Caregiving & Grief

Sandwich Generation Survival Strategies

There is a particular kind of fatigue that comes from packing school lunches while you are also managing medication refills. From helping with algebra homework to explaining a new phone charger to your parent for the fifth time, it can feel like your life is one long relay race and you are always...

The First 30 Days After a Loss

In the first days after someone dies, your brain is doing two jobs at once: grieving and triaging. You might feel foggy, numb, oddly productive, or all of the above before lunch. This checklist is here for the moments when you cannot remember what comes next, but you still have to keep the wheels...

What to Say (and Avoid Saying) to Someone Grieving a Miscarriage

When someone tells you they miscarried, your brain can do that unhelpful thing where it flips through every Hallmark card it has ever seen and comes up blank. You want to help. You do not want to make it worse. And because pregnancy loss is both deeply personal and strangely public (people ask...

Dividing Eldercare Responsibilities Fairly

Most sibling conflict around eldercare is not really about who loves Mom or Dad more. It is about visibility and load . One person is doing a thousand tiny tasks no one else sees, and another sibling feels criticized for having a job, distance, health issues, or their own kids. The goal is not...

First Holidays After a Loss

The first holiday season after losing someone you love can feel like walking into a room where the furniture has been rearranged in the dark. Everything looks familiar, but nothing lands the same way. The music. The recipes. The empty chair that somehow takes up the most space. If you are dreading...

How to Talk to Aging Parents About Moving to Assisted Living

There is a particular kind of ache that shows up when you start thinking about assisted living for a parent. It is love mixed with fear, plus a pinch of role reversal that can make even the most capable adult child feel like a kid again. If you have ever sat at a kitchen table trying to find the...

In-Home Care vs. Assisted Living

Most families do not “choose” eldercare so much as they arrive there, tired and worried, carrying a notebook full of medication lists and a quiet fear of getting it wrong. I have been the adult child trying to keep a parent safe at home, and I have also sat with families in my therapy office as...

7 Warning Signs of Caregiver Burnout (And How to Ask Relatives for Help)

Caregiving burnout rarely arrives with a trumpet. It shows up more like a slow leak. You stop sleeping well. Your patience gets shorter. You start forgetting the little things, and then you start forgetting the big things. As a former family therapist and a long-time member of the sandwich...

Sandwich Generation Survival Guide

There is a particular kind of tired that comes from packing a lunch, paying a copay, answering a school email, and then spending your “break” on hold with an insurance company. If you are raising children while also supporting an aging parent, you are not failing. You are doing two big jobs at...

Talking to Kids About Death

There is no “right” way to tell a child someone has died. There is only the best you can do in a moment you never wanted to be in. As a former family therapist and a parent who has had to have these conversations more than once, I can tell you this: children do not need perfect words. They need...