Turning Points
For everyone who is a caregiver, there are important milestones, or turning points, in the caregiver’s journey. For example, there is the moment when you first become a caregiver. Shocking, scary, and overwhelming, this is probably the most obvious example that comes to mind. But there are other turning points in the journey where caregiver’s find themselves once again, out of their depth. Often, as the people we care for grow older, suffer medical complications or setbacks, or progress through a disease process, there will be points in time where the needs of the person change, or increase. The caregiver, who once had it all figured out, now struggles again to make it work. I remember well a family I was helping whose mother had terminal cancer. She’d been doing mostly alright for a long time, really just needing supervision for safety. Then, one day, as the cancer progressed to the bones in her legs, she found herself unable to walk. Now, there was a whole new set of needs to be