Caller Seeks to Reconcile With Caregiving Sister She Abandoned

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Call 866-WINASIA or to see chickens and other animals to donate, go to CritterCampaign.org. Gina in Texas. Gina, good morning. How are you feeling? I'm doing good.

Thank you very much. How are you and your wife doing? Well, you know, we seem to be rocking right along here. It's beautiful weather. We had four inches of snow on Labor Day, and then it was 80 degrees yesterday. So go figure. It's hard to know if you should pull out the winter clothes yet or not, but that was kind of fun on Labor Day to watch.

She loves the snow, and it was fun to watch that. But we're doing okay. What you got on your mind?

Well, we have a father that has Alzheimer's, and they're very difficult to figure out how to care for because of the special needs that they have due to that mental situation. But I'm calling about the family, the extended family. We're all broken up. I don't talk to my sister. I have to sever the relationship because it was taking me down. I initially was, I wouldn't say the only caretaker, but I was the primary caretaker because I didn't have a job, and I made sure that he was five minutes from my house. But no matter what I did, no matter if my other sister wasn't pleased, I really don't have the authority.

She's the one to have the power of attorney to take care of him and all of that. But she works, but we're tore up. How do we begin to heal? How do we begin to accept that this is the circumstances that really nobody knows what to do because from what I understand, it manifests itself in different degrees according to different people. So how do we begin the healing?

That is a very good question that affects so many family caregivers. I tell you what, will you hold on to the break and we're going to talk about that. Is that all right? All right. This is Hope for the caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. How do you heal? How do you build relationships or work together with other family members when you have all this dysfunction? That is a question so many caregivers face.

We're going to deal with that when we come back. 888-589-8840. 888-589-8840. Welcome back to Hope for the caregiver here on American Family Radio.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver and your life is in his hand. That is my wife Gracie singing from her new CD Resilient. You can get a copy of that if you want. Go to Hopeforthecaregiver.com.

Right there in the front is the CD cover. You can see it and hear more music and see our books and so forth that we have available to you as a family caregiver. We have the presenting sponsor for what we do here at Hope for the caregiver is Standing with Hope. It is the ministry Gracie and I founded many years ago when she wanted to provide prosthetic limbs to her fellow amputees. We've been doing that since 2005 and we have two program areas for the wounded and those who care for them. For the wounded is the amputee related ministry that we have. We collect used limbs from all over the country. They go to a prison and inmates volunteer to help us disassemble them so we can recycle the parts. We send the parts and then we buy new parts and then we take teams over to West Africa. We've been working with the Republic of Ghana for many years with their government. We teach and equip them to make legs for their own people.

Then we'll purchase things in country. We just purchased a bunch of resin to make brand new sockets that fit for each patient. We just purchased, we sponsored a leg for a young man we've been treating since 2007 I think.

Amputees will go through prosthetics and Gracie herself is a double amputee and she sends over her own things, prosthetic socks and liners and sleeves and hardware from her prosthesis that she goes through. It's a wonderful ministry and then we have for the wounded and those who care for them. That's what this is, this whole outreach to family caregivers. If you want to be a part of that, we would welcome your help. Go to HopeForTheCaregiver.com and just click on the button that says donate and whatever's on your heart, we'll send you a copy of her CD.

How about that? And it's great. She's a no kidding singer. Alright, we're talking with Gina in Texas and she's got a family that is dissolved under the strain of caring for a father with Alzheimer's and how do you heal? And that's what we're addressing here today. So Gina, your sister has all the power of attorney and medical power of attorney and all that kind of stuff, but you're doing all the work.

Is that what I understand? I was, but since it was taking me down, I bailed. I said, I'm sorry, I can't do this anymore. I'm going to need a caretaker myself if I don't bail. And so I bailed because it affects not just the caretaker that you're taking care of, it affects every aspect. I was drowning and it was going to take my marriage with it and I had to bail. I don't feel good about it, but I had to survive and I had to protect my relationship with my husband because it was so destructive that I gained weight, I was a raving maniac. And I realized that that was not what needed to be happened.

So I totally gave her and said, here's his medication. This is what I've been doing. You're in charge. I can't please you. There's no point in me going through this anymore. It's your job now. And I haven't talked to her.

I've seen her at a store here and there, and if her sight could kill, I'd be 10 feet under. But my family says survive. I am back to being me, but now I want to know how do we go from here? I mean, I don't want this situation to be forever, but I really don't know where to begin. I called her, left her a message and said, look, I know a lot has happened, but no matter what, I still love you as a sister. I know we have a lot of differences and left it at that. Then I contacted her daughter because due to the COVID, my dad had to go live with her because he got a bunch of blisters from wearing the mask and he had eye infections from wearing that mask all the time.

So she had to take him out so that he didn't have to wear a mask all the time. Then he went back because things opened up and I get a little more lax and there was supposed to be a hurricane a week ago or two weeks ago here. So they were going to pre-evacuate before and so the center called me and said, you need to come get your dad. And I said, well, I can't.

