The Thoughtful Caregiver: Surviving, Thriving and Growing in Spirit as You Care for Your Elderly Parent

by Rebecca James Hecking

One fateful summer, Rebecca James Hecking’s elderly father suffered a catastrophic fall that turned his life upside down and launched her into nearly six years of active caregiving for both her parents. The experience was emotionally challenging, heart opening and ultimately life changing. Written to provide emotional support and practical advice for you, the adult child caregiver, it will help you navigate the many challenges you may encounter as you care for your elderly parent. Part practical advice, part spiritual guide, The Thoughtful Caregiver is your companion on the caregiving journey. Although there are many excellent books on eldercare available, few focus primarily on the needs and experience of the adult child caregiver directly. The Thoughtful Caregiver was written to fill that gap. The Thoughtful Caregiver covers a wide range of topics
•Handling the unique stresses of caregiving

•Finding balance between caregiving and the rest of your life

•Negotiating the parent/adult child relationship

•Surviving the emotional nightmare of a parent with dementia

•Navigating a major move

•Coping with sudden, unexpected crises

•Decision making at the end of life

•Balancing expectations and reality

•Handling the holidays and the unique challenges they pose to caregiving

•Sorting out the intersection of grief and dementia

•Developing creative coping rituals unique to you

•Sorting out the emotional baggage of your relationship with your parent

•Growing into greater compassion

•Integrating your caregiving years into the bigger picture of your life
Each chapter is labeled with several word tags such as anger, crisis, self-care, or family dynamics that are indexed in the back of the book to help you find exactly the support you need when you need it. There are also several questions at the end of each chapter that are suitable for journaling or reflection to help you gain perspective on your own unique situation. Throughout the book, Rebecca shares her own story, and offers a mix of practical physical advice and mindful reflection. The Thoughtful Caregiver is like having a conversation over a cup of tea with a friend who has walked the caregiving path a little bit ahead of you.

264 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2016

About the author

Rebecca James Hecking is something of a jane-of-all-trades. She grew up in western Pennsylvania and holds a B.S. in chemistry, and an M.A./I.S. in cultural and equity studies. She presently teaches mathematics at Thiel College in Greenville Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband and cats. She is the mother of three young adult children, and is proud of them to the point of absurdity.

Rebecca's writing is an eclectic mix of self-help, inspiration, environmental topics and commentary on the world at large. She has written for numerous online and print publications over the past decade. Her reading interests are just as eclectic as her writing. This past weekend found her reading the Aeneid of Virgil, the Bill McKibbon Reader, the essays of Carl Jung and Bridget Jones's Diary over the course of an evening. Topics of discussion over her dinner table on any given evening may include dark matter, international politics and the latest cat videos from the internet.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a comforting but not practical book, intended to provide support to people who are caring for their elderly and most likely dying parent, and in that respect, it succeeds. It helps to know that there are others who are experiencing the same things you are -- the premature grief that jumps from stage to stage often more than once in the same day, the anxiety that morphs into terror, the bone-deep exhaustion -- and even if it only helps for a few minutes, sometimes you need that few minutes of respite just to be able to get back to the laundry, stacks of paperwork, figuring out what the hell to cook for dinner that your mom will actually eat, the odd and likely imagined new symptoms, and the weeping, both yours and hers, that make up an average day.

Some things were helpful in a practical way, for example, I didn't know that dementia patients mirror the mood of their caregiver, and while this means I need to mask my normally non-upbeat personality, at least it gives me a little bit of control. And the author's experience with hospice helped clarify my own thinking on the matter. Other things were not helpful at all, and by this I specifically mean the metaphor about transplanting a rosebush, which was so tortured that it was nonsensical, and the thing about writing down negative feelings and then burning the paper or tearing it into tiny pieces and flushing them. Because sure, that's all I need, to call a plumber and explain to him that I clogged the toilet with my childhood resentments. I am short on time and temper these days, so don't test me with foolishness. Additionally, Hecking suggests finding a caregiver support group, either locally or online, but offers not even the most cursory of instructions as to how to locate one. This isn't a problem for me because ... Google, but a lot of people would be at a complete loss as to how to start. However, if I'm being honest, I'm knocking off a star because Hecking refers to herself as a caregiver, when both her parents lived alone in their own home 100 miles from her (though she did make weekly overnight visits) and then later they lived in an assisted living/skilled nursing facility closer to where she lived. That is not to say she didn't provide care for her parents (in fact, it sounds like she did a wonderful job and gave them the best end-of-life they could have had) but there's a vast difference between being what's essentially a visitor who does chores and being the sole caregiver 24 hours a day, and it feels like an insult, however unintentional, to suggest those two things are basically the same.

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grateful for this guide

I found this book useful and just right at this moment. I have been through being a caregiver for one parent and found being a caregiver for the other parent harder in some ways. Having the wisdom of this book at my side helps me through those dark days.