Speaker 1: 0:01

You're never prepared for how the world shifts. When you begin to manage care for your parents, it starts as a helping hand, then it begins to grow slowly, until that day it's clear that they are truly struggling in ways that maybe you just hadn't realized. Switching into parent caregiving was like that for me. I saw the flags but believed I was making it bigger than it was. I lived farther away and didn't see them all the time. There were a few medical moments that were in my face, scary Moments like well, when one parent was discovered non-responsive. Each time the crisis would pass and we could all pretend things were normal. At some time we had to admit that just wasn't true. My parents were all single, all living alone, and they were having a hard time with it.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Hi, I'm Becky Fraser, an award-winning coach, author and entrepreneur. I'm also a leader shaped by decades of experience inviting others on a journey towards adaptable leadership and fulfilled potential. Welcome to Short Story Long. Today is a novella. These episodes share the journeys between the inflection points they still have growth, a little drama and insights. The inflection points they still have growth, a little drama and insights, just in a smaller package.

Speaker 1: 1:28

I'm the youngest of three and I'm the one who moved away and only returned really for visits For years. It was mostly holidays and big life events. Given the geographic distance between where I lived and where my family was, it was at least annual and often really multiple times a year I was there but I wasn't part of the day-to-day living. Honestly, it's some random chaos when we get together in any combination and it's warm, laughter-filled and familiar. We are wildly different people who have some common threads that weave us together pretty tightly. That was incredibly important for us when our parents started to decline, separately and simultaneously. Moving away was actually a reasonable choice for me to make, based upon the life that I wanted to live, who I wanted to be and the experiences I wanted to have. In some moments that was really challenging and difficult for me to be that separated from everyone else because they were all congregated within a small geography.

Speaker 1: 2:45

One of the things that my mom said to me shortly after I graduated from college actually was that she always knew that I would leave for college and she never actually expected that I would ever come back. She saw within me that I was just going to keep on going and getting those different experiences all of the time and I think, anytime that some of the guilt might've come up of I'm not there when I should be or when someone else might think that I should be. I would remember her saying that, and she didn't say it in a way that was judging me. She was saying it as this is who you are and it's okay for you to go in this direction. There are times when I think she might have regretted saying that she wanted me closer and at the same time, it's also that statement that I carried with me quite a bit.

Speaker 1: 3:48

It's hard to see your parents struggle with the things that were once simple tasks for them. It changes a little bit how you see them and a little, unfortunately, I think, how you interact with them. I might think there was a clear and obvious choice, but this may not surprise you. I come from some independent kinds of people who weren't about to let anyone make choices for them. I could more fully describe each of my parents to you, but there aren't hours and words for that. For me, the stories took decades to accumulate and I am forever grateful for all the time with each of them. They taught me that whatever happens matters far less than what you do with it. Those lessons showed up in different ways depending on which was teaching and what time of life I was in. Those lessons also came from my awesome and I truly mean awesome mother-in-law. She was a different kind of character who taught me a whole new set of life lessons.

Speaker 1: 4:57

After I met her, each of my parents had gotten where they were in life based on choices they had made In all fairness. Who were we, my siblings and I? To take that right from them, I had to tune into who they were and what was important to them, not what was important to me. I'm not going to lie. That wasn't an easy task and I had to learn that over and over and over again. Each of them had different chronic diagnoses that were made and each appeared to be navigating life with less ease, but still successfully. And then some cracks began to show. Things like use of technology caused more confusion. Managing financial records and making decisions required more support. Information about doctor appointments didn't seem consistent and definitely incomplete. We had to figure out how to rally around them in ways that were supportive without taking over, in order to get there.

