Finding Joy In Caregiving With Erin Antroinen

Listen as Erin Antroinen, founder and CEO of NextGen Caregivers LLC shares her journey into caregiving that was sparked when she simultaneously cared for her fatherJeff battling cancer and her mother Sue facing dementia and Parkinson’s. Erin is your guide to a personalized caregiving approach, recognizing that each caregiver’s story is unique. She looks to support caregivers at every stage, from newbies seeking logistics and stress management tips to seasoned caregivers looking for somatic awareness and emotional support, and those wanting to thrive on their caregiving journey. Erin believes that caregiving, though demanding, offers incredible opportunities for personal growth and fulfillment. IG link https://www.instagram.com/nextgencaregivers/

Transcript

Mandy: 0:06

Hello and welcome back to the Grief Trails podcast. I'm your host Amanda Kernighan from Remembergrams, a small business dedicated to helping you support those in your life experiencing grief. I hope you'll consider sending someone a personalized card or grief support box. Shipping within the U. S. is always free and we treat each order with special care, paying attention to every detail. Today on the podcast, we have Erin Antronian, creator and CEO of NextGen Caregivers, where she is a guide to others on the caregiving journey, recognizing everyone's experience is unique while helping to offer logistical support, stress management tips, somatic awareness, emotional support, and anything needed to help support others through the demanding experience of caregiving that Erin believes offers some incredible opportunities for personal growth and fulfillment. Of course, like anyone else, she was not a born expert in caregiving. Erin found herself in the position of caregiver for her father as he passed away from cancer, and immediately after for her mother who faced both dementia and Parkinson's disease. This is Erin's story.

Erin: 1:16

Oh gosh. Life before caregiving and loss. Hmm. It's been such a long journey and it just feels like it's a never ending journey. You know prior to all of this, my parents were both super active in my life. My mom was actually my manager. I had a direct sales business for 17 years and she was my office manager. She worked in my office with me full time. And. My dad was like my biggest cheerleader, you know, he would, anything that needed to be done, like if I needed something cooked, if I needed something cleaned, if I needed my tires fixed, you know, I was, I'm single. And my parents, we always joked that they're, they're my significant other until, I get a husband, I love that. Yeah. Yeah, really. And I'm, I was so grateful that like, I had that type of relationship with my parents because I know not everybody is lucky to have that sort of relationship. And I, and to be honest, it wasn't always like that, you know, there were some things that happened in my parents marriage that, cause some division in our family. And we worked really hard to get back on good footing and had many conversations of healing and forgiveness and all of that stuff. And my dad was diagnosed with cancer though, in 20. 12. And it was a adenoma carcinoma. It basically he ended up losing his eye. It kept coming back in the same place over and over and over again. And he just kept beating it like literally he would beat it. And then five months later, he'd go in for a scan and it come back and it just bounced back and forth between his eyes and his lymph nodes in his neck like it didn't go anywhere else. It just stayed right in those two places and they just always caught it early enough. And and it was a lot like every fall me and my mom were in the hospital dealing with one of his surgeries and the, just, you know, Never ending. And probably 2018 ish, 2017, 2018. My mom started showing signs of mental cognition things, you know, like having a hard time communicating, like asking lots of questions, my sister lived with her at the time. And with. She'd go to target and she would call her 20 times in the 30 minutes that she was gone because she would either forget that she asked or she just was anxious or, you know, whatever the thing was. And long story short, we ended up getting my mom's frontal temporal lobe dementia and Parkinson's diagnosis the same week that my dad came home on hospice in 2020. Yeah, we were the middle and in

Mandy: 3:52

2020 is Covid in the

Erin: 3:54

middle of the pandemic. Yeah. So it was like a triple whammy. My dad ended up going to the hospital. We thought he just had the flu. Then he ended up having a brain infection. So I, I will spare you guys the medical details, but basically he was leaking spinal fluid out of his nose. So. What comes out can also go in. So he had a nice old brain infection in his brain. And so they basically plugged him up, plugged up the hole in his brain and sent him home and we had three weeks with him on hospice. It was really beautiful. Like it was the best and the worst times. I have stories for days of the best and worst things that can happen when someone's dying. But it was just really beautiful to have that time with our family but it was really hard. Like, I remember being on the phone with one of my friends when my dad was on his way home, we had just gotten my mom's diagnosis going like, I don't even know how to do this. Both of my parents, like my dad is his death is eminent. And now it's just a matter of time before our mom is going to be in the same boat. And even now, I don't even think that I can process that type of information. It's just a lot. It's a lot for any family to endure in the middle of a pandemic where you can have no contact with people like no, you know, there's a lot. And you have One sibling or more? Okay. Yeah. It's just me and my sister. I'm the oldest. So we're about 21 months apart.

