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Every week, I pour my heart into these words to make your caregiving journey a little lighter and less lonely. Many of you have shared how these stories have brought comfort, perspective, or even a smile on a hard day.

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Caregiver’s Corner: The Yin and Yang of Family Caregiving

You’ve probably seen the ancient Chinese symbol of the Yin and Yang. It looks a little bit like two fish circling each other, one white and one black.

This symbol represents balance: white and dark, sky and earth, male and female, and so on. The thing I love most about this symbol is that it has a little white dot on the black side, and vice versa on the white side. Nothing is balanced, that is, unless it’s opposite is included.

That’s why I tell people that every weakness contains an element of strength. (And yes, every strength contains an element of weakness, too.)

So what does this mean for caregiving? We all feel our “weaknesses” acutely. Home and family caregivers may be hit hardest by these feelings. If you’re in that boat, you might think that you’re at a disadvantage compared to professional caregivers because:

• You can’t clock out and take a break; no PTO either

• You don’t have back-up to help

• You may not have training

• You may not have the medical equipment that you’d see in a professional facility

• You haven’t been able to practice things before you have to do them for real

And so on.

But because of—not in spite of—many of those circumstances, you have some strengths that you can bring to the table as well.

Having a “Beginner’s Mind” is crucial in improving on any activity. Family caregivers have to maintain that curious mindset because nothing is hand-delivered by corporate headquarters or a nursing supervisor: you’re scouring YouTube, talking to support groups, and asking embarrassing questions in order to get the best methods to care for your loved one. You have to be creative and experiment.

Compare that to a caregiver who gets dropped into a job with a procedure dictating how things must be done. They actually aren’t allowed to engage with the study of caregiving in the same way: instead, they’re required to do the procedure according to the manual until someone in charge tells them to do something different. They are given the craft wholesale, and expected NOT to refine it. You, in contrast, are innovating every day.

Or, maybe you feel like you don’t understand the disease well enough. However, the personal nature of your caregiving drives you to study and learn. Professional caregivers learn the basics of dementia, but most won’t study the disease in their spare time as though their loved one’s life depended on it. For you, it’s a necessity. If you’ve spent several hours studying dementia, even reading this newsletter, you have probably exceeded the amount of required dementia training a caregiver will usually get on the job.

If you watched my video at the top of the post, you got to see how I was able to help my mom through her experience at the hospital this past week. She had passed out at dinner and they transported her. (She’s doing great, by the way!) The doctor was trying to go through the stroke tests with my mom: squinch your eyes, smile, lift one leg and then the other, etc.

The doctor would ask her to do something, she’d look at me, and I’d translate it into something she understood. Remember that just because someone is a doctor or even a dementia professional, that doesn’t make them an expert in your loved one’s wants, needs, history, and preferences!

That’s your superpower, and it comes from what you might think is a weakness: you aren’t a professional. No professional, however, could have stepped in for my mom the way that I did. We know our loved ones, and we put it all on the line to take care of them. That kind of caregiving can’t be bought or paid for.

We all feel the weak points in our lives and our care for others. Like me, you may be very good at identifying your failures, disappointments, and missed opportunities. Ouch. It’s a tough way to live, and caregivers seem particularly prone to being hard on ourselves. But if you can take those moments and look for the strength in them—and, for me, it’s always been hidden in there somewhere when I look really hard—the load gets lighter. As we let go of comparisons, we give ourselves permission to care in our own unique ways.