The "Child Voice" of a Caregiver

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Call 866-WINASIA or to see chickens and other animals to donate, go to crittercampaign.org. Hi, I'm Gracie Rosenberger, and I'm the wife of Peter Rosenberger. He's a great caregiver. He's only dropped me a couple of times, but he really makes me laugh in the emergency room, and I can guarantee you he'll put a smile on your face. Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver.

I am Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one program for you as a family caregiver. How are you doing?

How are you feeling? The reason we ask that is because so many ignore the caregiver, and so many caregivers allow themselves to be ignored, but not on this show. And we are so thrilled to have you with us. If you want to be a part of the show, 877-655-6755.

877-655-6755. And we stream the show live on our Facebook page at Hope for the Caregiver and other group pages and so forth. If you want to be a part of that while you're watching and you're calling the show, you could be here with not just me, but himself, Jon Butler, the Count of Mighty Disco himself. How you doing, Peter? I'm doing just lovely. Jon, thank you for being a part of this.

A couple, just some business notes real quick. We broadcast the show every Saturday morning at 8 a.m. Eastern. And we just punched through, Jon, and we're on over 200 stations now.

That's what I hear. And I'm extraordinarily grateful for that. And then we podcast, we do the live podcast interviews and so forth here on Sunday evenings. And we just changed over to a new podcasting company, which I was a little bit hesitant to do, but I've got guys that are working with me.

I'm part of a network and do that. And they said, no, you need to do it. I said, well, I don't want to lose all the data and so forth.

And they said, no, you got it. But it's all there because we just punched through over 50,000 downloads now that we've had on our podcast, which for some people that may not be a lot. That's a lot to me, Jon. Oh, yeah.

So I love it. But we're on every kind of podcast platform out there and it's a free podcast that we push out and we hope you'll take advantage of it and share it with friends who are going through different things. We're separated out by topics, you know, all that kind of stuff to do.

And then I get calls in about people. In fact, I had a call yesterday about the book and they wanted to know where they can get the books and CDs and so forth. And they're all out at the dot coms, you know, Amazon and so forth, if you want to buy the book and the audiobook, which you helped me do, Jon. And it's an unabridged audiobook, which evidently that's not normal. Oh, really?

Huh. A lot of people will condense it down. And so and then I don't know, a lot of authors don't even read their own book.

Which I thought was kind of weird. Well, it depends on what kind of pipes the author has. Well, true.

But I did read my- Not all authors are in radio. You know that, right? Well, OK. But it is time consuming and cumbersome. You were with me when I did a lot of it. It's a challenge.

But at the same time, I felt like it was important to do. And it gives caregivers, you know, just a familiar voice to hear while they're going through some of the things they go through. So that's all available out there. And then if you want the physical copies of the book or the CDs or whatever you want, you can go out to our website, HopeForTheCaregiver.com. There's Gracie's CD.

And you can click on that and that we use that to help raise funds for what we do for the nonprofit. That is the parent company of all this, Standing With Hope. You've heard Gracie's story and so forth. We have two different programs at Standing With Hope.

We have a prosthetic limb outreach and we have a caregiver outreach for the wounded and those who care for them. And if you haven't heard Gracie's story, where can you find out where that is? Well, her book, which is available wherever books are sold. And it's called Gracie's Standing With Hope.

And it's a powerful story. And you'll learn why we do what we do. And we'll send you her CD and then all the other books.

Logos Bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee. We'll ship them all over the world. They have literally shipped to Outer Mongolia. He's told me this. Ken told me this, John. I don't remember that story, but yeah. And so that's 615-297-5388. And they have all of our products there because you don't go to bookstores like you used to anymore. Yeah.

I don't go to the grocery store like I used to anymore. But he will ship. He's got everything there. He'll ship it to you. You know, just you let him know. 615-297-5388.

That is Ken Najar over at Logos Bookstore. All right. Let me get to what I was going to talk to you about today, John.

And then we got a guest at the bottom of the hour to talk about some financial planning issues, because that's a big part of a caregiver's life is financial planning. And don't think you're going to have a lot of money to do this because you don't. You just have to have a desire to have some vision for your life and not be just taking and playing defense all the time.

You can play offense and you can play offense with a very little bit, but it's still offense. But I heard something this morning, so we'll get to that later, but I heard something this morning, John. And as my custom here, I never prepare you for the show. No, I don't require it.

Nor desire it. But I like to bounce things off of you and get your instant reaction. OK. And I heard this. I was talking to a social worker this morning. And I asked, I said, if you had to describe in one sentence or so, because she started talking about forensic investigation, forensic interviews, forensic interviews. Right. And I said, if you had to describe in one sentence or so, what does that mean to you? Now, this is a woman who went into all types of very, very ugly circumstances.