Mandy: 5:21

I mean, in a way, it's good that you had each other to experience this together. I don't know what that, I know all sibling dynamics are different but was that a support to you to have a sibling being there kind of going through the exact same thing as you or was that more difficult?

Erin: 5:37

It was definitely helpful. We're just two different people as most siblings are. Right. Like there's very dramatic differences, especially when there's two, it's like, one is always complete opposite. So, you know, from how they handle things to how they process things, to how they do. So she brought the laughter and the fun and all of that stuff, which was really appreciative. Cause I can be more type a, let's get it done. you know, let's accomplish something. So, it was good.

Mandy: 6:05

So was your mom able, at this point this was new in her diagnosis, so she was still cognizant of losing her husband and going through the grief of all of that with you. Is that right?

Erin: 6:18

She was and she wasn't. So with frontal temporal lobe, it attacks the frontal lobe. And so all of that is like executive functioning, like your reasoning, your emotion. So she didn't really have any emotions. By the time all of this started happening, she was very, she had inappropriate emotions at inappropriate times. So like when my dad did die and it was finally real, I read his obituary and I like broke down crying. She laughed at me because she didn't understand and in that moment I was like, I know she's not laughing at me. It's the disease that's laughing at me. And it's not even like a that's what she's doing. It's like, everything is misfiring in her brain. And so it's just the appropriate emotion is not coming out. And so, it didn't feel good still, but at least I was aware enough of her disease that I could intellectualize that it's not her doing that.

Mandy: 7:19

Right. Though when you're grieving, intellectualizing and understanding the logic behind things is not always easy.

Erin: 7:27

No, and it's definitely a coping mechanism, right? It's definitely like a way to protect yourself from the pain, you know, I think it definitely was a place. I think there's definitely things that I'm still dealing with because I intellectualized them and made it okay because that's, you know, what dementia says that is normal. And so I made it normal.

Mandy: 7:49

Did you know much about dementia and your mom's specific type of dementia before her diagnosis or were you learning right alongside you know, your mom and your sister at the time of diagnosis?

Erin: 8:00

Definitely learning right alongside, like I had known some people, it's not something that's prevalent in our family. So it it's also something that's newly talked about, right? It's not something that 10, 20 years that people were talking about a lot. It's like now all of a sudden there's more research, there's more, you know, back in the day, they just like put you in the loony bin. I say that tongue in cheek, but like, cause they didn't know, They didn't know how to process it. They didn't have a diagnosis for it. It's something that's, that's been in the last 20 to 30 years that they have researched for. So definitely learning along the way with everything, which was, you know, Really hard because nervous system diseases like Parkinson's and any form of dementias, they're all moving targets, right? Like they, they only show you certain symptoms at certain times and doctors can do their best to get a best diagnosis. But it's like, it's this constant ebb and flow of okay, this is what it looks like today. And then three months from now it looks like a completely different type of dementia because she's presenting different. symptoms. And, and it's this like constant grieving the loss of, Your mom, like for me, it was my mom. I know other people experienced this with different people, but it's, you know, like one day she can eat on her own and the next day I'm feeding her, you know, one day she's going to the bathroom by herself. And the next day I'm having to wipe her and put diapers on her. You know, it's that role reversal that all of a sudden you're now becoming the parent to your parents.

Mandy: 9:35

And it's such compounded grief from having just at the same time lost your dad and his experience being so different, right? You know,

Erin: 9:45

having a

Mandy: 9:46

pretty short period where he was on hospice, you knew it was coming compared to this diagnosis and not really having a clear timeline or knowing what all of that's going to look like. Right. How do you think that impacted your experience grieving your dad? Do you feel like you waited to do some of your grief work around losing your dad until you were able to process what was happening with your mom?

Erin: 10:12

I actually don't even think I grieved my dad until my mom died this year. So my mom just passed in March of 2023. And I feel like. Father's Day this year was the first time that I was like, my dad's gone, because I was so busy taking care of her and making sure that she was okay. And it was just yeah, I think that there was just a part of me that just, Mentally compartmentalized his death and just kind of put it over here on the side and I intellectually could say to people like I know when my mom dies, this is going to this is going to hit me hard, like for both of their deaths. And, you know, I wasn't lying.