I'm sorry, I can't do that. You have to call his primary caretaker, which is Martha, my sister. And so they did. During that time, I did try to call and see if I could take him out to dinner, you know, give her a break or something. I went through her daughter to do that. Well, nothing ever happened to that and we're just a mess.

Well, and this is sadly not an unusual situation. And so let's back it way up. Okay. Did you and your sister have fractures in your relationship before your dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's? Yes. Yes, sir.

Okay. So you guys have not had a great relationship for some time. We've never, I mean, we've been sisters.

We've been, we love each other. While my mother lived, she was the peacemaker. She was the one that helped, you know, ease things off. But after her death and with the responsibility that we have with our dad, it's just gone from not so good to horribly a nightmare to the point that I knew that I wasn't being any good to her and I knew she wasn't doing any good to me. So the relationship just to survive. Well, what happens is if there's any kind of fracture in the relationship, being a caregiver will expose that and amplify that to just almost crushing levels. If you've got anything going on, it will push the pressure of it, particularly with Alzheimer's.

The pressure of it is just staggering. So what's happened is that it took you and your sister from a truce relationship that where you just kind of had a truce that you're going to stay away from certain subjects and so forth to now it's just full blown battle lines. So to get back to a place of any kind of reconciliation is going to be a lot of work, and it's going to be work that is way outside your purview to be able to orchestrate. You cannot make your sister be reasonable. You cannot make you be reasonable. You cannot make either one of you forgive. You can't do those things by yourself.

It's going to take a lot of work. Where does that start? Well, the first place may be to sit down with some type of family counselor, social worker, licensed mental health counselor, somebody, a pastor, somebody, though, that can at least have a conversation with you and start giving you some better tools to reach out to your sister. Then you develop a way to reach out to her.

It may be a letter. Instead of going through her daughter, you just go to her. You can go to her relentlessly and say, look, I don't want to fight with you. I want to work this out. I don't know what that looks like, but this is where my heart is. I want to have that relationship with you, and I want to be a partner with you in taking care of our father. If that's something you want, then express that to her in multiple ways and multiple times, because it's going to take a while for her to, number one, believe you and then to be able to count on you.

These are things that you'll have to own. Yeah, you bail, but you don't need to get into all the drum of why you did it. You said, look, when people are drowning, they're going to pull somebody down with them just to be able to get air. That's what happens, and that's exactly what you did. You were ill-equipped with the pressure and the suffocating journey, and I get that.

We all are, but now it's time to go back and reassess, okay, where are we, and what are we doing here? What's the next step for us? I would start with that. I would start with understanding that part of the journey of being a caregiver is learning how to make amends because we're going to get it wrong. I got a book called Seven Caregiver Landmines, and one of the things we talk about is excessive weight gain, and this is what happens to us because we are not in a healthy place.

Our bodies reflect what's going on in our hearts, and so you're going to have these moments of rage, of depression, of anger, whatever. It's all going to come at you, so if you can get to somebody who can help you consistently walk through that and give you the vocabulary of what it's like to go to your sister, you don't have to grovel. You have to stay focused on your message, on what are you trying to accomplish here? Do you want to have a peaceful, loving relationship with your sister? And once you answer that question, do you want to help her take care of your father? And once you've established what your goals are, what you're trying to get out of this thing, then you can go to her and offer these things. Now, she's probably going to be a little bit reticent to get involved. It sounds like she already is. She doesn't want to deal with you.

And like you said, when you go to the store and you see her at a store and she's just shooting daggers at you with her eyes, all the pressure you're feeling, she's feeling with your father, she's feeling that now too, plus the added resentment of all the things going on with you. So this is going to take a while to detangle this, if at all. And some of these things don't get detangled and you need to be prepared for that. Some things don't get fixed this side of heaven. Doesn't mean that God can't do it.

Doesn't mean that God won't do it. It just means that the nature of some of these things are that you cannot force somebody to be agreeable with you. You cannot force things and try to get the outcome that you want. But what you can do is be as upfront and be as clear and be as amenable to God healing this as you possibly can. And that's where you ask for help from scripture and you ask for help from people around you who are professionals at this. And you can't go in there with your airing of grievances.

If you're going to go try to help your sister, you have to accept the fact that some of the things that you have that are grievances or whatever, they're not going to necessarily be addressed. You're not going to get all the things that you want, but that's not the point. You're trying to offer and try to push into something.

Be prepared to get rejected. But that doesn't mean you quit. If it's important to you, stay with it. And to go back to what our scripture was today with this widow said she needed something from this guy and he wasn't going to budge, but finally she just wore him down. Well, you could do the same thing with love. You could do the same thing with making amends. You could do the same thing with offering to help. You can wear them down so that they will believe you.

Your sister's got to believe. Does that give you a starting point? All right. Well, listen, we're up against the break.

Peter Rosenberger. We'll be right back. 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 purchase 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.