Last year, I co-authored a peer-reviewed scholarly paper on caregivers in leadership roles. Now, in the second year of my doctoral program, I am learning an additional lesson. This semester found me completing coursework for the subject called Rehabilitation Counseling. I designed a plan addressing caregiver burden for a member of the Sandwich Generation. He is a Gen Xer like me, caught in the squeeze between raising children and supporting aging parents. In his story, as in my own, there are hefty demands. They cause in him (and I realize while writing this, in me, too) caregiver fatigue, emotional overextension, and a refusal to let go or delegate.
Analyzing caregiver strain and writing the rehab plan for my client was like looking in a mirror. I saw how I do it, too. I have always been fascinated by the soft, nurturing qualities of caregiving—perhaps because they were qualities I felt I lacked and needed to grow more. Growing up as a Chinoy firstborn daughter, my birth was met with disappointment; in our culture, an eldest son is seen as the primary testament to a father’s virility. That influenced how I valued feminine qualities, so I ended up trying to kill the softness. But as in all things, nature has a way of balancing herself.
Enter my perimenopause.
When I was a young mom, motherhood required me to learn nurturance freehand: comforting, rocking fussy babies to sleep, and offering unconditional succor.
Now, as I go through “The Change,” my relationship with caregiving, nurturance, and feminine development is evolving again. I am part of the sandwich generation, becoming increasingly involved in caring for my mother-in-law, who is entering her eighties and has mobility issues. She is getting more needy in terms of care. Because my own body is changing, feeling the physical realities of my own aging has built more empathy for her. I used not to understand older adults; now, gasp, I am becoming one of them! (And there is no shame in that!)
In Jungian terms, I am approaching the threshold of the Wise Woman stage of life. In Eastern thought, as a Metal Monkey, I recognize an excess of unyielding, rigid energy within myself that craves the softening balance of Water—more fluid, yielding, and gentle care.
I outlined the rehabilitation interventions for my client, where we planned together for him to shift away from an emotionally contained Super Dad persona, practice cognitive reframing, chunk tasks to allow delegation, and prioritize body care. While doing it, as I said, it was like a mirror; I saw I had to take some of these elements and change something in how I manage my own life, too. Some of them are personal imperatives—applicable insights that will help make my life more sustainable. It all boils down to an attitude change.
Motherhood taught me how to extend patience and comfort outward to others. This next stage of life is asking for something harder: to turn that same patience inward. The rehabilitation plan I drafted enriched my life because it helped me reflect that caregivers, too, require care.