Right. And she had to interview some pretty rough situations. And she said, it's letting the child speak without the scripting of the parent. OK. And she said, I love that. I love to be able to do that, to be able to speak to the child and push the parent's voices away, let the child speak in their own voice. And what hit me about that, John, if I take the principle, the concept, and she's, of course, dealing in abuse situations and so forth.

But I feel as caregivers that we need to let our child speak without the scripting of the parent, who we are down in our hearts. Yeah. Yeah. There's a little bit of, well, we talk about this. And I don't mean to be that kind of weird in a psychotherapy kind of way, but I think that there's a part of us that are just, we're wounded children. We all could use a little bit of therapy. OK. Well, that's true.

Let's not poo-poo that. Some of us need a little bit more than others. But I wanted to throw that out to you and say, as a caregiver, is that something that would be of great benefit to us is to let who we are in our hearts, that child part of us?

Because I think we all carry that. There are wounds that we carry that go back to our childhood and to let that childhood speak without the voice of adult reason saying, you shouldn't feel that way. Well, we get into, we get into sort of shorthand about an awful lot of things.

The habits that we get into oftentimes are developed and cultivated for good reason. When someone starts to ask too much about our situation, we kind of, it's often we will deflect for a very good reason. We just say, oh, you know, things are fine. It's OK to not offer information to every Joe Schmo that comes up and tries to ask what's going on.

Because they're not necessarily safe or they haven't earned the right to be in that trusted circle. Exactly. But those habits that we build up can become just a lot about who we are as a person and allowing, again, like you were saying, the child part of us to get rid of that adult reasoning for a second and just let things kind of not behave in a scripted sort of way.

In the same way that we're doing the show right now. Well, yeah, I mean, but I think that in even, and scripture speaks to this, you know, when Jesus suffered the little children to come to me, as a child just come to me because the children don't necessarily have all the vocabulary to express what's going on, but they have all the ability to express the emotion of it and what's going on with it. And as caregivers, I think that we get into these situations where we are doing our duty and being responsible and being, you know, this is what this is ours to do and we lock it down. But do we give ourselves the permission to weep it out? Do we give ourselves the permission to just say, you know what, this just this just doesn't feel right.

This is this is really uncomfortable. And if we say that, can we say that without feeling some kind of this overt guilt on us? Right. Where we, now we do have to pick the right time and place to do this sort of thing. Not in the middle of the grocery store. One time and you're labeled for life, I swear. Just, oh, man, I got kicked out of one Kroger.

It's always the green bean-o. Yeah, oh, man. But, you know, and those it is difficult to give ourselves permission to do that. And oftentimes it doesn't happen outside like a therapist's office or, you know, or outside, you know, a meeting with a pastor or, you know, whatever it happens to be. But it's just that it's a right tool, right job kind of situation. And again, we often get to the habit.

Yeah, yeah. And we get to and we get in the habit of of not utilizing these tools because for whatever reason, we feel like it makes us look weak or it makes us feel weak. It doesn't matter how we look or, you know, as a failure somehow. And that can be rather off-putting because, you know, we do have a it's nice to have a healthy fear of failure.

OK. But, you know, no one is is without flaw and no one is completely in control all the time. There is that is that is that is a weakness to believe that one is in control all the time. Yeah, I think it really actually is delusional. And it's a pathological. It's a deplorable lack of understanding of what's going on around us.

But I think that one of the things I designed for this show was a place where caregivers could come in. And that's why I say, how do you feel? And they can come in and they can just say, you know, I feel, you know, just, you know, I'm pissed. I feel like crap.

I feel despair, whatever you got to feel. But it's time to have that honest conversation about how you feel about it. But in the context and in a place where you're not going to be slapped around for it. Right. It's OK to say, man, the dog keeps messing up my carpet and I just I just wanted to kick the dog that one time. But I didn't do it. But you can be able to say, oh, this is I'm so frustrated at this dog.

Why? Well, and I am a member of a lot of Facebook groups for caregivers and I just read a lot of the comments and they break your heart. You know, he he, you know, is peeing in the sink again. You know, you got to just put yourself in that person's mentality of saying, oh, my God, how tall is this dude? You know, you know, well, I'm not that person, but the person, the caregiver is saying, oh, my God, what?

You know, how much? And I had a friend of ours that, you know, her husband would just go into the closet and pee. You know, in the later days of Alzheimer's and dementia. Yeah, it was just and she was just like, oh, my God, you know, and she needed a place where she could come and say, this is wrong. This is bad. I feel, you know, whatever. But but but, you know, you don't want to feel guilty. You know, I feel guilty if I say something about it and not on this show, not on this. And it's it's OK to to let that sort of thing out.

