Listener Shares Her Poignant Poem About Caregiving

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Call 866-WINASIA or to see chickens and other animals to donate, go to CritterCampaign.org. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. I am Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one podcast for you as a family caregiver.

How are you holding up? Do you know that? He knows that he has the plans that he has for you. That's Gracie singing from her CD Resilience.

Go out to Hopeforthecaregiver.com to see more about that. And Gracie's fussing at me because I haven't loaded it onto all the.coms to be able to download it. It's not like I've got nothing else to do. But I will do the best I can.

If I only had someone in my life, someone who I could count on to help me with things like that. Oh, that would be you, John. Oh, oh, oh. It's not like I don't have anything else going on. Oh, by the way, speaking of... Oh, never mind. I forgot about something, John, so you'll have to forgive me. We'll talk about that afterwards.

I'm a member of a lot of Facebook groups for caregivers. I'd just like to see the pulse of what's... take the pulse of what's going on out there. Right, right. Well, I mean, if you're going to do this, you probably should be involved in the community in some sort of non-zero capacity. Well, yes. But I also get a lot of messaging from my show. After the show comes on on Saturday and we air on over 200 stations, I usually get messaging coming in from different folks who are struggling with various things. But I got something here, John, from someone.

No, no, no. I've yet to get hate mail. And I'm very moved by that because... Well, I got one guy that says I should have... never mind. I'm not going to give him credit.

I'm not going to give credit to it because he didn't really earn the credit to be able to do it. But this particular lady sent me a poem that she had written. And for whatever reason, it just stuck out at me. And she obviously writes several. But something about this really...

I don't know. It just kind of... it just clicked with me. And so I thought I would read it to you today and then let you respond to it, however... Well, I love poetry.

And I write a lot myself, actually. So, yeah. But it's... it's called I Need To.

Okay? And it's by a lady. And I told her I'd read it today. And then I'm going to send it to her and make sure she has it. Teresa Loder.

L-O-D-E-R. She's a caregiver. And it's called I Need To. All right? And I'm going to read this to you. I need to wash my hair and take a shower. But here I sit, enjoying this quiet hour. I need to put up meds and tidy up the room. But I cherish this time to just be me. There will be plenty to do very soon.

Right now I float in this peaceful place my mind has brought me to. Hard to let go. There is so much I really need to do. My mind seesaws back and forth of insulin shots. I need to give morning meds and vitamin probiotics and other stuff.

We need to live. Soon my hubby will be up and need to start his day with me assisting him in each and every way. Making sure he doesn't fall while walking to his chair. Setting all the pillows before he sits down there. Making oatmeal and a nice hot cup of coffee. Maybe a bottle of water in case he starts coughing. Check the swelling in his ankles every morning.

If there's swelling, I consider that a warning. As much as I'd love to stay and chat, now I must go. Get the important things done before my energy gets low.

But I love to float in this peaceful place my mind brings me to. I see saw back and forth. So much yet to do.

Theresa Loader. And I thought, wow, she really captured it, didn't she? Well, absolutely. And there is a wonderful message there. There's a couple of things we can get caught up in. The main body of this is talking about the practical things that need to be done, which we were talking about with Stephanie earlier. You know, that people get caught up in the, you know, it's like, oh, what do we do?

What do we do about mom or dad or whatever? You know, how do we how do we function in this and how can we then, you know, what ends up happening a lot is, you know, kind of shuffle them off into some, you know, some facility or something like that where it the work gets done, but the soul is somehow lost. And in all of this and all of the emotions and, you know, that is such a that is such an amazing statement.

I want you to say it again. The work gets done, but the work gets done, but somehow the soul gets lost in all of this. And that's, you know, I could have talked with Stephanie for another hour. But yeah, like we do the body of that poem. You know, there's there's a lot of talking about the step one, step two, step three that goes on.

But initially, we're kind of clued in to what the not what mostly what is being said in the text, but what is important here. And that is the the ability to really appreciate a little bit of stillness. And we talk about that an awful lot.

If you have to make time for that. And, you know, I can picture so many caregivers. I've done it myself where we sometimes we just sit there and we close our eyes and we just take a deep breath and we just take a moment just to just just to grab our thoughts as best as we can.

We know all the things we need to do. And sometimes I'm like the rest of you. I just I want to pull the covers over my head and say I just can't do it right now. And as I as I struggle with that and I see somebody write this out so beautifully, she knows all the things. I mean, I look at all the list of things that she has to do that goes on with her husband's life. You know, obviously he's diabetic and he has so many things going on in his life. And she's just taking a moment to center herself because she knows this list is waiting for her, but she just wants to sit there just for a moment. And I think that's for us as caregivers.

That's an important conversation to have with ourselves. Can we just take can we just take a moment to just to take a deep breath? You know, I was going to say some poem. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I could go into the academics of it and like, oh, yeah, good meter. Good.

