It’s a new month with a new theme, and we have lots to share as we focus on management as it relates to caregivers. This week, we’ll focus on planning for the future as well as the resources we have available to help us. We’ll also keep in mind that September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month – an important month for all of us.

Here’s a resource from WRAP – Wellness Recovery Action Plan – that combines all of those themes. Utilizing the WRAP for Life process for suicide prevention is an invaluable tool for caregivers and their loved ones. What I love about this process is that it involves your loved one directly, including taking ownership of their future planning. It includes resources for daily planning, a wellness toolbox, and crisis planning.

Management is an essential but often neglected topic for caregivers. We have a lot of things thrown our way, and it’s often difficult to keep up. Planning for the future, allocating resources, decluttering your space, time management, and determining who is on your professional team are all ways we can manage and maintain control.

Whether you’re helping your loved one on a sporadic basis or with more consistent care, providing primary emotional and financial support or occasional assistance, or co-caregiving with a partner, it may be concerning to think about your loved one’s future without your presence. Caregivers also can feel the impact of depleting their own financial, emotional, and mental resources to care for a loved one.

Planning can help reduce this stress, and it’s a key part of self-care. When you feel prepared, you feel less anxious.

But the planning process itself can also make us feel anxious. It may be hard to have a conversation with your loved one about the future. But remember our tips from two weeks on how to have difficult but necessary conversations? You’ve GOT this.

And as you plan, consider all of the resources you can draw upon to help you function effectively. These include tangible resources, such as people, places, or things that help us as caregivers or make life easier for our loved ones. They also include intangible resources – such as empathy, flexibility, support, and hope – expressions of goodwill that help make our days a little easier. Without a doubt, my go-to intangible resource is HOPE.

Finally, here’s an outstanding resource on caregiver management from AARP Foundation: “Prepare to Care – A Planning Guide for Families.” It’s a helpful guide that applies to caregivers of all kinds.

Setting goals for management and planning for the future can seem daunting at first, but they are necessary for self-care. It might be helpful to start small. Baby steps forward ARE steps in the right direction!

Kristi Horner
Founder and Executive Director
Courage to Caregivers

Our topic this week is really two related topics: changing the subject and having hard conversations.

Every one of us has a story. We own that story, and part of ownership is deciding when to talk about it and when to change the subject.

You may recall that our son had a horrible motorcycle accident last year, and for some time afterward, it seemed that everywhere I went, I was greeted by, “I’m so SORRY … How’s your son?” Of course, I realized that people meant well when they asked this, but I felt I was being pitied. I was desperate to get back to talking about something else – and doing something else – instead of constantly being defined by my caregiving role.

Changing the subject in this way was hard for me, but it was also necessary. Sometimes, we just don’t want to talk about our story. And that’s our right because it’s OUR story, and we OWN it.

When people constantly focus on the negatives, it can keep those negative scenarios alive for far too long. In other words, when people do this, they interview for pain. It’s better to focus on the positives by asking uplifting questions, talking about opportunities and possibilities, creating HOPE, and painting a picture of a brighter future that could be. If you know a caregiver, here are some great questions to ask:

• What do you dream about?
• What brings you hope?
• How can I best support you?
• What do you need?

While changing the subject is hard, it can be just as hard to know when to face things head on and have hard conversations when necessary. If we avoid all of the hard conversations, we may just be kicking a can down the street. We risk the conversation blowing up even BIGGER than if we opened the can today.

So, here are some tips for tackling difficult conversations:

1. Plan, and be prepared. Go in with the facts, and be specific. Remember, there are always at least two valid positions on any topic.
2. Set ground rules – healthy boundaries for healthy conversations. There should be NO judging.
3. Communicate directly. Be assertive (not passive or aggressive) in your communication.
4. Listen – really listen. Prepare a few open-ended questions in advance to flush out the other person’s point of view.
5. Regulate your emotions. Emotions can run high in hard conversations, and being prepared helps you to keep your emotions in check. If your loved one can’t keep their emotions in check, remember that it’s OK to hit pause and take a break.

It takes a lot of courage to have hard conversations as a caregiver. It also takes courage to own our story and to decide when is the right time to talk about it. As Brené Brown says, “When we deny the story, it defines us. When we own the story, we can write a brave new ending.”

Kristi Horner
Founder and Executive Director

7/23/20
The current pandemic has brought with it many kinds of losses – including personal, social, financial, and even our sense of “life as we know it.” Any loss can make us feel grief, and that, appropriately, is our topic for this week.

Grieving can be both personal and communal. We’re all navigating this differently and maybe feeling different kinds of personal losses, but we’re also feeling “collective grief.” We have all lost something in the last four months, and because of that, we’re all grieving together. This is hard.

