Episode 117: It's Time to Grieve for the Pre-Caregiving Life You Abandoned

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Transcript

There’s always that point in time, when you are early on in your caregiving, when it hits you that things aren’t really ok. You can’t really figure out why. There isn’t one major thing that has happened, that you can remember. But you wake up one morning and don’t remember how it got to be like this. How you got to be so tired. You don’t know where all of your friends disappeared to or how you became so sad. 

Let’s talk about the importance of grieving for your pre-caregiving life so you can find a way to consciously become a caregiver. 

In the last episode I talked about how caregivers passively become caregivers most of the time. You probably weren’t given the opportunity to hear the risks and benefits of becoming a caregiving or given a choice of if you wanted to become one or not. If you haven’t listened to that episode go back to listen to it first. 

Now that you might have a better understanding, after that episode, on how much more supportive it would have been for you to understand you were choosing to be a caregiver let’s talk today about how important it is to grieve the life you had before everything changed for you. No matter how far into caregiving you are right now.

About six months into caregiving you feel tired, overwhelmed, and lonely. You find it hard to connect with family and friends the way you used to. Some friends are distant or you feel bitter that they’re going on with their lives while you seem stuck in a holding pattern. Sometimes you might find yourself enjoying a moment only to remember a few seconds later that there isn’t much to laugh about. This about the time when people grow tired of checking in with you or offering to help. It’s that moment when you really feel like you are alone in all of this.

That’s what life with a new cancer diagnosis felt like for me. I felt like I was always struggling to breathe.  I’d laugh about something and have a light moment and for a minute forget about all the worry and stress I was holding and then just as quickly I’d remember that things weren’t good. I’d wake up in the morning, notice the beautiful sun and hear the birds singing. I would have this “life is good” moment and then my husband would stir beside me and my reality would hit me. Pulling that breath out of me -  making me feel like I’d never catch it again. 

I didn’t realize then that part of me was grieving. I was grieving the old me, the old way of life, the old world I never would be a part of again. Life for the people around me didn’t change, but the world my husband, daughter, and I lived in changed instantly, without warning. 

My brain and body wanted the comfort of working on autopilot and started to fail me. I’d find myself standing in the kitchen not knowing how to take the next step forward to make a meal. Everyday decisions were difficult for me to make. I’d find myself breaking down in tears while driving somewhere because it felt familiar but realizing everything had changed and felt overwhelming. 

Becoming a caregiver is like stubbing a toe on furniture… you’re in the middle of enjoying your life. Going forward with no hesitation and then it happens unexpectedly… you hit the edge of a chair leg and it brings you to your knees. The problem was there wasn’t any time for me to sit down and analyze what was going on. Never did I think to take a moment to realize how this change in my life is affecting me and how I can acknowledge that.

I suddenly had this real fear of losing my husband. I stayed up at night wondering how I would be able to continue with life if I were to lose him. My brain was in survival mode trying to keep me protected and giving me just enough to be able to function. It was as if a film had been put over my eyes that required me to see things differently. Decisions needed to go through different filters. Things I focussed on or, maybe obsessed over, were instantly different. My problems felt more serious. There was a threat to life that I couldn’t fight on my own and I clawed at and held onto anything that gave me a shred of hope. 

Most importantly, I didn’t get to say goodbye to my old life, my former self. The old me was thrown aside without a ceremony, no kind words shared of the life I had, of the happiness I was surrounded with. The black veil was thrown over me without me noticing and I spent a long time trying to see past it. 

Not realizing that you have changed makes it difficult for you to realize who you’ve become and what your new story will be. 

We all live in a story partly created by us but also by the people we live with and have grown up with. The story is who people think you are. Are you considered the responsible one? That’s partly a persona that you took on but most likely friends and family reinforced along the way. Your story not only defines who you are but it also defines who you are not. So if you wanted to try something new, like meditation, but stopped yourself because you’re just not that type of person or because of what other people will say or think, that’s your story defining who you are. 

When you become a caregiver your story is re-written and the problem is you continue to try to live as your former self. That’s why you feel so much resistance in your life. It’s why you become bitter because you’re putting how life is now up to the standards and goals you had before and they aren’t aligned. 

When you try to live your pre-caregiving life the unfairness of it all is highlighted every day because that isn’t who you are anymore. If you felt you were crushing it by being able to get up every day feeling energized, go out into the world to make a difference, hang out with friends to laugh and have fun and then go to sleep without a care in the world and you haven’t realized that has all changed, then you’ll feel crushed. Excelling in life might now mean getting up and being able to put on clean clothes, helping the person you care for get dressed, making sure they get to their chemo appointment on time, and hopefully eating dinner calmly before collapsing into bed. You see, those are two different stories and two different worlds. 

If you can understand how your life has changed and begin to re-write your story you can stop wasting energy trying to live up to standards that don’t make any sense anymore. Here are some things you can do to meet the new you and begin to live your new story.

Re-writing your story means you have to say goodbye to the life you used to live, understand what is most important for your life now and learn what caregiving means to you at this moment.

Saying Goodbye

Anytime we have a transition in life we need to be able to grieve the loss or actively make a change. If you loose a job unexpectedly you take the time to mourn that loss and process what happened. You might take some time to figure out how that loss will create change for you. If you decide to move further in your career by getting a new job and decide to leave the one you have you are actively making a change that you know will create change for you. These are normal ways to process or work towards life changes. 

When you become a caregiver it isn’t usually a change you are anticipating and planning for. It is an abrupt change in your life but unlike getting fired from a job, this change isn’t positioned in a way for you to feel you should take the time to calculate how it would change your life and make arrangements for that change.

 You might be saying “Why should I be able to grieve when I haven’t lost anything?” but you actually have. You need to be able to say goodbye to who you were before you became a caregiver so you can fully accept who you are now. 

The July issue of the Caregiving Confessions Digital magazine is focussed on this process. There are activities that will help you grieve the life you used to have and support you in doing this as well as giving you opportunity to go over any questions or concerns in a live session with me next month. If you’d like a digital magazine to help you through this process make sure to subscribe before July 1st at loveyourcaregivinglife.com/confesssions.

Even if you think that something you had to let go of was small or trivial you need to at least take a moment to say goodbye. For example, maybe you quit book club because you just don’t have the attention span or time right now to actually read a book or meet with your friends. Or you had to go down to part-time hours at work in order to be a caregiver. Did you stop going out to get your nails done or can’t do your volunteer work? 

It doesn’t matter how big or small the things you stopped doing are because of the change in your story it’s still a life change you probably made without understanding what was happening. When you look back at how your day is going or how life is at the moment and you find yourself upset because you aren’t doing the things that made you feel like a success you aren’t enjoying the life you’re actually living. So if you can say goodbye to the things that don’t fit anymore you can stop using them as goals that you’ll continually fail to meet. 

Letting go of the parts of you that aren’t actually you anymore is how you can understand and accept your caregiving role. So if you can take time throughout this week and even just reminisce about the way things were before you became a caregiver you might start to notice what has really changed for you. You might realize there are some things you really enjoyed doing and that you miss. Those are important to make note of because that is when you’ll need to know for the next step and the topic for the next episode. 

First you figure out what parts of you that can be let go. Find a way to let go of it. Maybe you you write them down on a piece of paper and throw them into a bonfire. Just create a ritual or a moment dedicated to letting go of these things that don’t really define who you are anymore.

Then you begin to piece together who you are today. We’ll get to that next time. Until then take some time to say goodbye to the pieces of you that don’t fit anymore. 

Thanks for listening.

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