Sandwiched Support

Tag: self-care

  • October 8, 2025

    The Why

    I have been talking with clients, particularly my college student clients who are questioning their life choices when midterms hit, about their “Why”. For them I point to my degrees and licenses on the wall of my office and tell them that I have been where they are and that though they must lock in now and grind it out when it’s difficult, if I did it, so can they.

    I have been struggling with it all. The mental load of this sandwiched situation, the inadequate support, the significant need for advocacy on my part to fill significant gaps in systems that I seem to pay quite a bit into in taxes and the insurance payments are astounding. It still makes me weak in the knees when I think of all who are doing this with fewer resources than I have and I try not to verbally express frustration when some more privileged than we are mention paying out of pocket for resources that we will likely never be able to afford.

    But as I sit in this idyllic setting where our children are privileged to play soccer on a beautifully manicured field surrounded by brilliant fall colors and scenic farmland. And as I watch my healthy daughter run freely with the ball it is the ideal moment to practice gratitude for the health most of our household is experiencing now and the strides we have made. I am grateful for the medical care we do have available, even as I want to challenge us to be provide better. I am grateful that my children have a wonderful school district in an amazing community and that we can raise them in a healthy place where a variety of activities are available for their enjoyment and enrichment. And when I remember that everything I do is for family and that my children are thriving it reminds me Why I work this hard burning the candle at both ends.

    I truly care about my parents and about my children and my family as a whole and doing everything I can to give them the best life possible as far as it depends on the choices I make. I received this text from a dear friend who I respect very much. The whole text made my day, this part in particular:

    “You are a warrior and take such good care of your family. Remember to take care of yourself too.”

    As I walk this long winding road in this season of life and step up as a warrior for the cause of my family each day, I haven’t yet found the best way to also take care of myself. Yet is one of my favorite words though, I know I can and will learn at some point. But for now I am focusing on the “Why” for getting up early and getting to bed late so that I can keep it all going in this season for those who count on me. They matter so much to me and they are my Why.

  • October 6, 2025

    Something’s Gotta Give

    When sandwiched Mom/Adult Daughter is not feeling well, work (as a contractor at one job and a part-time employee at the other there is NO paid sick time, NO paid vacation time, and there are NO benefits so if I don’t show up and work I don’t get paid AT ALL) doesn’t stop, the kids’ needs don’t stop, the parents’ needs don’t stop, and the mess waiting for me doesn’t stop a bit either. So we, the sandwiched primary parents who are also only children of the aging (or whatever the situation is for you) rarely find a break. And something has to give and it’s been this blog. Playing catch up right now, but it might turn into once weekly posting if I fall too far behind. There are “life hacks” that cost me money, but they’re worth it. I have someone cleaning a portion of my house each week for 4 hours a week, I pay for grocery delivery from a chain store and a big box retailer, and plenty of packages with everything from toiletries to household goods to pharmacy health-related items to the gift I need for the weekend land by my front door. Then I hit up consignment sales and stores for all things pre-owned in the toy, clothing, shoe, and home decor categories to save money while living as well as we can. We like the name brand things too, but we typically live with them used and then sell them to consignment when all kiddos have grown out of them or we donate at various places. I rarely get to schedule my own appointments with my “hairapist” and my own therapist and time to connect with friends is becoming more and more rare unless that friend happens to be at a community activity that involves one of my children or something with our church where we are participating or volunteering. If I will already be there showing up where we are already committed on the calendar, we might get to chat. My texting thumbs are incredibly speedy and I am blogging on my phone with them while at my son’s soccer practice after zipping over here from my daughter’s parent/teacher conference which I raced to after hurrying home from work and stopping quickly in my driveway to pick up two of my sons (one to go to soccer practice and the older one to be his chaperone while my husband and I were at our daughter’s conference). And I had to pick up my sons because I let something (heaven-forbid) drop from my mental load and forgot to ask my mom-in-law to cover soccer. So I had to cover it. I promise my husband wasn’t volunteering to ask his mom for help or to help get my son to soccer. He did however tell me I would be cutting it close, which I was, arrived 3 minutes before conference time and got upstairs in the school to the classroom just in time. Thankfully the teacher had stepped out for a bathroom break so us showing up in the nick of time was beautifully anticlimactic. I got it all done again, while recovering from what I still don’t know and finishing up my period and another day I will tell you about ALL the kin-keeping I was doing at the same time plus all of the regular Mom of 4 and busy Adult daughter of two live-in aging parent stuff. Is this really all meant to be one WOMAN’s job?