In this article, Lucy Hone of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience reminds us about the power of resilience. This can include tuning into the good that still remains, hunting out positive emotions, and keeping memories alive through routines and rituals. According to research, Hone says, “participating in rituals returns a feeling of control to the bereaved, and people who do so experience lower levels of grief.”

Elisabeth Kübler–Ross is legendary when it comes to navigating grief and loss. This is one of my most favorite quotes of hers – when you read it insert ANY loss you have experienced – not just a loss of a loved one experienced through death. “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”

Although we may never really “get over” the loss of a loved one – or any significant loss, for that matter – we do find new ways of coping and managing overtime. Regarding this pandemic, I know that not one of us will emerge in the same way or as the same person we were four months ago. But it’s my hope that all of us, and the world around us, will change for the better.

That’s probably why I’ve dusted off all my go-to resources for facing loss during this pandemic. Here’s a list of some of my favorite grief and loss resources.

As a final note, tomorrow is an important day for us. It’s International Self-Care Day, and we’ve decided to celebrate with our very first Day of Giving in honor of our commitment to self-care for caregivers!

We are so proud that Courage to Caregivers has been able to help hundreds of caregivers through our peer support, breathing meditation, and support group programs. And this newsletter reaches hundreds more with weekly inspirational messages and resources.

Thank YOU for supporting our mission to provide hope, support, and courage to caregivers and loved ones of those living with mental illness. We can’t do this important work without YOU.

Kristi Horner
Founder and Executive Director
Courage to Caregivers

Before I begin my day I have to get something off my chest – How Can We Have an Imbecile (per the dictionary, “a person affected with moderate intellectual disability,” a fool, an idiot) be a world leader as POTUS. Yes, I am talking about Donald Trump! I am not holding back because he is so ignorant when it comes to ‘reality’ and he has a following of minions that claim they want change (and climate change is not real!) and only this so-called IMBECILE can provide that for them. My question is other than promises what has he changed for you? He has not made America GREAT? He has, however, made the USA a laughing stock in the world as we know it! My momma once told me not to trust the snake oil salesman and that is DJT.

Donald only chooses to listen to people who agree with him, and he believes that is what makes him smart. However, agreeing with another person without knowing what you are agreeing too is dangerous. Did you ever go to your parents and tell them you wanted to do something because your friends were doing it and their response was; if your friends jump off a bridge, would you? (My answer would be no because I am fearful of bridges – what would or was your answer?)
Yesterday DJT claimed Joe Biden is unfit to be President (the pot calling the Kettle Black.) He wants Biden to be checked out physically and mentally – excuse Mr. Imbecile, a majority of people (including your family member, your niece) claim you are unfit! Why don’t you get checked out and we can compare the results? All mr. donald trump does is ridicule people.

Healthy boundaries have always been an important part of self-care, but in these weird, pandemic days of sheltering-in-place, many of us may be feeling uneasy about the boundaries we are having to maintain just to stay safe.

That’s how I felt this week as we celebrated my sister’s birthday and her talents at an opening for her most recent artwork. As we maintained our physical distancing, the time came for my two sisters and me to take a picture together, and it was heartbreaking. All I wanted to do was give both of my sisters a big hug, but I couldn’t.

We understood that our physical distancing would help keep us healthy, but as I say about so many things when it comes to self-care, it was hard.

Even in so-called normal times, maintaining healthy boundaries can be hard. But it’s a necessity for self-care, whether they’re mental, physical, or emotional boundaries. According to PsychCentral.com, mental boundaries apply to our thoughts, values, and opinions; physical boundaries pertain to our personal space, privacy, and body; and emotional boundaries involve separating our emotions from someone else’s. Healthy boundaries can protect you from feeling guilty for someone else’s negative feelings or problems, or from taking others’ comments personally.

Here are some ways to set and maintain healthy boundaries:

• Examine your current boundaries (or lack of boundaries) with significant people in your life.
• Say “no” to something you don’t want to do or that makes you uncomfortable. You don’t have to explain or justify the “no.”
• Use “I” language. Talk about how you feel, not how someone else is making you feel. Say, “I need a few minutes alone after work,” instead of saying, “You have to stop bothering me as soon as I get home from work.”
• You may need to set consequences if the other person is unwilling to respect the boundary, but you must be willing to follow through, or the boundary is useless.
• Recognize not only your own boundaries but also the boundaries of others, and strive to respect and honor those boundaries.

Now more than ever, no one should judge us about the boundaries we set to make us comfortable. We need to be respectful of each other and the boundaries that keep all of us healthy – you, me, and those we love.