You know, absolutely good rhyme structure and everything. But that's not what we're here for. That's supposed to be invisible, which coincidentally is a lot of what caregivers end up doing.

Like the the sole part gets to be a little bit invisible. When we're dealing with everything about medications or we're having to bail somebody out of jail because addiction took over or something like that. When it's it can be really rough. And, you know, the next step, we always we talk a lot about, hey, we sometimes you don't have to worry about the next 14 steps. You just have to do the next right thing.

And that is absolutely true. Sometimes you just have to do the next right thing. But again, sometimes the next right thing is just enjoying that one little moment of a nice deep breath. Where nobody's saying anything.

There's nothing here. And after these 12 seconds, we can move on to what the next next right thing is. The first time I read this, it made me think of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. And his words, these are I think I know his houses in the village.

So any talks about just the poignancy of just wanting to stay there for just a moment and just reflect. But he said, but I got to go. I got miles to go before asleep. And that's what this made me think of. And when she said making oatmeal in a nice hot cup of coffee, making maybe a bottle of water in case he starts coughing, checking the swelling in his ankles every morning.

If they are swelling, I consider that a warning. As much as I'd love to stay in chat, now I must go. She knows what's waiting ahead. I have miles to go before I sleep. But she wanted to take a moment. You've read that poem by Frost, haven't you?

Oh, absolutely. I don't know it by heart. Because I know a lot of poems by heart, but not that one. Well, it's that same kind of moment.

He just wanted to bask in the moment. And she does. And then she sees all the litany of things she must do. And it's so detailed.

You know, checking the ankles. You know, he may start coughing, so I've got to have some bottles. It's all very beautiful and specific. And so I thought, you know, and I want to encourage every caregiver, every caregiver that this is in us all. It may not be in poetry, it may be in something else, but it's in us all and it needs to come out.

Please let it come out. This is what I would humbly put forth, that writing this poem is one of those things in which she can take a little bit of joy and take a little bit of, you know, this was, writing this poem was her deep breath. And it's going to give others a chance to do the same. Right, right. Well, she didn't write this in a vacuum now because we put it out here and it's being put out to this audience. Well, it's hard to take a deep breath in a vacuum, Peter. All right.

Well, yes, I know that. But it just reminded me of a Farsight comic when he showed this lady pushing a vacuum down a path in the forest and all the trees were getting rid of tacker because nature abhors a vacuum. For some reason that just gave it, but no, I think it puts, as we put this poem out there now, and these thoughts from a caregiver, and it's all of a sudden now her thoughts will be with whoever listens to this and you never know once you put it out there, it's out there. You never know who's going to be affected by this. And I feel like caregivers need to be, deserve to be affirmed in whatever creative way they choose to express their challenges, heartache, hearts, whatever.

Just please do it. And just because we like poetry doesn't mean that that needs to be what it is. It can be, you know, coaching kids soccer team, it can be whatever, whatever sort of thing brings you joy that, you know, it doesn't have to even be productive.

It can just be something or doesn't have to benefit anybody but you at that point. And we talk about guilt a lot. We're like, oh, yeah, I got to write this poem for other people, but you got to write it for yourself.

That's how it helps other people. If you don't write things for other people. I know that Stephanie earlier wrote her stuff with a lot of other people in mind, but I'm sure it was for her mostly. She wanted to write a book, you know, and whether or not anybody read it is, you know, it matters, but she was going to write it if nobody else was going to read it anyway. Well, and that's the mark of good writing and good art or good anything is that is this authentic to who I am? And this was her book was authentic to her 25 years of experience of saying, I'm going to encapsulate everything I've done and make it cohesive and concise for folks to be able to understand because I can't just, I'm limited one on one in a practice.

But if I do this book, then I can reach a lot of people with this message. And but at the same time, it's got to be authentic to her. This is her experience. This is her journey.

She has to own it. And and I would suggest to any of my fellow caregivers, if you're doing something to express what's going on in your heart, let it be authentic to who you are. Don't do it for commercial applause or or reward or anything like that. If that comes, that's great.

That's great. But let it be authentic. Yeah, you're gonna have and you're gonna have a higher chance of that if you're not paying attention to it, at least for the purposes of what you're doing. Yeah, when you're doing editing or when you're doing whatever you have to pay attention to that sort of thing.

But if you're right, the your primary goal when you're doing something like that should be because it's the right thing to do, not because somebody else told you to or something like that. Well, the same thing with art. Don't try to to paint like someone else or do whatever or make sure that somebody wants to buy this.

Who cares? Just paint it. Just paint. And and our friend Gary Chapman, longtime singer songwriter, numerous awards. And he gave that piece of advice on the show one time and he said, for songwriters, he said, just write. Don't try to write a hit song. Just write.

