-supporters and energy-creators into your lives. Or, ask someone else to help you do one or more of those things.

Getting to be a fully human being, regularly, actually tends to help keep your temper in check.

#9 - Cora's advice

Our Australian Shepherd dog Cora is a remarkable caregiver. Last year I learned that she's a better caregiver than I am in many ways. She's my mentor now.

Cora was 8 weeks old when she joined our family 5 years ago, at a time when our other dog, Eva, was recovering from losing a leg to bone cancer, chemo, and an immunotherapy trial we lucked into that got her a whopping 4 more years of life. Yay! But I digress. Cora spent the first three years of her young life learning from Eva and also caregiving for Eva. She curled up against her, tucking into the extra space where Eva's cancer-riddled leg used to be. Eva occasionally had anxiety outside, after her amputation, so Cora patrolled the yard and then sat with her to make sure Eva felt safe outside. She kept Eva moving, was gentle with her, and she played with Eva at Eva's pace, which was slower and more often rolling-on-the-ground than her own pace. She even stepped between Eva and other dogs at the dog park now and then if she got a bad vibe from them, to help minimize Eva's anxiety (Eva's body knew that she couldn't out-run other beings anymore and sometimes that knowing got the best of her). Usually when Cora did that, she put her fuzzy butt in the other dog's face and she stood smiling, face to face, with Eva.

At the end of last year, my partner D went through a series of scary medical issues– and even scarier medications and gaping holes in the medial system here– that suddenly brought on anxiety and panic attacks in him, which made everything, including his recovery, worse. Cora leapt back into caregiver action. Neither D nor I have ever experienced anything at all like panic attacks and extreme anxiety. We had no idea what to do, and a lot of the things we tried at first just made the symptoms worse, not better. D became emotionally unrecognizable some days. He felt like a stranger to me. But Cora knew what to do. She went with him into a quiet, dark bedroom and just sat with him quietly. She laid her head on his lap or even got into his lap sometimes. Licked his hands sometimes. She put her full 40-pounds of weight on his chest sometimes. She stayed with him, and she kept him moving, and she brought him back to himself again and again, across 4 months, while his wife and a dozen other human health experts experimented until they figured out how to help. Herbalist Me learned lessons I'll never forget from Cora. We have so much more to offer than expertise or plants or tea or infused honeys or medications. Or even words. Our entire being– and way of being– can be a healer!

So, that was Cora's caregiving advice– tucked between the words.

Stay present and open. Breathe. Love who you're with. Love yourself and be yourself. Hold that love at your center. Notice what they need. Notice what you need. If you feel stressed, consider hugging those you love and wiggling your butt– that works for her. If you feel happy, definitely wiggle your butt. Drop expectations and long-term worries and trying to fix everything and just focus on the simple needs at hand, right now, right here. Just today. Just this one minute. Just these 5 minutes.

Trust your experience and also your whole body, not just your brain. And use your whole body–sit with people, hold their hands, hug people, touch people, rub their feet, walk beside them, listen to people even when you don't understand. Your loving presence matters far more than your opinion. Loving, quiet, and attentive full-body presence is often far better than words and ideas and strategizing and thrashing about from busy expert to busy expert. Especially when the person you're caregiving for is frightened, agitated, anxious, confused, angry, and/or panicking. My problem– especially for the first two months into D's health meltdown– was that his panic attacks and anxiety would so easily spread into me. So, I often felt anxious while trying to help a very anxious person– not particularly useful to him. I was worried about way too much. Cora's genius, then and now, is that she continues to love D and I no matter what state we're in– anxious, freaking out, panicking, angry, blaming, calm, happy, cheerful, loving– to Cora these are all just other ways of being. Nothing to fear. Just another aspect of us to learn how to be present with, and for, so she can spend more time with her favorite human(s) on earth. Cora never, for a second, stops leading with love. His anxiety, and mine, barely touch her completely love-infused body. Such a powerful being! Such a good dog. And a worthy mentor, because I know a lot of amazing humans but I've yet to meet one who is so full of love all the time that they never, ever, fill with worry, or anger, or blame, and all the other things we humans fill ourselves with.

One of the reasons Mom has done so well living with Alzheimer's is that after 15 years of caregiving at home, both Dad and I were struggling with staying focused on the love, like Cora did/does with Eva and Daniel and me. Dad and I were exhausted. Mom was agitated, often up and down all night, and she wasn't recognizing Dad much anymore, so she started fighting him helping her with getting dressed, using the bathroom, showering, and even eating. At that point, moving her into her Memory Care home meant that we suddenly had 50 more people– and the other families of people who live in her home too– to help us stay centered on love. It's far easier to stay centered on love when 50 to 100 people are helping you, not just 2 or 3 always-exhausted people. Mom thrived her first few years in her memory care home: she literally got better in many ways, which is supposed to be impossible in the later stages of Alzheimer's. Today, she's still surrounded by love in all directions. Eight years living in her Memory Care home! Today she can't speak that love out loud, but she can feel it, and I can feel that knowing, that awareness of being loved, within her. It radiates out from her some days.

So, there are our best answers to the question "How do you not lose your temper when caregiving some days?" I'm so grateful for those always teaching me to stay present enough, and close enough, to keep feeling the love and re-centering on love and community when we lose it. And wow do I lose it some days. 😄