Mandy: 10:54

Intellectually, you're very smart. You knew exactly what was going to happen. I wear my trauma well. So your mom's decline and her illness, were you living with her? Did your sister stay living with her? How did that look for the two of you? Did you have to take turns?

Erin: 11:11

Yeah. So my sister so she has a son who's now 15 at the time he was 12, 13. And so he had lived with our parents since he was a baby. And when dad declined like he had been sick for, you know, eight years, but that rapid decline, like he was considered to be in remission when he got sick again. And then that's when he came home on hospice. So it was Not totally surprised, but also we were not expecting that. And so we were all there when he passed together, my nephew was and all of that stuff. And so we just made a collective decision that the two of them didn't need to be there, as our mom declined and my sister didn't really have the bandwidth to. To do that and do everything for him. So so I moved home to help take care of my mom and stepped in immediately, like literally dad passed in the middle of COVID and then stepped in to take care of her. And yeah, and we moved in there too. Like we moved homes, it wasn't our childhood home, but we had grown, lived there for Like 20 years. So we had to move out of there cause my mom had to fall. She like fell down the stairs. So literally dad died. A month later, mom fell, broke her back. Luckily the hospital let me stay in the hospital with her. And then came home from that. It was just a fracture. And then she came home, fell again, got a brain bleed. And it was literally fighting tooth and nail to get her the treatment that she needed, because I couldn't be in the hospital with her, like they were having me send her into emergency rooms by herself. And like. You want to talk about traumatizing like I couldn't even I had to leave her at the door. They would not let me go in. I'm like, she cannot advocate for herself. She does not sit still. She will touch everything. I know you do not have the personnel that is going to sit with her. Like, I know. And you're asking for more trouble than it's worth. it will just be easier if I'm able to be there with her. And. Wouldn't do it. So they sent her they sent her home from a hospital in DC. And I ended up having to take her back because they told me that she was back to her baseline. She was not, she could barely walk up the stairs. She could barely move. Well, before she fell, she was doing like a mile a day. We would break it up throughout the day and do like a quarter of a mile at a time. And so I had to take her back in through the emergency room for them to readmit her, for them to get her to a skilled nursing facility to get the care that she needed. And I literally had to drop her off at the ER and sit outside waiting to find out if they were going to admit her all day long. I felt like I was dropping my child off at. A hospital and waiting for them to, like, take care of them and this child cannot speak for themselves. They can't do anything for themselves.

Mandy: 13:55

The coven experience when you put it with these, like, medical. Situations that people are going through when you put it through, like the grief that people are going through. I mean, it was, it's such a mass and I impacted people. I think in ways we're not going to know for years down the road. I know our hospital. I work in the hospital. That's my day job. And yeah, the restrictions on even how many people can be in a room. Who are on the hospice unit, like saying goodbye to somebody who's dying. There are restrictions with that. There were, like you said, at the emergency room, dropping people off who have dementia, who have different cognitive issues. And I remember there were people standing outside the windows trying to like watch and make sure their loved one was safe. And. It, yeah, I, I think then you add in the fact of grieving or losing someone during this time period when isolation is a lot higher and one of the biggest helps in grief is finding connection and, and leaning on others for support. So how was that for you? Did you find that COVID made things more complex for you being able to move through your own grief in different ways with friends and the support of family and others?

