Remember Who You Are

Important guidance for parents, caregivers, and every kind of human.

Clockwise from top left: Pooja Lakshmin, Allison Applebaum, Sehreen Noor Ali, and Molly Dickens.

Hi folks!

I’m writing today in the midst of an exciting week. This afternoon, I’m speaking about real self-care at the Texas Conference for Women. And on Monday morning I was invited for a live segment on KXAN, Austin’s local TV station. The segment was ten minutes long which, in TV time, is basically movie length!! I knocked it out of the park. (You can watch me here.)

But, anyway, I digress. Today I’m sharing with you excerpts from my conversation last month with three dear colleagues: Sehreen Noor Ali, the co-founder of Sleuth, a crowdsourced insights platform for parents and a parent caregiver; Dr. Allison Applebaum, a clinical psychologist who founded the caregivers clinic at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and wrote the book Stand By Me: A Guide to Navigating Modern, Meaningful Caregiving; and Dr. Molly Dickens, a stress physiologist and founder of

The Maternal Stress Project

.

The topic was “Caregiving” vs. “Parenting”: Do the Words Matter? You can read the full transcript, or watch the full video on YouTube.

For today’s letter I pulled my favorite pearls from the conversation, which, truthfully, could have gone on for hours. In the one hour we did have, we covered the many ways parenting and caregiving overlap — and the significant ways that they don’t. All four of us have experience either as a parent or caregiver (or both).

Sehreen, on being a parent caregiver:

I think the thing about parenting versus caregiving is that frankly, it was very triggering for me. Parenting culture, particularly coastal parenting culture, is really saturated. It feels very individual. It feels very oriented towards achievement. And when you have a child with anything, any sign of needs, that is literally the opposite of achievement culture whether you want it or not. There was a time when my daughter was really little and she had 17 therapies. She was going on zero play dates. She would go from school to therapy, and I remember there was this moment where I was like, you know what, this really sucks for her, and it really sucks for me because I've stopped talking to my friends, and I only talk to her therapist.

Allison on her experience caring for her father:

As a clinical psychologist, as a caregiver myself, as someone who's gone through loss and trauma and, of course, working with thousands of patients who are taking care of those with medical illnesses — I think there's such an important setting here, and that is the emotional, existential, and spiritual setting in which the care is happening. And it is a much different emotional experience to be taking care of someone. I won't say loved one. It doesn't have to be a loved one, but taking care of someone you know is going to die. or someone whose physical capacity is not going to improve. That is a much different experience of care than caring as a parent for a child that you wanted, that you worked so hard for, in some cases, to bring into the world. And yes, it's difficult. But the emotional tone is different there, and I think that piece contributes so much to the differences in the stress response, because I knew from day one of taking care of my dad that the end was his death. I knew that was going to happen, whether it was going to happen in a year, or 2 years, or 5 years, or in one week, that ultimately all of my efforts in the end, while, of course, they were focused on promoting quality of life, eventually they were towards promoting the quality of death. and that is a very, very heavy weight that we as family caregivers carry.

I’m sure most of you can relate to the frustration, pain, and feelings of being trapped that many of these topics can bring to mind. There were a number of themes that kept coming up during the conversation, including:

• The emotional, existential, and spiritual differences between caregiving & parenting, and how the language we use needs to do a better job of indicating these differences

• How vastly different it feels to be engaged in beginning-of-life care vs. end-of-life care

• The almost complete lack of government and policy support for caregivers — even less than for new parents, who at least receive paid (or unpaid) leave in many places

Near the end of our conversation, Dr. Allison Applebaum, who not only founded the only Caregivers Clinic in the country, but also cared for her father as he neared the end of his life, gave us a brilliant piece of advice. You can watch the full clip of what she had to say below, but, in brief, Allison says:

“One of the most powerful things I think every family caregiver can do is answer the following question from the perspective of before they became a caregiver. And that question is, ‘Who am I?’”

Who am I?

It’s a question we each continually answer as life contracts and expands, over and over again. And when we take on a huge, consuming responsibility — such as having a child or caretaking for a person in need — it’s more important than ever to know who we are at our core, and continue to make space and time for that person to still exist.

“So often as family caregivers, we become disconnected from who we are,” Allison says. “We feel like we can no longer be our authentic selves, because we are night and day caregiving.”

But, she continues, becoming a caregiver does not diminish who you are, your interests, what brings you joy. The necessary challenge is to bring those essential parts of you into your new life. It probably won’t look the same, and that’s okay. For many of my patients, reconnecting with themselves and finding that they have changed can bring up intense emotions like grief and sadness. But, if you look closely enough, you might find some other feelings too — perhaps curiosity, humor, and maybe even fun?

Allison loves dancing, and though she could no longer go to dance class while taking care of her father, she could practice for ten minutes at her father’s bedside. “I realized the bars in my dad's hospital beds were ballet bars for me,” she said. She kept dancing, and she kept her full identity close.

Of course, none of us are Pollyanna about what sacrifices need to be made as a caregiver or as a parent. My hope is that in reading today’s letter, you understand that staying connected with yourself is not a waste of time or an indulgence — it’s a necessity.

Whatever challenge you are facing today that’s taking up time and energy in your life, ask yourself:

• Who am I?

• What do I most enjoy doing?

• How can I bring some of that joy into my current life and responsibilities? What are some manageable ways to make that a reality and continue to take care of myself?

Finally, always remember your humanness. In this conversation, I shared that part of being human is being imperfect and vulnerable, getting sick, and, eventually, dying. None of these are weaknesses, though society often frames them that way. Caring for each other, and ourselves, is one of our greatest human strengths. We owe it to ourselves, and each other, to see it as such.

xo,

Pooja

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• Watch a 14-minute clip from our conversation about what it’s like to care for someone entering life vs. exiting life, and the heavy effects of uncertainty, below:

• Watch our entire conversation on YouTube

• Read more of my thoughts on self-care for caregivers

• Find Sehreen Noor Ali on LinkedIn

• Find Dr.

  Molly Dickens, PhD
  at her Substack,
  The Maternal Stress Project

• Find Dr. Allison Applebaum PhD on Instagram, and read her book, Stand By Me: A Guide to Navigating Modern, Meaningful Caregiving