An Uncertain Inheritance
From a review of An Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on Caring for Family, edited by Nell Casey.
"Today’s caregivers are likely to find themselves peculiarly alone, exiles from the busy, heedless life around them in what the writers in this book variously call “a black hole of time and energy,” a “Black Balloon,” “our own little prison,” “Planet Autism” and “this unfamiliar country with different weathers, different rules.”
"Today’s caregivers are likely to find themselves peculiarly alone, exiles from the busy, heedless life around them in what the writers in this book variously call “a black hole of time and energy,” a “Black Balloon,” “our own little prison,” “Planet Autism” and “this unfamiliar country with different weathers, different rules.”
"Today’s caregivers are likely to find themselves peculiarly alone, exiles from the busy, heedless life around them in what the writers in this book variously call “a black hole of time and energy,” a “Black Balloon,” “our own little prison,” “Planet Autism” and “this unfamiliar country with different weathers, different rules.”
ReplyDeleteI realize that you're posting this as a mother of a child with an eating disorder, but I read this as a caregiver to a parent with dementia and a spouse with debilitating/degenerating post polio ...
As I read the 'black balloon' my brain immediately said "oh yeah, how true ....and I'm allergic to latex"
I'm thinking ... that maybe I need to re evaluate just a bit ... my therapist keeps saying I'm overwhelmed ...maybe she has a point?
I think we can get so used to being overwhelmed - and so sure there is no other choice - that it becomes normal.
ReplyDeleteCaregiving is HARD. And caregiving on different levels is like 3-dimensional chess HARD.
Taking care of oneself while doing all that caregiving... it takes a special kind of heroism. But as a parent, I think doing that is one of the most important jobs we can do - to model it for them.
I'm not that good at it, but I am trying.
Laura I think parents of eating-disordered children never can hear it enough-- SELF-CARE. Of course, anyone caring for another who is seriously ill and requires extended amounts of care undoubtedly also hears the same- and understands the words... but you are so right- it takes an active effort to make sure we heed those words and DO it! And it's indeed not easy...
ReplyDeleteThe lines that hit me instantly were Eleanor Cooney's: "hard and mean and full of sorrow all at once"- that simultaneous compact set of emotions I can definitely respond to- and yet at the same time, after a year since our d was dx with AN- I also have found some distance and perspective, even humor in what we've had and continue to have to face- head on with this illness.
Virginia Woolf's "extreme reality" puts it poignantly, doesn't it? And Ponzi's picture of the woman either plugging down or up (and we all know at any time of the day- it can go either way!) into that black stone well- whew! I've had my share of those days too.
Blessings-
Thanks for mentioning this book. I've ordered it from the library; my husband's 81-year-old father is taking care of his 81-year-old mother, who appears to be getting Alzheimer's disease. I worry that they will all sink under the weight of this tremendous burden.
ReplyDelete