Erin: 15:14

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, we, it's funny, Well, so going back to the hospital, my dad, we thought he, we didn't even think he was going to come home. Like we went to the hospital to pull him off the vent at the hospital and I had to fight. They were just trying to send my mom in by herself or send me in or my sister. And then I was like, no, no, no. My mom has dementia and she needs both of me and my sister. So luckily we were able to get both of us in there. But, you know, he was up talking, like everything was fine, like an hour later. So it's, you know, he's, he's, he's been pulled off vents like 12 times in his life. It just is the amount of times I'm like, you are a cat with dementia. 15 lives. So but yeah, it was really challenging. Luckily I had a group at the time I worked for my church at the time. And so we all kind of were doing online church stuff together. And so we were kind of in a quarantine bubble or whatever they called it back then. I don't even remember. So luckily I had some. Of those types of people. And also I was super protective of my mom because she was such a high risk population with everything that she was going through. I mean, she was healthy as a fricking cow, outside of her dementia. It was insane to me. Just how everything happened. But so it was a lot of online groups, support prayer, you know, I actually hired a somatic breathwork coach that impacted me is that, which actually I'm now in the process of getting my practitioner certification because it was so impactful to me to learn how to move stress and trauma out of the body and all of that stuff. So just a lot of virtual help, but. It was really being willing to not be afraid to ask for help I think was one of the biggest things. And I think that because life was so overwhelming with the changes and also Prior to my parents getting sick, I had a black mold incident, which took me out like I couldn't drive for a year yet. It's my life. It's, it's been a little crazy. So I grieved all of that. Like, that's a whole nother grief process of like grieving my life, all of that. And So I, I surrendered in a lot of ways that prepared me to care for my mom that I don't think that I would have been as prepared had that not have happened. Like I can sit in gratitude now for that. I wasn't grateful for it for a very long time. It's very angry.

Mandy: 17:37

Yeah, that's natural though. I mean, that's something that happens with any kind of grief that we go through in life. So we are often angry and people are uncomfortable with feeling anger because it's not always a socially accepted emotion. But.

Erin: 17:52

Yeah, nobody teaches you how to be angry properly, you know, like that's one of the things with somatics is it teaches you how no emotions are good or bad. They just are, you know, and really like really allowing yourself whatever emotions are coming up, allowing yourself to feel those, whether it's screaming, breaking something it's better out than in. And so making sure that you're processing that.

Mandy: 18:15

Yeah. How did you learn about that work and how did you get interested in, in trying to incorporate that into your life during such a stressful time?

Erin: 18:25

So it actually came from a business coach that I was working with. One of their friends did the somatic work. And I. Just started watching some of her stuff on social media, because, you know, that's where all of us millennials find all things relevant. Right. We don't watch the news. We go to social media. And so I started watching her stuff and it just was like, The freedom to feel understanding the pains in the body and how they tie to emotions and I, again, intellectualizing thing. This is my, constant trauma response, like if I can do things. To be in control. this was my way of also trying to feel like I was in control of my grief process. Like, if I'm doing the things and I'm doing the, you know, I have all these things that I'm doing, then, maybe I'll protect myself or I'll, be able to process or whatever. And so it just, It just, and it made such an impact. So I just stick stuck with it. Cause it's, it's so much like our brain is sending. So our neurotransmitters and stuff in our body, like. 20 percent of our messages that go from our brain go to our body, but 80 percent of the messages in our body go to our brain. And so much of we can't think our way out of a problem. We, we have to feel our way. so much of us are staying in our brain and trying to think our way out of things. And so I was, so it helped me to get out of my brain and get into my body so that I was able to feel the things that I was avoiding feeling.

Mandy: 20:00

That's really interesting because I don't know much about this. I haven't ever done it myself, but I do find for me and my grief, one of the biggest helps was being out in nature, moving my body, walking, hiking, running different ways that I was physically moving were helping me process things, even if it wasn't at a conscious level. You know, I think that's what slowly moved me through the process. So it's really interesting to hear about that.

Erin: 20:30

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's so it's so innate, right? Like, it's so, it's so innate for us to want to move. And when we're in a trauma response, like if you think about an animal, when an animal is in a trauma response, they freeze, they pretend like they're dead. And, And then when they, if you ever watch an animal and they go, they have a near death experience, they get up from that near death experience and they shake. And what they're doing is they're moving that trauma out of their body. So then they can resume life as normal. And so much of us just keep going and we don't stop long enough to like shake it off or to get rid of it. Or we just. We hold on to it and we're like, okay, you come with me now everywhere I go. Yeah, that's accurate. We're like, you live here now. So we're just going to like stuff it all down as, as hard and as long as possible. Yes.

Mandy: 21:24

Oh, wow. So, so your experience was about three years of caregiving for your mom. What can you tell people about the experience of being a caregiver and what do you think people don't know or don't talk about enough about that experience?

