Vivant Coaching

The cost of caregiving is measured in more than one way. Financial implications, emotional costs, and costs to career longevity.

2021 Caregiving Out-of-Pocket Costs Study AARP study among family caregivers to quantify out-of-pocket expenses and risks to financial security that they incur as a result of caregiving.

“91% of the adults surveyed – aged anywhere from 50-79 – had not proactively researched the care they may need as they grew older. Over a third – 34% – had not even thought about their future care needs.”

Seniors Want to Age in Place, But They Still May Not Know What That Means While home-based care is a space booming with opportunities and potential tailwinds, much of it remains theoretical for the time being. Yes,

https://www.lcbseniorliving.com/blog/caring-relationship-caregiver/?utm_campaign=The%20Bridge%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=220433559&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-89M4kEIT8LgmSXx3GeebcP3Z-yOVg6vLzSRNUHg-G3P_tQezSMU-vkn7nvjVFVSbW5KHpysmLkIEcFQ2Wcnt1fXKDLjA&utm_content=220285531&utm_source=hs_email

Caring for Your Relationship as a Caregiver | LCB Senior Living It's so important for caregivers to try and carve out time for themselves and their partner to check in and stay connected.

I am taking my coaching in a new direction!

I have a bracelet that was made for me by my beautiful friend Erin. She asked me to choose a word or an intention and after some coaching and coaxing out came the term “love anyway”.

I wear this bracelet often. It is a reminder that I, like others, am imperfect. That I am human and that I make mistakes. That others have their own failings and stumbles. It reminds me that when I’m in dark places, I want to be loved in spite of those failings. That as a human being and a child of God, someone can love me anyway.

The descent of the global pandemic has amplified an arduous time in the United States. We have had mass shootings, we have seen brutality from the people who are supposed to keep us safe. We have seen abuses of power on all levels. We have also seen people we love to deny that these things are happening, or that they are even problems at all.

It can be difficult to know where safety lies, where we can find harmony and community again when everything feels so fractured? Families have been divided by politics, I’ve even seen neighborhoods divided. I want to love anyway.

I want the person who thinks I’m an as***le to not get an ounce of that anger back because I love them anyway. I want to separate myself from this matrix of fear and love people anyway. Broken, afraid, lied to, confused, lost, angry, hopeless, I want to love them anyway. Whether they deserve it or not, that is who I want to be in the world. That is where I want my integrity to show up. The integrity of unconditional kindness for the fragility of the human condition. A warm place in a cold world. A hopeful light in a dark place.

This is not to say that justice should not be served. It absolutely should be. The damnation of egregious acts against our fellow humans should never be left to the lightness of forgiveness without penance. That doesn’t solve anything. Grace should lift us higher but we need to have boundaries to hold, to keep people safe, to keep our morals intact. People will have to come to terms with the life that we have dealt with over the last few years, they will have to come to terms with the way that those they trusted manipulated them into believing their policies and beliefs were in line with theirs. It will break their hearts, and rightfully so. The way back to humanity, to the great America of WWII mythology (great America for some), can rise again through the willingness to step into our integrity. The willingness to accept we are only as healthy as our sickest neighbor. The willingness to accept that the wealthiest country in the world has starving children and that we all deserve better. If we start here, we can expand to the world. We can globally live in a better place. We can globally expand the well-being of all to those who are ready to embrace it. Quality of life is a measurement of success for a society.

This will be the creed in which I live my life going forward. It will take time for us to heal, and the problems have barely even shifted into solutions. This is where I will be. A refuge for others, in action.

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Over the last week and a half I was sick with what was presumably COVID. I lost my sense of taste and smell, I was very sick and nauseous and not as extremely productive as I usually am. Therefore, the house isn’t as beautiful or organized. The kids have been steamrolling me a little bit. I am behind.

I would like to now point out that I raise our three children, clean our house, feed everyone, manage our bills, educate our children on a Digital platform, landscape, and plan holiday parties for the grand total cost of free. Or at the very least, at cost.

I have watched women complain about their productivity while staying home “well then I just put stuff in the crockpot and start tidying up and boom! My day is over” Well sister-friend, that is work.

Feeding and cleaning is WORK.

I started staying home with my children when they were two and three it was the most difficult transition of my life. I gained 40 lbs and screamed and cried constantly. I never felt like I was doing anything because I didn’t see the unpaid labor that’s expected of me as work. I didn’t see the work that no one gives us credit for as work either. Thus I felt like a failure, I wasn’t present with my children, and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t productive enough.