And it's not going to make you there is there is a level to which where people will sometimes it seems they aspire to be a chronic complainer. And that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about very real getting it out. And well, and I wrote an article. We're afraid of that. Well, I wrote an article this week that got some traction and it's called It Is What It Is. And because recently the president came out and said something about the death toll. They asked him to say, well, it is what it is.

And then Melania, I mean, Michelle Obama was derisive towards the president in her speech the other night. And and, you know, they kind of really built on that. But I had to stop for a moment. And I'm not swerving into politics. I'm just simply saying that that phrase, it is what it is, has become a a banner for me, a banner, a benchmark, a watershed moment, if you will. Because I had to come to that place where I stopped trying to wish it was something different, accept that it is.

And then how do I become different in it? Right. And we can always aspire to make a situation better. And that's but it's an aspiration and being an accepting reality is is, you know, accepting the things that I that I cannot change. Right. And I aspire to make the situation better. But I am intent on making me better, no matter if the situation changes. Oh, well put. Well put. And I think that as we look at this with that, are we allowing that inner child to speak on it, that inner child can accept certain realities differently than sometimes a pragmatic adult. But let's talk about this when we get back. Hope for the caregiver. Hope for the caregiver dot com. This is Peter Rosenberger, 877-655-6755.

We'll be right back. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I'm Gracie Rosenberger, and in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me.

But over time, my questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding, along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs, led me to establish standing with hope for more than a dozen years. We've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people on a regular basis. We purchased and ship equipment and supplies.

And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standing with hope dot com to learn more and participate in lifting others up.

That's standing with hope dot com. I'm Gracie and I am standing with hope. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

I am Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. How are you feeling? How are you doing?

How are you holding up? Eight, seven, seven, six, five, five, sixty seven fifty five. If you want to be a part show, the podcast is free. Go out and subscribe to it at all. The players, Apple, Google, Amazon. I don't know, John, how many more players are out there? There's just.

Oh, I'm sure there was a startup that happened, you know, in the time that we've been talking about it. Would you say that there is a plethora of players? You know what that's from? Oh, it is. That's some pretty amigos, man.

Don't come at me with that. Yes. That was just such a great movie.

No, but we're out there. But what John and I are talking about, a topic that is, you know, for me, it struck me when I was talking to a friend of mine this morning who's a social worker and and she trained in forensic interviews. And I said, well, what do you how would you describe that? She said, that's when the child is able to speak without the scripting of the parent. And I thought, OK, on a heart level for us as caregivers, can the child of who we are that in our hearts speak without the scripting of what we feel obligated to say? And I think we can. And I think this is what I've designed the show to do here for my fellow caregivers. And John and I've been together now for over seven years working on that, creating a safe place to throw these things out there so that we as caregivers can recognize that we we get in that obligation trap that we should, we must, we could, we have to, we need to, we we ought to or supposed to. But do we get into those places often enough where we say, here's what it is. Here's where we are and an honest assessment of where we are. And it doesn't mean that we're accepting defeat. It means we're accepting reality and reality is a tough companion, but it's an honest friend.

And that's what I remember. And I'm not I'm just using the political thing as a metaphor for for what happened. But Michelle Obama said the other night, you know, we need to be requiring empathy. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, wait a minute.

How does one require empathy? I mean, you must feel this way about me. You know, I'm thinking, really?

I don't think I don't get that. But I remember when Gracie was in her prosthetist office. That's a prosthetist, John.

Hey, all right. I got excited. She's now a double amputee. And she had that is what it is moment with her prosthetist. Now, he certainly, as he knocked on his own prosthetic leg, felt empathy literally because he understood. But he also knew at that point she didn't need that. She needed something greater. She needed to have that acceptance of this is my life now. It's not going to change.

My legs will not grow back. And all of a sudden, when you have those kind of moments, those is what it is moments, it then it gives you that starting point to propel yourself to a different level of life. But if you don't have those moments of accepting what reality is, this is the way it is.

And that sounds so simple. I don't mean it as such. You got something. I do.

I do. Well, it's you say the accepting of reality. And I don't I don't mean to put this in kind of a kind of a flippant sort of way. But it's if you're if you're you sit down to a game of like chess or backgammon or something like that and you start playing by the rules of monopoly. It's not going to get you anywhere. You can't like this is the reality in which I find myself as my opponents play in chess.

But if I'm playing monopoly that I'm not in the same world or if I'm trying to play this, it just it's just doesn't even it doesn't even work out like that. And, you know, accepting where you find yourself might not be the best metaphor, but but it's a butler for there. There you go. I just coined that, by the way. Hey, what is it?