Erin: 21:41

That's such a good question. Honestly, I think that there can be joy in caregiving. You can still have joy. There's still life to be lived. I think so often we get a diagnosis or a loved one does and we all we see is this a line of life and what's left or like my mom was on hospitals for 14 months and it was this constant Is today the day? Is today the day? What about today? No? Okay, we're not, we're not dying today. Okay, cool. Is it, is it tomorrow? And so, and really separating your loved one from the disease, they're not their disease. I think so often we, whatever label that we're given anxiety, panic attacks, Dementia, cancer, all of a sudden we wear it like a badge. Like I have cancer, I have dementia, I have this, recently I just went through some testing and I have Epstein Barr virus, like a chronic infection. And so I'm wearing that. I found myself wearing it. Like, this is why I feel like trash because this is what I have. And I'm like, Erin, stop it. And so I actually named my mom's disease little B, little B, because when she was acting out or she was behaving in a way that was hurtful to me that were like, if it was my mom behaving that way, it would be hurtful to me. And I had, To find a way to separate her from the disease so that I could still love and be patient and be calm and find joy with her and also find something to take my anger out on because it wasn't her, you know, so I think that's a huge piece that not a lot of people talk about. And I think a lot of just this nervous system safety stuff. I think the finding. Especially when you're caring for a parent, that role reversal causes a complete upheaval in your nervous system and what's normal. Everything in your nervous system says, this is my parent and I'm, they're supposed to take care of me and I'm supposed to feel safe with them. Even if you didn't have a good relationship with them, like your nervous system still says that. And when all of a sudden you're, you're reversing that role, that's where angst and stress And all of that stuff comes from. And so if we can find a way to find safety within ourselves, within our nervous system, and that doesn't come from like massages and, you know, all of that stuff is great. Do it 1000%. And also there's self care, like getting in nature, coming home journaling, prayer, like those things that. actually move the needle forward and finding safety so that you can experience joy and caregiving because I really do believe that it's there. And I think that you're supposed to, because there's so much you can learn in caregiving that you would never experience if you never got that season.

Mandy: 24:32

That's such powerful advice. I imagine I've never been a caretaker to someone so I can't speak from that experience, but I could imagine it would be easy to lose yourself in that role, and to have your whole world be focused on this. This additional job responsibility of taking care of this person and then sort of losing yourself along the way because it can be such a long journey. I did talk to another woman and she Was a caregiver for her husband, I believe for like eight years,

Erin: 25:04

if I'm,

Mandy: 25:04

I hope I'm remembering that correctly, but a long time. And that's a long time for people to feel like their lives are a little bit on pause. And so I applaud you for saying that, you need to find little pockets of joy in that experience because we can't put our lives on hold for that many years. You know, you can't put aside your own joy and your own fulfillment for that long of a period. So.

Erin: 25:29

That's

Mandy: 25:30

really powerful.

Erin: 25:31

Thank you.

Mandy: 25:32

Your mom passed away so recently in March. So you're really new in the, Deep well of grief. I think the first year is like a lot of processing, a lot of emotion and you're right, you mentioned the holidays were coming up as we're recording this. This is prior to Thanksgiving and Christmas. And those are always really difficult the first year around, which I know you went through after your dad died, but now coming at it. From an experience of losing both your parents. That too is something I wanted to ask about is, it's one thing when we lose one of our parents. I think parent loss is profound for everyone. Obviously it depends on the relationship you have with the parent, but losing both of your parents is a different experience. Right. Do you feel unmoored or have you had that, that strange emotion of like thinking about the fact that both of the people who brought you into the world are not here?

Erin: 26:29

Yes, it has rocked me to my core, like literally has altered every fiber of my being. Sometimes I sit here and I'm just like, they're just at their house, right? It's just so weird, to think that they're just not here anymore. And in my thirties, I just didn't think like my dad's parents lived well until their nineties, you know, my mom's into their eighties. You know, I was like, for sure, we have another 40 years, you know, 30 years, something like that. And yeah, it, it, it makes you question who you are, like who you are, what you are, what you believe in, you know it's funny, you know, I was telling a girlfriend the other day, I was like, you know, I've been on my own since I was 18. So I'm about to be 40. So 20, 22 years, I've been on my own. But yet there was just some sort of safety with my parents on earth that is now not there. And there's this belief that I'm working through right now that if I was married that it would be easier. And I don't think that that's true.