There is a phenomenon that occurs when you are overwhelmed and I don’t know if it has a name but I call it reactivity. When I am overwhelmed and overstimulated, I am not longer introspective but reactive. I don’t think before I act, I don’t facilitate life lessons, I can’t access empathy because I’m literally reacting thoughtlessly to stimuli. When we continue to pile work on women in say..a pandemic… yanking them out of the workforce to do unpaid labor and then throw Christmas on top, you are going to see some reactivity. And the answer isn’t, throw your hopes and dreams away so you can be less stressed, it’s delegate some of these unpaid labors to your spouse and children.

That is where I’m stuck. I know I need a chore chart and higher expectations of those around me. One crux of our argument was that we needed to hire help for cleaning and online school. This is legitimate but being sick already, and facing the fear that my children could get the coronavirus, I don’t really want to relive that experience until a vaccine comes out.

Am I a stubborn mule? Absolutely. Am I a cautious one? Yes.

So although this is clearly a frustrated rant of an entrepreneurial housewife, I want to say to my other mothers:
Everything you do is work. Everything. The dishes, the diapers, the meetings on zoom. All of it. Even the most menial dusting off the shelves is work and effort and labor. So when you don’t check 6 things off of your full, one-page to-do list, please remember every pause to teach your child something important about their behavior and their life, every shirt and sock picked up off the floor, it matters and it counts. You are raising human beings and you are facilitating their life, that is a TASK. Thank you for doing it, and thank you for making it look beautiful. You all deserve a raise.

With love,
Alissa

Happy Sunday,
I want to write to you today about being solution-oriented. It is all too easy to jump into the despair, frustration, impossibility of the current climate. It is easy to say, "this isn't doable." "There isn't any way out of this".

We have been carrying a heavy burden these past 8 months.

All of us have.

One thing I try to teach my children is that your feelings matter but, they can get in the way sometimes. Emotions begin with our thinking. If we look at a situation and say "that's impossible" then it is. Your mind is made up, your emotions react to your thoughts and beliefs, and boom, your results speak for themselves. The situation at hand is, in fact, impossible.

But if we take a problem in our lives and say "what are the possibilities here? What solutions can we find?" Then we step into a new space, into curiosity. In curiosity, we can look at a problem without judgment, without emotion. We can start looking at it from different angles. We can begin to adjust our thinking to the potential solutions of any given situation, scenario, or circumstance.

So as we scan our emails for updates to student's learning schedules, changes at work, and hardships around the world, where can we drop into our hearts and say, "I wonder if?"
Where can we seek kindness to alleviate the difficulty of the days that lay ahead? Where can we help those around us?

Bless up,
Alissa

What do you need help with the most right now?
1. Time Management
2. Stress Management
3. Organization
4. Financial Help
5. Other

Let me know in the comments. My love language is service, and I know we are all having a hard time. Let's lift one another together.

Alissa

Good Morning!
I want to say thank you to everyone who has been following me and has liked this page. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Over the last two years, I have been on a ride. An intentional ride but a ride nonetheless. I set out to create stability and worked for a marketing firm in 2019 which was a short term gig. 2019 was full of failures and frustration and it felt impossible.

This year, I have been dedicated to taking care of my children's education and supporting my neighbors. All of which is good and important. My love language is acts of service. I get my energy by lifting up and encouraging others, in good times and bad.

I love people, genuinely. The human race is fascinating. But it's time to draw a line in the sand. It's time for ME to do MY work. To spend time with all of you. To commit to living my purpose, to restore joy in those who have lost it. I am committed to showing up for those who seek to change and I can't wait to see what the other side of 2020 brings us.

In my own experience of this year, I have been molded into the woman I've always wanted to become. I've addressed health concerns that have laid quietly beneath the surface, undermining my strongest efforts towards success.

I've experienced the true burden our educators are carrying, raising children, and being held to insane standards. And all the while, not being given an ounce of grace. Yet, because they are so committed to our children they keep showing up, day after day, for both in-person and online learning.

We have a clear opportunity ahead of us to do things differently. We have an opportunity to support people of color and women differently, we have an opportunity to support health care workers and essential workers differently.

We have an opportunity to lift every single person up. I hope we collectively take it. Because I will keep lifting every single day. No matter what. I will wake up and bring joy, I will tell you you are beautiful. I will remind you that the load you are carrying is heavy and you are doing a great job. Because heart-centered love is what the world needs.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki from Unsplash