What is a butler for being a sidekick? No, but I get it. And I think that if Gracie, once she, you know, what? And you say, well, how can you not accept the fact that you've lost your legs? You'd be surprised what people can't accept.

Oh, yeah. You'd be surprised that people cannot accept. Even when the grass is growing on the grave, you'd be surprised what people can't accept.

Especially somewhat invisible ones like, oh, you just got diagnosed with diabetes or something like that. You know, that's a reality that needs to be. That is what it is moment. And it's sometimes. But you don't have to live a miserable life in the context of that, but you just have to live an honest life in the context of it.

Otherwise, you're never going to move the needle positive. And then when you have people that say, you know, like Bill Clinton did, well, I feel your pain. You know, well, so what good does that do me? First off, you don't feel my pain because it's my pain. You're and then the second thing. You're imagining pain. And that's fine.

But but but how does that move the needle? For to say that where you say, you know what, I respect your pain. That's a different word. I appreciate the magnitude of your pain. But but to somehow just try to project this false sense of compassion or empathy or sympathy, as opposed to helping people come to grips with the fact that this is painful. I've reached I accept that this is really painful for you.

And I hate that for you. Here's where we are now. Now what? And I remember I don't know if you remember this call we got in one time. I remember this one lady called in and she said she wanted me to use my celebrity powers to help get Washington to do something. And first off that I stopped a minute. I said, the fact that you're calling me a celebrity is a little bit alarming because now we're going to change the term of celebrity.

Because that I hate. But but I said, OK, let's let's dissect this for a moment. Say we went all Bernie Sanders on this and we're going to give everything away, the whole store.

I mean, everybody's going to have everything for free. First off, you have to get this was back when he was running. I said, first off, you have to get him elected and then he has to get take the oath of office. And then he has to have a Congress to help pass all these things.

And then it has to be implemented and trickle down. So you're looking at minimum, minimum of a year at that point when she called. Right. What are you going to do? What are you going to do today?

You've got three hundred and sixty five more days minimum before you can even have that possibility. So what does today look like for you? See, it is what it is today. Today is reality. Tomorrow may change. Some things may open up.

And I think that's what I would envision for myself and for my fellow caregivers. It's OK. Let's deal with where we are right here, right now. Let's have that conversation. Let's let the heart of who we are that.

I don't like to use that word inner child thing because I think that sounds so. Well, it sounds a little woo woo, crunchy, whatever. But if you're listening to the show, you kind of know what the woo woo people. Well, look, I'm not we're not we're not we're not going to try to like, you know, infuse your your psyche with some some charged crystals or anything like that. You know, that's not what we're going for here. No, I just I think I just I'd like to have that that kind of that air into the conversation of, you know, this is the reality for us as caregivers. We have to have a place where we can express these things and look at horrific circumstances and not lose ourselves in it. And that's why we built the show.

Hope for the caregiver dot com. And if you want to be a part of the show, eight seven seven six five five sixty seven fifty five. Brian Pennington's on next.

We're going to talk about some financial planning issues. Don't go away. There's more to come.

And there's more Butler. Hey, this is Peter Rosenberger. Have you ever helped somebody walk for the first time? I've had that privilege many times through our organization, Standing with Hope. When my wife, Gracie, gave up both of her legs following this horrible wreck that she had as a teenager and she tried to save them for years.

And if it just wouldn't work out and finally she relinquished them and thought, wow, this is it. I mean, I don't have any legs anymore. What can God do with that? And then she had this vision for using prosthetic limbs as a means of sharing the gospel to put legs on her fellow amputees. And that's what we've been doing now since 2005 with Standing with Hope. We work in the West African country of Ghana, and you can be a part of that through supplies, through supporting team members, through supporting the work that we're doing over there.

You could designate a limb. There's all kinds of ways that you could be a part of giving the gift that keeps on walking at standingwithhope.com. Would you take a moment to go out to standingwithhope.com and see how you can give.

They go walking and leaping and praising God. You could be a part of that at standingwithhope.com. As a caregiver, think about all the legal documents you need. Power of attorney, a will, living wills, and so many more. Then think about such things as disputes about medical bills. What if instead of shelling out hefty fees for a few days of legal help, you paid a monthly membership and got a law firm for life? Well, we're taking legal representation and making some revisions in the form of accessible, affordable, full-service coverage.

Finally, you can live life knowing you have a lawyer in your back pocket who, at the same time, isn't emptying it. It's called Legal Shield, and it's practical, affordable, and a must for the family caregiver. Visit caregiverlegal.com. That's caregiverlegal.com. Isn't it about time someone started advocating for you? www.caregiverlegal.com, an independent associate.