  • October 4, 2025

    Resting on the move

    On Saturday, the day the post is dated for, I kept plans with two close friends from practically forever who I don’t see often enough and live a couple of hours from. In some ways I didn’t feel well enough to go, but we each brought along our youngest (all daughters) to meet about halfway between us and spend the day at a place that is a well-oiled machine for kids to have a BLAST and parents to (mostly) relax and enjoy in an outdoor activity farm setting.

    I had had my symptoms for like 2 1/2 weeks by then and it didn’t appear that I had gotten anyone else sick and also I had been on antibiotics since that Wednesday morning and steroids for a lot longer and things seemed somewhat better.

    I decided to go while not super well because I was on the high dose steroid and getting into the thick of the antibiotics then and during the days I was on my feet or sitting in a chair or car doing everything I normally do (because no one is filling in for me as a woman in the thick of the sandwich generation season of life). I mean I was avoiding lifting bins or anything heavier housework- wise and then later in the evening I was getting to bed earlier.

    But having my two youngest kids home on a Saturday together without any help to entertain them is not at all restful so I think the best idea was to go to a super fun place with just my daughter to meet friends and play and to have chatting therapy with my friends.

    It turned out to be the best plan! One of my friends is battling an ongoing challenging health issue and we all enjoyed moseying, sitting, rocking, and finding shade while the kids enjoyed unlimited admission bracelet fun for 6 straight hours. They were happy and in sight and we got to just breathe and catch up.

    In this stage of life for all of us there are many (different but similar) very real reasons why we might not have been able to reschedule anytime soon. Talking with your people about similar life challenges is truly a light in what can feel like a very dark and heavy time.

    If you’re on your feet at home it can help to take at least one kiddo and go where there’s fun, where there’s amazing people you miss often, and where you can mostly sit where you are not feeling the piles of laundry staring at you.

  • October 01, 2025

    I Blame Her a Little Bit and Also I Blame Myself

    Blame is not really the way to go I guess but late morning Monday after I saw the CRNP at my PCP’s office, one of my best friends who is a PA asked me to describe my symptoms to her and I explained the back pain and the pain up under my left side and she said right away that the CRNP should have gotten a urine, maybe it’s the kidneys. The CRNP ordered the Lyme’s test that I requested because of what’s been going on with our dog and my husband and weird symptoms and wanting to rule out Lyme’s and potentially other tick born illnesses. But she said if it was anything other than Lyme’s I would be too sick to be in her office. She didn’t order the infection/inflammation marker panels because I went on the steroid Friday from the urgent care provider.

    Having gone through everything I have gone through as my mom’s hospital advocate I should have remembered that the steroids mess up the bloodwork, sometimes falsely raising WBC count or raising it higher than it would be. And then the CRNP informed me that it would be a month before the steroids being in there wouldn’t affect the infection markers.

    She had a student there and kept repeating the phrase “common things happen commonly” as I expressed that I have no idea what’s going on with me and wondered about Mono or Meningitis which I learned does not have the potential to be airborne from the college students in my office. She told me to finish the steroid and to get the limited bloodwork she sent to the lab and she did not add a urine.

    I did message her and ask her for one and she added the urine, but I had already been to the lab Monday and didn’t message her until late Monday or early Tuesday and didn’t go get it until this morning with my other lab orders after I saw the third provider last evening.

    More on that tomorrow. It really is tough to know which place to seek medical attention on our community first when it comes to certain symptoms. On one hand I am thankful we have an Urgent Care so when it’s bad but it’s not feeling emergent and the PCP has no appointments available there’s a place to go, but they seem to not want to order bloodwork or scans because they don’t want to be following up with you. And then your PCP has helper providers that don’t always know you and honestly you don’t see your PCP enough for them to know you either. And they don’t seem to want to jump to getting bloodwork or tests to find things out either.