Mandy: 27:36

I think it's hard whether you're married or not. I was married when my mom died and I don't think that that makes it an easier experience. I think it's just different, you know, everyone has a different time with it. But. You know, that makes me think I remember prior to my mom's passing. So I was in my early twenties, but I was newly married and I had a baby and a house. And so by like all accounts, I was definitely an adult in society standards. And I remember someone asking a group of students, when do you become an adult? And is it, is it when you turn 18? Is it when you get your driver's license? Is it when you move out, when you go to college, when you graduate college? Is it when you get married? And like, when do you feel like you're an adult? And I remember at the time I was like, Ooh, I don't feel like an adult yet, even though I had checked all these boxes. And when I lost my mom, it was like, Oh, okay. Now I feel like an adult because there is that lifeline there. And you feel like, well, I can still just call my mom and ask. You know, get the advice and, and get the support that you need. And like you mentioned before, your dad will come over and, and do all of the little things and, and now all of that is left to you and it's, yeah, it's a really difficult transition or shift in your own place in the world, I think.

Erin: 28:58

Yeah. Remembering how to cook certain things, remembering how to do a change in my air filter and my air conditioning, you know, just little things you know, when we were moving out of my mom's house and we were going through everything to sell things and figure out what we wanted to keep because she had like a 4000 square foot house that just had, Massive amounts of stuff. And there's just so many things that I wish that I had stories from that, I just didn't even think to ask because I had never seen the things or I won't even say that I didn't care. It's just that I wasn't mature enough to probably want to even ask those questions. Like, ask about her childhood. Ask the stories of what happened on the playground? Were you a good student? You know, just little things that I wish I knew now that, you know, I don't know that I'll ever know.

Mandy: 29:45

I know. I think so many of us have that. Lots of stories. I wish I knew, but the power of hindsight,

Erin: 29:53

right? But, you know, it makes us gives us the ability to move forward and move differently in our life, you know?

Mandy: 30:00

So now being I think it's a little over six months since I'm not great at math, but I think around there since your mom died, six or seven, something like that. What are you doing differently in your life since? Since all of this has changed, you know, you lost your dad, you took care of your mom for so long, and now you've lost your mom. Have you gotten to a point in your life where things are, look different and you envision a different future for yourself than what you were doing prior to your dad getting sick?

Erin: 30:31

Yeah, I mean, I've completely changed my whole career. I'm now building a business for caregivers to actually teach them about the somatic piece and teaching them how to navigate the stress that comes with caregiving. Of course, there's the logistics piece that's in there that's important because that gives space for it. But I think more than that, it's the stress that comes with it. It's, Actually really interesting because I'm in this place of, so going into caregiving, I, my nervous system was not healthy. And then being in caregiving, going through this grief, being in a pandemic in the middle of all of that with a cherry on top, you know, being so isolated for years. And I was isolated prior to that with my nervous system disorder because I was like very overstimulated. So I couldn't go places. I couldn't go to stores. I couldn't. So I spent a lot of time prior to that on at home. And so now I'm at the place of really learning how to feel safe, even having fun, you know, because everything has felt safe. Protected and had such walls up for so long for good reason, with the pandemic and with all the things, but like even learning how to. Be a human again, how to socialize again, how to not feel you know, I feel really overwhelmed some days, you know, with like so many adulting and then business and this and this, and I'm like, I'm frozen. If one more person asks me one more thing, I'm literally not going to make it. Like I have to go home and turn all the lights off and turn all the sound off. And no one talked to me.

Mandy: 32:07

Fair. That sounds really nice. I know moms everywhere

Erin: 32:11

are like, yeah, but it's just amazing how physical grief is, you know, it's just such a physical. And so I'm just, right now I'm just really being kind to my body and I'm just, even when I feel like I could push through and do more, like I'm taking extra time for rest and I'm working to not shame myself because I'm definitely a over worker, you know, and Redefining that work is actually in the rest and that's, that's actually some of the most productive time that I could do. And You know, there's times where I go down scrolling on social media and doing all of that stuff but really that's not productive rest, you know, like it's, it's not, it's still mental stimulation that is causing, all kinds of things happening, but it's just it's learning to be okay in this silence that is It's challenging, but it's so once you get past all the noise and you allow that to come like one thing I do with my clients is I have them whenever they're feeling really overwhelmed, just imagine your thoughts are like clouds they're just passing by don't grab onto it and like hold on to it and like think through all the things and you're worried just let it go and eventually they'll slow down 30 minutes. But they will stop eventually and then you get to this place and then you never want to leave. So because it's so peaceful.