Just write it. Yeah, just get it out. And that's the mistake. I think a lot of people think, well, it's not any good. Nobody's gonna want to read it. And you know what? You read it. You read it. You enjoy it.

Let it be true to who you are. You know, every time I sit down at the piano, I'm not recording something. You know, I'm playing for myself. I'm playing to to work out the kinks of my own soul. You do that as well at the piano. Oh, absolutely.

You know, I have to work. I'm not making an album every time I sit down, you know, and Gracie, when she sings, she's not cutting a record every time she sings. She sings because that's how she communicates the depths of her soul. And sometimes the most important person she's talking to when she's communicating is herself.

Exactly. And this is a big part of a caregiver's journey. This is a part that it gets lost. And that's why this poem spoke to me so much is that we are so frantic on the I need to's. And we do. And we have, I got a lot of need to's.

And I've been having to do it on a gimpy leg. And I've been very unpleasant about it too, by the way, John. I have been right.

I suspected but wasn't going to accuse. It's, you know, guilty, you know, and I have been because I and it and it and it frightens me. And I don't mind saying this, it frightens me when I am limited. When I, when I feel like, oh my gosh, this is this is hampered my ability, I've always had the ability to move faster than most of Gracie's challenges.

Right. And all of a sudden I can't do that anymore. And that's not necessarily something I should do, by the way, it's just something I did out of a sense of my own freneticness. And it's, it's one of those things that I've had to learn to accept certain limits and certain realities that I, I don't.

I can't keep up. I would say that. Yeah. And everybody has to do that. And it's a really long journey because when you're a kid, everything is possible. And it still is.

Don't get me wrong. But it's, you know, you take it. I heard a great quote.

Everything, everything that I'm doing now was used to be impossible to me at one time. Oh, nice. Nice circle back. I like that. I like that. Yeah. All right. We're gonna take a quick break.

We'll be right back. This is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger with John Butler.

Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Hey, this is John Butler, producer of Hope for the Caregiver. And I have learned something that you probably all know that Gracie, his wife, uh, lost her legs many, many years ago and started a prosthetic limb outreach ministry called Standing with Hope.

And recently they ended up with a rather unique and unexpected partner. Peter had a conversation with Gracie and take a listen. Gracie, when you envision doing a prosthetic limb outreach, did you ever think that inmates would help you do that?

Not in a million years. When you go to the facility run by CoreCivic over in Nashville and you see the faces of these inmates that are working on prosthetic limbs that you have helped collect from all over the country that you put out the plea for. And they're disassembling. You see all these legs, like what you have your own prosthetic and arms and arms. When you see all this, what does that do to you? Makes me cry because I see the smiles on their faces and I know, I know what it is to be locked someplace where you can't get out without somebody else allowing you to get out.

Of course, being in the hospital so much and so long. And so, um, these men are so glad that they get to be doing, um, as, as one band said, something good finally with my hands. Did you know before you became an amputee that parts of prosthetic limbs could be recycled? No, I had no idea. You know, I thought of peg leg. I thought of wooden legs. I never thought of titanium and carbon legs and flex feet and sea legs and all that. I never thought about that. As you watch these inmates participate in something like this, knowing that they're, they're helping other people now walk, they're providing the means for these supplies to get over there.

What does that do to you just on a heart level? I wish I could explain to the world what I see in there. And I wish that I could be able to go and say this guy right here, he needs to go to Africa with us. I never not feel that way.

Every time, you know, you always make me have to leave. I don't want to leave them. I feel like I'm at home with them. And I feel like that we have a common bond that I would have never expected that only God could put together. Now that you've had an experience with it, what do you think of the faith based programs that CoreCivic offers?

I think they're just absolutely awesome. And I think every prison out there should have faith based programs like this because the return rate of the men that are involved in this particular faith based program and the other ones like it. But I know about this one. It's just an amazingly low rate compared to those who don't have them. And I think that that says so much.

That doesn't have anything to do with me. It just has something to do with God using somebody broken to help other broken people. If people want to donate a used prosthetic limbs, whether from a loved one who passed away or, you know, somebody who outgrew them, you've donated some of your own for them to do.

How do they do that? Please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

I am Peter Rosenberger. That is Gracie and Russ Taft. And I love that recording from her record, Resilient. And be a part of what we're doing. Get a copy of that record.

Go out to Hopeforthecaregiver.com. John, I'm going to pivot just a little bit. You know, one of the things that I expected is, by the way, as regular listeners of this show, you're going to know this for those of you first time listeners to the podcast. We don't rehearse. And the advice I was given when I first started doing this show by a guy that had a lengthy experience in radio, he says, never script your show. And I said, well, that's not going to be a problem. I don't like to script anything. I'll make notes on some things. I'll have an outline. And I like to throw things at John.

