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Commentary Category
Coping with Caregiving
You can hear me speak about elder caregiving on Segment One of the “Coping with Caregiving” radio show discussing Where Their Needs End and Yours Begin with host, Jacqueline Marcell, author of “Elder Rage“.
The show aired on June 13th.
You can listen to the archive via Windows Media Player (Windows or MAC) or Real Player (Windows). Learn more about listening to WSRadio.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt an internal push to make my life better. Perhaps I was looking for more fulfillment, more satisfaction, more joy…I don’t know. If you had asked me why I repeatedly upset the status quo of my life when things became too comfortable I couldn’t have explained it to you… it was unclear to me.
But what was clear was that I wanted more from my life. It was as if another part of me – one that lived in rest mode much of the time – took over my mind and spirit from time to time and challenged me to make a positive change in some area of my life. It was a drive to be a better person.
I didn’t understand it then. But now I view it differently, from the perspective gained from age, from hard-won personal growth and from the holistic beliefs I now hold. It was my spirit that carried me forward towards a more joyful, satisfying life…my spirit that helped me divest myself of old emotional baggage so I could become more of who I really was.
Yesterday we had our quarterly call with Martha Beck, the remarkable woman who trained us as coaches. Part of Martha’s conversation with us was a brief synopsis of the concepts in her recent coaching book, “Steering by Starlight”. Martha told us we’re born to focus on the shallows of our lives. We work towards detaching ourselves from the issues we have in various categories of our lives. We burn up these issues, or attachments the ring of fire, and gradually move towards the core of peace.
I understood this explanation ‘from the horses mouth’ in a way that I hadn’t understood the book or my study course with the Martha Beck Master Coaches. I realized that what my spirit has pushed me to do all these years was just what Martha described. She has her own words for it and I have mine.
We’ve been back for 6 days from SE Asia & the jet lag seems worse in some ways than last time. I’m sleeping way too much & can’t wake up properly when I’m done sleeping. It gets a bit better as the days go on & when I set a clock radio to wake me (the longer I sleep the worse it gets!). Often people can’t sleep when they’re jet lagged but oversleeping is a side effect too. – (can’t find any info on not being able to wake up though). Also I’ve had a cold which complicates things.
I had my 1st outing today – to the library & to my favourite coffeeshop, Truffles, in downtown Gibsons – really enjoyed it. Had to drive there though as I thought it was a bit far to hobble on my healing miniscus ligament! Tore it 2 weeks ago climbing in & out of the back of pick-up trucks with my short little, 60 year-old legs – that’s the way you travel in rural Thailand.
Getting around the tiny island where we were staying was a bit of a challenge as our house was the farthest out in the resort & about a 5 minute walk from the restaurant on an uneven sandy pathway by the seashore. For the first week my brother came for me each morning on his motorcycle & we slowly putted along the path & over the bridges to breakfast. I’d stay there for a couple of hours at least sociallizing or reading, then walk slowly back with my bound knee & my funny old cane, stopping to rest & ice the knee along the way! (The cane was given to me by Mr. A., a staff member & friend of my brothers; it had to be taped together at the joint & have the foot of a bar stool added to the bottom to give it stability),
Fortunately when I hurt myself we were already on the little island in South Thailand relaxing, we’d finished our travelling around time in Laos & Malaysia where we walked miles in a day often. Despite the leg injury, we had a great time there & met many new friends, both tourists from all over the world & Thai staff.
- The final layout is done for my book, The Caregiver in MidLife, where do their needs end and yours begin. Progress has been slow due to the illness on my team I mentioned. Please stay tuned!
What to say about Bangkok? I noticed on the plane out of Vancouver a quietness, a calm energy amongst the passengers, quite unlike the bustling energy on the way to India last year. We’ve been here since Tuesday around noon Bangkok time (that’s about 9 pm Vancouver time) & we’re leaving this eveing for Ventienne, Laos, an 11 hour bus ride north (plane tickets were expensive & the 1st class train was fully booked; they said Don was too tall for a 2nd class upper berth).
We’ve loved the neighborhood we’ve stayed in, called Phra Nakhon, at the Rajata, a quiet family hotel with friendly staff & interesting laneways to explore & eat in. Life revolves around the street, with kids playing near their parents & small businesses & living space often in the same set of rooms. We’re about a 15 minute walk from the Chao Phraya River, & on the east side of it where most of the city is. We can get a long ferry ride through 15 stops for 13 Bhat (~52 cents). Sometimes the ferry is pretty crowded with Thais going about their daily business along with many tourists, but it’s a great way to travel.
A few stops down the river from us is the enormous & very beautiful Wat (temple) Phra Kaeo & Grand Palace where the beloved King & Queen used to live (they’re in their 80′s now & reside elsewhere) & many markets. Yesterday we took the boat further along to the Central Pier, & had one of those weird tourist experiences.
We ran into a lovely Thai woman who is an English teacher. She recommended that we take a tuk tuk (auto rickshaw) to the Thai market to see local Thai products. It took ages to get their in very busy traffic & when we arrived we saw not the marketplace we expected, but a very upscale wholesale showroom with one floor of high end jewellery displays & the other dress clothes. I did see one thing I liked, a small, rather heavy turtle with semi-precious stones on it, but wasn’t willing to pay the discount price of 1400 Bhat (~$56).
Our ride to the craft place was very cheap, but when we tried to get out of there, it took many tries to find the right driver to take us. The 1st tuk tuk driver said he’d charge less than what we paid to get there but insisted that we make “1 stop” on the way back at a store so he’d get a commission, so we got out of his tuk tuk (suprisingly he let us). Then we crossed the street where we saw a lineup of cabs, but it was the taxi yard; some of the cabs were out of commission being repaired, & several very friendly drivers said they could drive us after they ate lunch, in about 1 hour (one invited us to sit down & share the meal, but we politely declined as we wanted to get back downtown. The men helped us a bit & finally we found a tuk tuks driver willing to take us back to the Central Pier area downtown for 70 Bhat (because the traffic was getting so heavy). When we finally got back there I took off my pristine white hat & it had quite a bit of black soot on it.
All for now – next installment from Laos hopefully.
I’m okay, maybe you’re not – projecting our stuff
I guess that’s why we don’t live in isolation, rather we live surrounded by others in varying degrees of community. What Kirstie Alley was doing and saying seemed quite odd and imbalanced to me, but then don’t I do all kinds of things that don’t make sense, and that cause my life to go out of balance? Don’t we all?
Kirstie lived healthily for a period of time, a couple of years or so, and as spokesperson for Jennie Craig lost much weight and was a model for many American women. Then about a year ago, maybe she got tired of doing it all ‘right’, I don’t know; she decided to turn her dining room, full of gym equipment, back to its original purpose so she could wine and dine her friends. She had all the equipment moved out of the dining room and shoved into a smaller room, and never looked back on working out. Needless to say, she gained a load of weight.
This show begs the big questions, “Why can’t Kirstie Alley afford a workout room in her lovely home?”, “Why would she turn her beautiful dining room into a workout room?” And a final one: “Why is she designing a weight loss program when she had already found a balanced program that seemed to work well for her?”.
Most of us have to be hit over the head before we get things. (I know someone who was literally hit hard on the head several times when she inadvertently struck a 2×4 jutting out from an unfinished doghouse. Each time she felt enraged with her husband who was in charge of the project; finally the last time she got it that he wasn’t the one causing her to bend down and hit her head. But that topic’s a whole other story and we’ll leave it for another time !)
Maybe Kirstie’s out there as a figurative ‘hit on the head’ for us…a gift from the Universe! Thank you Kirstie Alley!