Caring together,

Kristi Horner
Founder and Executive Director
Courage to Caregivers

Please click on this link and absorb her wisdom https://medium.com/@barbarrose/age-is-a-billion-dollar-business-c3e01b7e3751

Barbar is 83 and wants to be a Movie Star – I, Karen Moss Hale, am 70, and I want to have the Number 1 Podcast with Barbara Rose Brooker https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-rant-with-barbara-rose-brooker_1

We’re on to a new theme this month – relationships – and our first topic is connections. Unfortunately, social distancing is getting all of the publicity these days. But while physical distancing remains important during this pandemic, maintaining our social connections is also important, especially for caregivers.

Connecting with others is a basic human need that is hardwired within us from birth. As caregivers, we gain a lot from our social connections, including emotional support, respite care, and a sounding board for our concerns, just to name a few of the benefits. As this article notes, connecting is one of Mental Health America’s 10 tools that can help you feel stronger and more hopeful. Research shows that feeling socially connected can increase happiness, improve health, and lead to a longer life.

Gideon Rosenblatt notes that connections are different from relationships. Connections, or points of contact, can take many forms. They typically involve some kind of action and are usually time-constrained. Relationships are about the experience of connecting with someone over an extended period of time. “One way to think of connections is as a kind of handshake between two parties,” he says.

Sometimes, a connection can take the form of a heart-to-heart, spill-it-all talk. Other times, just a laugh-out-loud e-mail can do wonders. Spending time connecting with others in pleasurable activities can be a welcome release from our daily worries.

And we can all learn something from our connections. During the past four years, as we’ve launched Courage to Caregivers, I’ve met some extraordinary people along the way, and every one of them has helped me better understand the unique challenges of caregivers. I’ve also learned how to listen better and how to be a better human.

That’s why it’s so important that we continue to connect while we also continue our physical distancing. I like to think of this time as an opportunity to strengthen our social solidarity. We need all of the solidarity we can get right now, and that goes not only for caregivers but also for those we love who are living with mental illness.

In the spirit of solidarity, if you’re looking for a new way to come together and expand your connections, consider joining one of our programs at Courage to Caregivers in our new virtual format. We’d love to support you and have you join our community.

Kristi Horner
Founder and Executive Director
Courage to Caregivers

https://thenexters.org/

The big holiday is upon us, and if you’re like me, you’re not going anywhere. Our friends’ Fourth of July parties have all been canceled down here in Texas, so I will be hanging out with the fam, playing card games, and shooting off our own fireworks. So not exactly quiet. Happy Fourth to all!

Here are 4 bits of news from the NextTribe offices:

1. We learned about the 4 pillars of the “house of health” through menopause and beyond during our Nutrafol-sponsored Embrace the Change talk on fitness, energy and sleep.
Read all about it here.

2. A lot of us have been embracing our gray, out of necessity, during the pandemic. We say don’t hide away your gray, strut it. Win prizes and recognition by posting photos with hashtags: #NextTribe and #HoorayforGray.
Details here. 
(Members are eligible to win bigger prizes.)

3. We’re setting up our summer virtual events. The first one is on July 16th with Erica Heller, editor of One Last Lunch and yes, Joseph Heller’s daughter, and Muffie Meyer, a director, and editor of Grey Gardens.
Details here. 

4. I’m very proud that so many truly accomplished women are being considered for the VP slot on the Democratic ticket. Which one do you think will make the best candidate?

Stay safe all, and wear a mask if you’re out and about.

–Jeannie Ralston

Sunday – June 21, 2020
I think it was my paternal grandfather, Abe, who first laid this simple piece of folk wisdom on me, “If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, most likely…”.  Navel contemplators may have a burning passion to delve deeper into the spiritual or philosophical possibilities of that perception, but I’m pretty sure, most of the time, the feathery creatures, attempting to look adorably hungry to the strangers disregarding the “Do Not Feed the Ducks” sign, are ducks.  Ergo, racists are racist, liars lie, thieves steal, politicians spin, guns kill, bullies abuse and everyone poops.  At this unique moment in time, at the confluence of pandemic and racial unrest and mad king despotism in the White House, most of us are experiencing a moment of widespread clarity where it may just be possible to clean our very messy and disingenuous slate, if only we take this opportunity to stop trying to reimagine the obvious.  It is better to be at peace than at war.  It is better not to harm the life-sustaining nature of our planet.  It’s cool to be kind.  We can, should, must do better while abiding zero tolerance for inept, corrupt, ill-thinking public servants at every level of governance.  We are all created equal and everyone’s life is better when life is better for everyone.  Certainly, BLACK LIVES MATTER! Equally, blackened hearts DO NOT!  Quack

When you believe that #Black Lives Matter – you share your story – https://womensenews.org/2020/06/a-gift-for-my-racist-father-a-biracial-nephew