A Path Through The Storm

What do you say to a caregiver?

How do you help a caregiver? I was talking to this billing agent at the doctor's office and said, how are you feeling? And she said, oh great It's Friday. And before I could catch myself, I said Friday means nothing to me. Every day is Monday. And I felt kind of ashamed of that and I'm sorry for that, but I realized that whole principle of every day is Monday. What that means for us as caregivers, we know that this is going to be a challenging day. And I wrote these one-minute chapters.

You literally could read them in one minute. And I'm really proud of this book. It's called A Minute for Caregivers, when every day feels like Monday. It's filled with bedrock principles that we as caregivers can lean on, that we can depend upon to get us to safety, where we can catch our breath, take a knee if we have to, and reorient our thinking and the weight that we carry on our shoulders. If you don't know what to say to a caregiver, don't worry about it. I do. Give them this book.

This is Peter Roseburger. This is A Minute for Caregivers. When storms loom, media outlets often show footage of people placing plywood on homes and businesses and hunkering down. Caregiving is its own storm. Although sometimes receiving advance notice, caregiving can often descend like a tornado and last a lifetime. If cameras followed caregivers, many daily activities might resemble the frantic bustle of those boarding homes and businesses. Imagine trying to build a five-year plan while simultaneously working to survive a hurricane. Incredulously, many caregivers regularly attempt such a feat. While the aftermath of hurricanes usually brings clearer skies that allow rebuilding, the lengthy caregiving storm usually ends at a cemetery, and the path to rebuilding appears shrouded in confusion, despair, and even desolation.

Yet a path through and following the storm does exist. It's called endurance. The challenges of caregiving can forge a resilience and resolve that spills into every area of life. Many faced with hardships lament, how can I get out of this?

Caregivers, and others, can instead change that question to what can I become through this? Entire marketing ads promote tempting versions of success that sadly ring hollow as the years pass. Endurance remains its own success while standing the test of time. Romans 5, 3 through 4 states, Knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. This is Peter Rosenberger, and this is an excerpt from my book, A Minute for Caregivers, When Every Day Feels Like Monday, available wherever books are sold. There's more at hopeforthecaregiver.com