I didn’t want to learn hard caregiving lessons in 2023. Mainly because I’m a big fan of easy. Hard? Not so much. Yet here I am waiting for 2023 to end—believe me, I’m ready to put it behind me—and at the same time embracing the hard lessons I’m about to share with you as precious gifts.

My entire life, literally since I was two years old, has revolved around caregiving. Therefore I assumed I was prepared for the challenges our family faced after my mother was diagnosed with dementia in 2008. That assumption proved correct until January of 2023 when Mom entered hospice care. Over the six months leading to her departure from this earth, advocating for her was all encompassing. I didn’t want, nor did I have time to learn hard caregiving lessons. With each passing day I became more grateful for how they drew and are still drawing me closer to God. And so, I want to share them with you.

1. The why of caregiver grief is the same, though the who and what may be different. All grief is a response to loss. Young parents grieve the loss of children gone too soon or the losses related to their child’s disability. Growing children grieve what they don’t experience because their parents live with disabilities or because their parents were lost to disease. Adult children grieve as their elderly parents lose their independence, personality, and function. The universality of loss among caregivers can make us more empathetic toward all caregivers.

To read the rest of I Didn’t Want to Learn Hard Caregiving Lessons, visit the Key Ministry website.

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email.

Image by Raven Ryann from Pixabay