    Very thankful for provider number 3 who I sought out at our local orthopedic urgent care and she was very attentive and ordered many things that have brought the diagnostic process along a bit. More tomorrow.

  • September 24, 2025

    Pushing Through Anyway

    I haven’t been feeling well this week, but I’m sandwiched daughter and mom. There is really no one to fill in for me without rearranging or canceling plenty and without a TON of favors being asked likely of other moms who either don’t work outside of the home or work from home. Quite frankly unless I am completely incapacitated with a stomach virus that won’t quit I don’t want to take the time and energy to ask multiple people for help with ALL that I do for my family each week. Text after text to try to find the right person who happens to be free and willing to do each thing honestly ends up being a lot and quite frankly it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t return the favor later. And it’s not that I don’t want to help them out, it’s only fair and these individuals are friends and relatives and fellow sandwiched moms in solidarity, it’s just that I already feel like I don’t have the bandwidth to keep up with my own family’s needs and wants. And I know they feel the same way. So just like people show up to work sick, Moms do that too except we don’t get a real restful break unless someone chooses to step up to take something off of our plates and between the meal prep, the appointments, the running kids to activities, the housework, the laundry, and the childcare, homework support, and support of aging loved ones, no one is willing to take it all on. Lightening the load of a member of the sandwiched generation is absolutely a thing and it is greatly appreciated, but truly there is no one who is really taking it all on for even one day. Sometimes a husband takes on putting out the “fires” of what’s needed to get his children through the day or a mom-in-law runs the kids to everything, makes lunch and dinner, and puts in a load of laundry, but it is a rarity that coverage does not leave plenty for the primary sandwiched adult to catch up on once well.

    A comparison can be made here to any job, but truly there is no comparison to the number of items on the primary caregiver/sandwiched adult’s list. And so very many categories leaving “tabs” open in the brain.

    A visit to urgent care or a nap or a trip to pick up a medication is carefully considered and life juggled to fit it in with everything else. And boy do we ever try not to loop in someone else. Instead sleep is lost, meals are skipped, and we do the next thing while the laundry and dust bunnies collect and multiply.

  • April 28, 2025

    Glad You’re With Her

    She meant so very well. She has always been warm as can be to my family and I and she is a compassionate, caring, mom and retired nurse. But today, after I sent a text update on my mom that included a family member on my dad’s side, she concluded a text of encouraging responses with “glad you can be with her.”

    I hearted the whole text because I appreciate her love and encouragement, but here’s the thing, I’m not with Mom. And this brought up a little guilt I had to briefly work through today because, as planned ahead of time, my husband and I are away on a long weekend trip. We got the trip insurance in case something did not go smoothly with the surgery or the weather or a number of other factors. But we made arrangements for another family member to visit Mom today and to take care for our dog while Dad is also out of town for one night. And we hit the road knowing Mom is recovering and well cared for.

    I was there for 9 plus hours the day of the surgery and the big hospital is almost an hour away. And I am not writing this because I think my family member would judge if she knew I wasn’t with Mom today, but instead because of the feelings it brought up in me. I have spent an unbelievable number of hours at appointments and in the ED and visiting at the hospital and with in-home care team members and ordering and picking up supplies and helping to provide care.

    If you are an advocate or a caregiver, take note. Sometimes when our loved one is stable, recovering, and under the care of others (with or without loved ones visiting) it is helpful for us to focus on our kids and ourselves and to seize the opportunity to be away from where ongoing support may be needed in the future.

  • April 28, 2025

    Glad You’re With Her

    She meant so very well. She has always been warm as can be to my family and I and she is a compassionate, caring, mom and retired nurse. But today, after I sent a text update on my mom that included a family member on my dad’s side, she concluded a text of encouraging responses with “glad you can be with her.”

    I hearted the whole text because I appreciate her love and encouragement, but here’s the thing, I’m not with Mom. And this brought up a little guilt I had to briefly work through today because, as planned ahead of time, my husband and I are away on a long weekend trip. We got the trip insurance in case something did not go smoothly with the surgery or the weather or a number of other factors. But we made arrangements for another family member to visit Mom today and to take care for our dog while Dad is also out of town for one night. And we hit the road knowing Mom is recovering and well cared for.