Speaker 1: 6:11

As things progressed, I was grateful for the flexibility I had with my work. I had started my coaching practice and especially during COVID, I was doing everything virtually, and especially during COVID I was doing everything virtually as the severity of the epidemic receded. That remained almost always true At several points. I drove the 10-hour drive one way back to my family and during a particular six-month period of time I was home and in that area for roughly a total of about three months, but not three consecutive months, right, so I would find a place to work flyer in some of those particular places. I wanted to be there when I had a call come in at two o'clock in the morning, rebecca, because that's what most of them called me, rebecca, I need you to come here, is that okay? Yep, give me 10 minutes, I'll be there. That was actually a privilege for me to be able to be that close by and that easy to call, and it also took a little bit of pressure off from my siblings because they were getting those calls all of the time and it was important for me to take at least a little bit of that.

Speaker 1: 7:51

There were times of frustration and despair with enough hope, and that hope kept me questioning whether it was as serious as I believed it to be. Believed it to be. I started to access some outside resources and at one point even engaged with a social worker because I had done an online survey and I realized that the situation that I was facing with one of my parents was actually far more serious than I actually believed it to be, and I went how much do I not know about what I don't know? And her expertise, her knowledge, her ability to send me resources without me digging through the internet for questionable quality kinds of things was really critical for my mental health during that time, because I was able to have a partner I could rely on to give me reasonable counsel and, every once in a while, a little bit of a talking to, because maybe I wasn't being my best self.

Speaker 1: 8:56

My dad passed a month after I've published my book. He was so proud of me that he was bragging about me to the nurse that was right after scolding me for not signing it already. When I talked to him that morning, my mother-in-law passed away about 15 months later. She'd been balancing a variety of things and she never wanted to be a bother. She made sure that we had what we needed for the next steps after she was gone, and that was a gift that I didn't even recognize that you could give to someone. My mom is still fighting the fight against her diagnosis. We don't know yet where that path will be and and at some point in time you just have to surrender to the ambiguity and keep on going wherever it's going to take you.

Speaker 1: 9:52

Each situation has been different. None have been easy. Never did I feel confident that I was helping enough. It's taught me a few things that I wish I'd known at the start and I think might be a little important to share with my listeners here. So, as I mentioned, geographically distant hundreds of miles, hours of driving to get there my siblings were both local. My siblings were both local. I've often thought about if one is easier than the other and I've pretty much decided nope, they're both miserably and challengingly hard. I worked to find things that I could do when I wasn't there handling some of the financial things I could do on the internet, doing loads and loads of research on things and understanding some of the legalities of things so we could ask smart questions.

Speaker 1: 10:51

When we were in the room with professionals and experts, I kept worrying about being far away from everyone and just not being enough. The travel was intense. I spent a lot of time there and yet it never felt like I was there. In those moments of crisis when I needed to be there, I started to believe that it was after I left to come back to where I live that the bad things would happen. And then a week later I would need to turn around and go back. You start to realize that crazy things are happening every day. It's not about whether or not I was there or not. What I did have was the ability to step away from the situation a little bit and have a little bit of distance. I had that reprieve. My siblings didn't always get that break, and it's why I was so conscious when I was there to say no, no, I will do some of these things that you normally do so that you can get your breath back.

Speaker 1: 12:00

As siblings, we tried very hard to be supportive and understanding of one another. We are really fortunate that our differences were acknowledged as strengths among the team or the group right. We were intentional about saying that to reinforce how we valued each other and how we saw each one of us really contributing to the whole of the effort. Still, I had the fear that I'd miss a call or not be home in time for some calamity, and that was a challenge for me that they didn't necessarily have have. Another thing that I think about a lot is that listening and empathy are far more important than the tasks. I'm a problem solver and it was really hard for me to stop fixing everything.

