The Caregiver Space, a place for ALL caregivers
831 FOLLOWERS
Created by caregivers, for caregivers. This is a safe space for people from around the world to talk about everything caregiving. From the good to the bad and everything in-between.
The Caregiver Space, a place for ALL caregivers
1w ago
Revolving doors at office towers might as well be called “blind-person milling machines.” Try finding the bottle of vitamins you want on a CVS shelf or minding the gap on the S train at Times Square without plunging to the tracks. Beijing, where I currently reside, is a death trap for the disabled. Every time ..read more
The Caregiver Space, a place for ALL caregivers
1w ago
The week we move in together, Pam breaks her leg. They call it a fragile fracture, and I argue about the word fragile. “Why fragile? This woman right here runs marathons. She’s not fragile.” I’m pissed. The doctor explains that any fracture in a person over fifty, much less sixty, is called fragile. I sputter ..read more
The Caregiver Space, a place for ALL caregivers
2w ago
“The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world BECAUSE it doesn’t have paid family leave. In other words, our position as one of the, if not the, wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet intrinsically depends on our ability to extract maximum value while externalizing as many costs as possible ..read more
The Caregiver Space, a place for ALL caregivers
2w ago
So tightly drawn are local council eligibility criteria that many older people do indeed need to be almost at deaths door (or at risk of passing through it) to be deemed eligible for council commissioned support. Maybe as a result, care in later life is largely imagined and practiced as an extension of palliative care ..read more
The Caregiver Space, a place for ALL caregivers
1M ago
“Avis Hitchcock, a 30-year-old from Florida, has cared for their parents for six years. Both of their parents have battled two types of cancer, from which both are currently in remission. However, due to the deteriorating effects of the disease, chemotherapy and radiation treatments, caregiving remains a necessity. … When asked about how they experience ..read more
The Caregiver Space, a place for ALL caregivers
1M ago
I first learned about the concept of psychological boundaries a little over a year ago. But something didn’t seem quite right about it. People explained to me how they understood psychological boundaries, and but the explanations didn’t seem logically consistent. Sometimes, boundaries meant ~“the unavoidable separateness of individuals”, and sometimes, boundaries meant ~“things you are ..read more
The Caregiver Space, a place for ALL caregivers
1M ago
In hard times, urging people to be positive doesn’t boost their resilience. It denies their reality. People in pain don’t need good vibes only. They need a hand to stay steady through all the vibrations. Strength doesn’t come from forced smiles. It comes from feeling supported. Over the past month, I’ve been diving into the ..read more
The Caregiver Space, a place for ALL caregivers
1M ago
There’s a lot of talk about different kinds of marriage penalties in the tax code (when being legally married puts you at a disadvantage relative to cohabiting and filing separately). They’re well worth addressing, but for the most part, they’re a matter of putting pressure on couples at the margin—marriage means forfeiting a few thousand ..read more
The Caregiver Space, a place for ALL caregivers
1M ago
That bracelet and the days surrounding his giving it to me were the one bright beam of joy in an otherwise very dark time. My mother’s longterm partner (who I dislike, but that’s a letter for another time) had a difficult bout with cancer this spring. Chemo, radiation, the whole Megillah. After his treatment ended ..read more
The Caregiver Space, a place for ALL caregivers
1M ago
When Carolita Johnson became a live-in caretaker for her 87-year-old mother, reimagining this new life as a multi-year writing residency helped her make peace with a difficult living arrangement. … It so happened that my mother, nearly 87 and all alone in the house since my father’s death a year earlier, began making it clear ..read more