    I was there for 9 plus hours the day of the surgery and the big hospital is almost an hour away. And I am not writing this because I think my family member would judge if she knew I wasn’t with Mom today, but instead because of the feelings it brought up in me. I have spent an unbelievable number of hours at appointments and in the ED and visiting at the hospital and with in-home care team members and ordering and picking up supplies and helping to provide care.

    If you are an advocate or a caregiver, take note. Sometimes when our loved one is stable, recovering, and under the care of others (with or without loved ones visiting) it is helpful for us to focus on our kids and ourselves and to seize the opportunity to be away from where ongoing support may be needed in the future.

  • August 21, 2025

    Caregiver Syndrome

    Saw a very brief video online today where Mel Robbins is describing Caregiver Burnout and shares that she does not want to see her followers make themselves wrong over it, encouraging them not to blame themselves.

    This is exactly what I needed to hear tonight as I am sitting in my car waiting for my son at baseball practice and it’s running a half hour late and then I am off to pick up my oldest from work. I am proud of them and want them to have all they have both in terms of experiences/opportunities AND belongings, but there are 4 of them and they Just went back to school today and I spent ALL day working or organizing my moms entire closet and drawers with her and I just about Always feel spent.

    If you’re thinking that maybe cleaning out and organizing my mom’s entire wardrobe wasn’t the greatest choice for my first day without the kids and that I could have chosen not to do that so that I could rest between online clients or so I could have gotten some other things accomplished for me, technically you’re right, it was a choice.

    But it’s complicated, Mom has surgery on Monday and she has lost so much weight since October and all she has gone through and with the recent months of a liquid diet. So when I went to help her pack her bag for post-surgery PT/OT rehab she said she needed to go through her clothes to purge what is way too big now and to figure out which size of all of the clothing she has saved over the years fits her. I can’t say it was a bad time entirely. She and I had a nice time togethers but it’s a lot of work hauling everything around and sorting it all and putting it all back and hopping on calls and then returning.

    In this sandwiched season I have done some direct care, but I am not even someone who does that daily. I truly feel for those who do that work around the clock. I cannot wrap my head around what it must be like to do that work. I am struggling with never having more than an hour or two to myself in a week’s time during the summer and to get those two hours I am either losing sleep or just ignoring some things that quite urgently do need to be done but are not emergent.

    Now that the school year has started and my children have a structured place to go I will be able to set aside one day a week to have a little self-care. Tomorrow I will have the opportunity to go for coffee with one or two wonderful friends who get me at a great place and I have appreciated with both my “hairapist” and my therapist and both are greatly needed. But I won’t be able to do all of that every week. There will be errands and appointments for my parents and children and many many things to prep from meals to fun things like costumes for trick or treat (that will still stress me out because my attention will be divided due to 50 other things I don’t prefer to have on my plate).

    Maybe I will miss this, but honestly I highly doubt I will miss all of it. And at the very same time it is Also True that I love each one in my household so very much.

  • August 16, 2025

    Facts about Founder and Family

    Getting ready for another child’s birthday party bumped the blog post from Friday night to Saturday again. Last evening I decided I was too exhausted to blog after emptying out a carload of clearance party items and Walmart food. Decided that Walmart on a Friday night is not my favorite (but I spent all day finishing up the library hikes with my 4 kids and getting my most social teen son to a birthday hang out) and I needed to do my shopping before my prep. It was crowded and a little creepy at times (a story for another day), but I ran into a sweet friend who is also family on my husband’s side by marriage and we made plans to go second-hand shopping when the kids are back in school. And I am really looking forward to it!! Mom and I are very big into thrift stores, yard sales, and consignment shops and sales and I have found friends that share my passion for great deals also.

    As a sandwiched adult, however, it’s very difficult to decide how to spend one’s precious VERY LITTLE spare time. For me it doesn’t count if my kids are along or if Mom or Dad is with me. And with regard to my husband it absolutely depends on what kind of mood I’m in or he’s in and what we plan to do. Often it’s quality time when I am with my family, but it’s not that incredibly rare special free time that I almost never get.