Speaker 1: 12:54

It's a vulnerable and scary time for everyone. We didn't talk about the hard stuff all the time. Scary time for everyone. We didn't talk about the hard stuff all the time, but I did finally recognize that caring about my parent was as important, if not more so, than caring for my parent. We all want to have some dignity, especially in those moments that feel horribly undignified. It's not just about the body, it's all the other moments of dealing with financial, social discomforts, clarity with doctor's instructions. They were talking and, beck, I just don't even know what they said to me right there. That's hard to admit to someone, particularly your child you raise, and I became very, very aware of that and I could see that their frustration bubbled up all the time in those areas and it was hard not to feel that it was about me and that it was truly their emotions that were surfacing at that point in time.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Taking time to know and name my boundaries was important, and remembering to respect the limits my parents had was crucial. It's no surprise that my parents, by birth or choice, were a strong and independent group of people. If they weren't ready to make a change let me just share it wasn't going to happen. Even in the frustration I sometimes felt, I had to acknowledge a level of pride that they were that way. Remembering to have fun with them was another key piece. Some of my favorite memories were just really random, unpredictable kinds of experiences. Really random, unpredictable kinds of experiences.

Speaker 1: 14:45

After a particularly challenging doctor's appointment, my mother-in-law and I went out to have some lunch together and we were in the restaurant. She had me laughing so hard that I actually had to lay down on the bench inside the restaurant because I was trying not to make well that big of a scene. So I wanted to hide myself because otherwise it was going to cause a ruckus and that of course, made us just laugh harder. It was messy. We probably made a scene With my dad. It was really going through generations of things that had accumulated and learning far more about family members I'd never met. He had all of these pictures and letters and all these things, and he kept looking at them, saying I just want to look through these and so we could take the time to do something like that and I could see a different side of my dad that I'd never seen before. What a gift. My mom and I had taken a trip once with folks who were maybe even a couple of decades older than she was she might have been bringing the average age down, so I definitely was and we were able to go into Canada and experience some of the tourist sites and really just get into innocent trouble and just have moments where we were laughing about different things and it really didn't matter how true the story was to reality as we were reciting them back to each other. It was really about having the fun of sharing those experiences with each other.

Speaker 1: 16:24

Again, you might be asking me and I can't hear you, but I'm suspecting, becky, why would you share this? Why is this part of the podcast? And I would say this is yet another instance in my life where I had no idea what I'd experience until I was in it. I'd heard others talk about how parent care had affected their professional lives, the stress of it, the time invested the head banging on a wall to find a way to make it work. I shared what I learned, but fewer details about the pain of learning them. The pain is less important than sharing the lesson.

Speaker 1: 17:05

I also recognize how much I underestimated the value of getting along with my siblings. I recognize that's not true for everyone. I don't think I even realized how true that was for us until we went through this and we were of common mind what would that parent want? What would that parent want? And that was our driving force. My business didn't grow maybe as much as it could have. During that time I had fantastic clients who were flexible, caring and amazing. I also scaled back on business development and other things during that time because I didn't have the capacity to invest in those things from a mental perspective, from an emotional perspective. My voice, I knew, would carry through in any of the things I was doing and I didn't want that stress to come out in that way For me. I have no regrets about where I spent my time. That ability to do that was a privilege.

Speaker 1: 18:17

My sister, for most of that time, was working a full-time, in-person job. My brother runs a farm and the harvest wasn't going to wait too long. We all gave work a little bit of a backseat in order to focus on family and the personal things that we wanted to accomplish. Integrating life and work is always challenging. In making those decisions about am I willing to put my time into these personal things, perhaps at the cost of work, can be a very challenging decision.

Speaker 1: 18:55

I can tell you that for me, it became a moment to moment kind of thing. Is this a huge fire that I have to be a? For me, it became a moment-to-moment kind of thing. Is this a huge fire that I have to be a part of putting it out? Or is this a small-range kind of fire where my siblings had it under control and me being there was nice to have but not a need to have, and I needed to start using that lens a little bit more to get there? Taking time with my parents and thinking about their needs may have even given me a path toward even greater clarity about myself and my business. Naturally, that's another story. Thank you for listening to my story. My hope is that you will get insights for leading as you. If you know someone who would benefit from this episode, be sure to share it. Interested in connecting with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a note telling me where you found me. The link will be in the show notes. Okay, bye.