It's almost like, remember when Carson used to do Stomp the Band? But I like to do that with John because his first impressions of anything I talk about usually are so interesting and often unexpected. And so here I'm going to throw one at you. On a side note, thank you very much. Well, I pride myself on being unexpected, but no, really.

Mission accomplished. Well, and back at you, I have always enjoyed all of our conversations. It's an interesting way to do radio and broadcasting because you would think that we'd have all these cool little gimmicks and this or that or whatever. No, let's just have a conversation. I know my audience. My audience is not interested in being lectured to. They just want to be a part of a conversation and it be in their language in a way they can understand. So I'm going to throw a topic out at you that I have not.

There's no way we have not coordinated in any way, fashion or form. But a friend of mine sent this to me and I've struggled with this since my surgery. I have not been sleeping well. I haven't had a good night's sleep in now over two months and it is really taking a toll on me. And he used to, he comes from a surgical background and there was a big bravado in a lot of surgeons, how they could go X amount of time without sleep and soldiers and all this stuff until a Navy SEAL wrote a piece about this and started digging into this on the detriment of sleep deprivation.

And what that does to the human mind, body and your soul. And I know my caregivers. I know them. I know this audience. I know my fellow caregivers. I know you guys and I know that so many of us are sleep deprived.

That we are not sleeping well. And so I'm asking you to consider getting some professional help if that's the case. I've had to do it. This has been something I've had to do recently. I use a CPAP machine, John. I was going to ask about it. I was going to say that's certainly one of the things, but there are lots of sleep clinics out there that our professionals can monitor you during a sleep cycle and go from there.

Go ahead. I'm sorry. What are your thoughts on this, on sleep deprivation? Has this been something that you've had to engage with? This is a little personal, but I am on some medication that really does not do well with sleep. I don't sleep very much.

And part of it is because of who I am as a person. And part of it is because of the medication. And so oftentimes I have to really dial in what I'm doing and pay attention to sleep. Because I've said for several decades now, I saw this somewhere, but sleep deprivation is a very, very quick path to temporary psychosis. It will mess you up.

There is a reason why people who struggle with addiction to stimulants end up thinking and looking the way they do, because it will really destroy you. And sleep is the way that our body repairs itself. But more importantly, sleep is the way that our mind repairs itself and goes over all of the thoughts of the day and things like that. But more importantly, like physically, your brain kind of swells and contracts a little bit while you're sleeping during different sleep cycles. And there are different chemicals that are released that wash things out for lack of a better term. And we don't fully understand exactly all of the mechanisms that go on during sleep.

But we know it is absolutely required. And in the same way that we talk about, well, what happens if you go down with the flu or a bum knee or something like that? Where does that leave the person that you're taking care of? And if you do not get nice, good, restful sleep, you're going to be making some really, really uninformed decisions or some impaired decisions. You will also say and do things that are going to require amends for. Just go with me on that one, okay? Just go ahead and go with me on that. I don't need to go any deeper, do I really?

No, no, no. In the same way that we've all had those moments where we, I'm not going to say snapped, but reacted out of emotion and didn't respond out of intellect or whatever. But we reacted out of emotion because, look, there is a great joke about this in the Snickers commercials, you know? You're just not you when you're hungry, you know? You're such a diva when you're hungry.

And like Aretha Franklin was doing it or whatever. You're such a diva when you're hungry. And you're just not you when you're sleepy. Yeah, you're just not you when you're sleepy.

So I'm going to ask you, we just got about a minute or two left, but I'm going to ask my fellow caregivers to give some thought to this. See if you can reduce anything, just one thing, just one thing in your diet that is providing artificial stimulants, certainly after, you know, the afternoon. Oh, yeah, because coffee in the morning is fine. Caffeine is something that is not detrimental when used appropriately.

However, it can. There were times in my life when I was drinking coffee through the entire day. I share it. I would have it at dinnertime. That's a horrible time to have coffee and for a caregiver. And for a student, maybe you can get by with it, you know?

But this is this is specifically for caregivers. So can you think of one thing in your life? Maybe it's it's it's sweet tea.

Cut the sugar in half. You know, I'm not asking you to become a monk or or, you know, just go full tilt on vegan lifestyle or whatever. I'm just asking you, is there anything in your life you can cut out that's a stimulant that is somehow keeping you amped up? And I would getting a good night's rest.

I would. On the other side of this, before we have to leave, there is something you can add. And that is regular exercise. Going from preaching to meddling.

I know exercise or exercise, walking, moving around, physically moving around all those things. But if you could just think of one thing, don't don't we'll add something down the road. But just one thing that you can do that will improve the sleep and rest quality of your life by by by adding or taking away. That would be a great step for you as a caregiver. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers.

And part of being a healthy caregiver is getting a good night's rest. I've enjoyed the show today. Hope you have as well. John, thank you. Ed, thank you.

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