    If it’s truly free time it’s quite fulfilling for me to head to a coffee shop, restaurant or spa especially with a friend or group of friends who truly get me. But I have to fight the urge to use the quiet to catch up on errands that need to be done (while looking for a few fun things that I’m shopping for at the same time and planning ahead to find things for the next child’s party) or to get work done for work while it’s quiet or to clean up the never-ending dumpster fire mess in my house.

    I know in my gut how badly I need space and time just to rest and recharge after having the kids all summer (that’s no joke trying to keep them from truly fighting and desperately trying to keep them from way too much screen time). But I also want to re-connect with my friends who understand me and to have a whole uninterrupted cup of coffee and conversation. This feels like a need also. And our family benefits from improved order around here and needs the errands to be done so if my husband had his way I would spend every spare moment making sure the errands are done and, especially, that the house is in fantastic order.

    The struggle is real to find balance in it all and to fill those open hours when there’s not an appointment or an occasion to prepare for and my parents don’t have an immediate need and I am not working and the kids are busy usually at school and the dog does not have an appointment or a need either. And I haven’t even started talking about how meals always need to be made usually by me.

    While sandwiched, what’s left after all of that is almost nothing. And I am very fortunate to work part-time or there really would be no spare time.

  • August 13, 2025

    If You Don’t

    My husband believes that you should have every bit of your work done before you rest. I am more of an alternate between work and breaks kind of person. This post is not about which is better, though my husband is hard-working, efficient and has always been successful and would argue all day that he knows the best way to complete many tasks.

    So from his perspective, if you don’t have your work done, if you don’t have your living space cleaned up and organized, if you don’t have your laundry done, etc, you should not make plans to go do something fun and you should not relax. He will allow himself exceptions and would agree with others doing so. One exception is that if you know you’ve truly worked hard for a full day and got most of what must be done accomplished, there can be a quitting time. Another exception when he is not super busy is to take a day off on the weekend, usually Sunday. All of this has a lot to do with the way he was raised, but there are specific personality traits involved as well.

    I am much more of a free spirit these days. I tended to keep up with household tasks to a T when we were first married because I was an adoring wife with stars in my eyes and I was in graduate school without working outside of the home and we did not yet have children so I invested a significant amount of time cleaning, organizing, and cooking in our little condo where there wasn’t much to clean or organize and usually only two to cook for.

    These days the house is turned upside down with 8 of us plus the dog and while the kids are messy, I am the one who has the most piles to be dealt with because I am assigned the most different categories to manage and I like to bring a lot of extra fun and celebrating to life even though it’s not a need. Sometimes, though, as I get older and busier and my parents” health and aging related needs grow, it feels and IS more difficult to move all of the mountains I used to move and there are just plain more of those mountains to move in many ways. Other mountains (diapers, feedings, keeping toddlers from the edge) have disappeared. But the point is that I just don’t and Won’t wait for my life to pass me by while cleaning and tidying up or doing laundry until I drop.

    Just doing what’s absolutely necessary to meet our needs plus our main goals takes most of the available time. And it’s not in my nature to simplify for the sake of simplification. It’s possible that there are ways to better compromise for some extra time to breathe and regroup, but I’ll admit I have some FOMO and I am going to throw the big birthday parties and deck the halls on many of the holidays and leave the big clutter mess and full laundry baskets and get some sleep before I leave for our big family trip.

    And now we have another big birthday party this weekend and the house is still a clutter mess and the laundry will always be there waiting for me and I want to plan a little Fall getaway for us and the kids and we are truly at a deadlocked impasse on this because my husband claims he has wanted a tidy organized house for the last decade and hasn’t gotten it and wants us (mostly me) to stay home and get it all done (there are a number of issues with this that could fill multiple posts) and I feel like it would be a whole lot more motivating and a whole lot less suffocating to put this little getaway on the calendar and book the place so that I have it to look forward to.

    We’ll see how it turns out. Hoping to convince him to seize the moment and take the little trip. Hoping the desire for order over any other doesn’t win.