Mandy: 33:35

Well, I love that because it's so counter American culture and you know what society sort of expects is people to push through it and stuff it down and not focus on it. So I think you're doing really important work and I love that you're Giving back to the caretaker community by offering the support to others who are in the position that you were in recently and that you're being kind to yourself in your grief. That is my number one thing that I tell people when they're grieving is like, you just have to really be kind to how you talk to yourself, what you expect of yourself, making sure that you. Honor those little hints of what you need in that moment and not ignore them, but like really lean into whatever that is. So where, if people are curious about learning more about caregiving and the services that you're providing, where could they find you?

Erin: 34:31

Next gen caregivers on Instagram is the best place to find me. So thank you so much for saying that. The only other thing that I would, add in was. To you have to teach people how to grieve, how, how you grieve and what you need in your grieving process. Like we expect that, you know, the thing is, is like after the major event of a death happens, you know, people are there immediately, but then, you know, seven, 14 days goes by and everybody goes back to their regular life and like your life does not change. And in fact, it has changed completely, but yet. You're still, you're just left to pick up the pieces. And so one thing that I have really implemented is really telling people what I need and asking for them to, and not assuming that they will, and if they don't, then that means that they don't care. And because it's not true. You know, they're just in their own world and like literally all of us only see what we're personally going through and I'm guilty of this even in my grief that sometimes I don't even see other people and there's sometimes that that's okay, right? Sometimes we have to be selfish in our grief. And also I think sometimes we, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, focusing on other people can help us get out of our grief. And so whatever that looks like for you, like for me, sometimes it's like serving at church or doing different things, like helping a friend folder laundry or, you know, and so like, just not being afraid of if you need help with the laundry or you know, or even just when you're having a hard time teaching people how to be with you in that hard time, a lot of times people like your grief, my grief makes people feel uncomfortable. You know, they want to stuff a tissue in my face or they want to like, don't cry, don't cry. Your mom will be so sad if you were sad and I'm like, no, actually I'm allowed to cry. Actually it's allowed to suck. And actually I can also. Be happy in five minutes from now. Like, both can exist. Like, it doesn't have to be this, like, terrible thing. You know, even though it is terrible, but just not being afraid to, feel those grief emotions when they come up and when they make people uncomfortable. Unfortunately, I have to teach them how to sit with me in those emotions, which sucks because I don't want to teach you when I'm grieving.

Mandy: 36:48

Right, and some people I don't think know how to teach others. I think in that experience you can be so overwhelmed with what you're going through that your reaction is anger when people say things that are invalidating. That's such a good

Erin: 37:03

point.

Mandy: 37:04

You know, I, that was like my number one thing that I hated that people would say is she wouldn't want you to be sad. I mean, it would just make me so mad because that is not helpful. And if roles were reversed, she would be sad too. If I were to die, you know, like you can't tell someone that they can't be sad because the other person wouldn't want them to be sad. It's just such a silly thing. To give us advice, but it comes up a lot. So I think it's such a great reminder to remind people that like, if you can just take that extra beat, take an extra minute to evaluate, you know, their intention was good, but that it wasn't helpful in being able to explain to them, you know, that it. That's not what I need right now. And yeah, I give you a lot of credit. You're like so in tune with your emotions and reactions and everything. I think it's a struggle for a lot of people.

Erin: 38:01

That's, you know, it's so thank you for saying that because I think sometimes I, because I've been doing this work for so long that I feel like like I, it's not that I don't feel those things. It's just not my, I've been doing this work for so long that my automatic response is pause, think through, like, educate, you know, but I, but it wasn't always like that. Let me be very clear. It was not always like that. But a lot of things happened before this season of my life that enabled me when I went through this season to be in that place. So yeah, I had to, I had to tell somebody just the other day, like they started telling me the whole, like, your mom wouldn't want you to do this. And I just basically had to tell her to stop talking and to hug me. Like I was just like, I just need you to stop talking and just give me a hug. I'm not even going to try to explain anything because even, and it's, it's not their fault. Right. Like it, this is how society deals with grief. It's just, an American thing. I don't even think it's a whole, like the world as a collective. I think it's an American thing, but yeah, that's a topic for another day. But this was awesome. So thank you for this conversation.

Mandy: 39:11

I hope you enjoyed today's show and feel validated in your own journey of caregiving. If you or someone you know needs support in that process, check the show notes for Erin's contact information. For today's journal prompt, write about how you have found joy in the most challenging period of your life. Let the writing take you in any direction it leads. Thank you so much for listening. Please make sure you subscribe, share this episode with anyone who could benefit from it, and as always visit RememberGrams anytime you need to send a little love to someone who is grieving. Thank you and have a wonderful day.