Daughterhood

The Blog
 by Anne Tumlinson

The 5 Most Unexpected Challenges of Caregiving

The 5 Most Unexpected Challenges of Caregiving

Every single one of us – because we are alive and we are human – runs the risk that at some point in our lives something will happen to us, making it impossible for us to take care of ourselves.

This something can be any one in a long list of disabling events. A car accident, or a serious disease like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease, or a developmental disability like cerebral palsy. Or it can just be the result of aging cells when we get old.

What is equally, if not more likely, is that someone in our family – a grandparent, a parent, a sibling, child or spouse – will be among the 10 to 12 million people at any point in time who need help. As a result, we’ll likely be drafted into service, joining the 40 million Americans who are currently serving in the role of family caregiver.

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in Common Challenges / Feeling Overwhelmed 2 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

6 Features of Long-Term Care Insurance You’d Never Guess But Need to Know

It feels a little silly to be writing about long-term care insurance because only about 10% of the older adult population has purchased it.

But, it comes up a lot in conversations I have with friends and family… either they’re thinking of buying it or they or their parents have a policy that’s hard to understand.

Also, many, many women want to know… “What can I do to make sure I can pay for care when I need it?”

Because remember… as women, we especially face the possibility that old age will bring with it the need for a lot of help with basic life activities that we do for ourselves now without even thinking: like bathing, eating or dressing.

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in Paying for Care 2 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

4 Essential Tips for Finding the Best Home Care for Your Parents

The vast majority of frail older adults live at home — not in independent or assisted living and not in nursing homes. So, If you’re managing your parents’ care, sooner or later you’ll come up against the question of whether you should get them more help at home and how to go about it.

Hiring someone to help your parents can be expensive and awkward.  It’s often hard to get your parents to accept a paid caregiver into their home and even harder to find a person you can trust.  But, at the same time, it feels like doing so is the only way you can keep your parents where they are.

And, keeping them at home very often feels like the least heartbreaking way to proceed.

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in Assisted Living / Home Care 50 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

The Top 3 Myths Most Women Believe About Paying for Long-Term Care

If you haven’t stopped to think about whether you’ll need to be taken care of when you are very old or how you’d pay for it, believe me, you are not alone.

But, if you are a woman, this is a question you cannot afford to avoid.

As Dr. Atul Gawande explains in his book, Being Mortal, “increasingly large numbers of us get to live out a full life span and die of old age.” Because of this, we live for longer periods of time needing help with basic life activities, like bathing, eating, and dressing.

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in Medicaid / Paying for Care 1 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

5 Safety-First Strategies for Your Parents’ Hospital Discharge

You’ve navigated your frail parent’s hospital stay and now it’s time to go home. You probably can’t wait to leave but …what’s coming next is extremely uncertain. Leaving a hospital with a frail older adult in tow is like stepping off a cliff blindfolded.

This blog is all about resources and tips to help you with this transition but first there are two things to know that will help you understand my advice.

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in Medicare / Your Parent's Hospitalization 23 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

3 Start-Up Business Strategies That Work for Daughterhood

I’ve always had a hard time with planning. I find the process of “thinking things through” boring and tedious. Occasionally this impulsiveness gets me in over my head. Like the time I ordered 20 zillion ivy seedlings for the shady part of my backyard without realizing that the soil was more clay than dirt. Getting those little buggers in the ground was much harder than I thought it would be — to the extent I had thought about it at all.

However, I’ve found that leaping before thinking has a nice side benefit. It gets you in the game. If you don’t know what’s ahead, you are much less likely to sit on the sidelines. Once 100 tiny plants arrive on your doorstep, you’re committed to their survival, no matter what the obstacle. Would I have ordered them if I had known what I was going to come up against? Probably Not. Am I glad now that I did? Definitely.

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in Navigating Change and Letting Go 2 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

4 Must-Know Tips for Your Parent’s Hospital Stay

It always comes as a shock to me that being likeable doesn’t solve all my problems. In my mind, being accommodating is the key to being likable.  Of course, the problem with this thinking is that occasionally all that pent up accommodation and desire to be likeable comes boiling to the surface and I become enraged and irrational.

I’ve found that I can sometimes avoid this cycle by being less accommodating and clearer right up front about what I need and what I expect. But, it’s not easy.

There is no better place to avoid the likeability trap than when your parent is hospitalized.  You have to be firm and relatively non-accommodating so you can head off the white-hot fury that ends up making you look like a looney and reduces your effectiveness.

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in Medicare / Your Parent's Hospitalization 47 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

4 Common Traps To Avoid in Making the Move to Assisted Living

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself
Maya Angelou

About two months after my husband moved out, I noticed an awful smell coming from somewhere in the kitchen. I spent a whole week trying to locate the source. My kitchen cabinets have never been so clean. Naturally, all it took was getting half a dozen nine year old boys over for a birthday party to find eight dead baby possums right outside my kitchen window.

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in Assisted Living / Home Care 12 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

How Softball and Starbucks Taught Me a Valuable Lesson About Being a Good Parent and a Good Daughter

I’ve been noticing that when I get caught in the undertow of feeling like a failure at parenting, it makes me really angst-y and hyper-controlling with my kids, especially my 15-year-old daughter, Grace.  This happened last week when, mid-stream in spring softball tryouts, she suggested that maybe she wasn’t really all that keen to play softball after all.  Turns out the practices were sort of grueling and boring and she’d rather be hangin’ with her girlfriends at Starbucks.

This made me worried. Inner dialogue:  “Does this mean colleges will think Daughter is lazy?  She needs to play softball! I’m going to talk to her. I am going to point out how to her how important it is to be involved in activities!” I love watching her play but I also love how it makes me feel — like a rock star mom — when I see her out there tearing up the field. And, if she’s just sitting around every afternoon, what does that say about my competence as a mother?

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in Navigating Change and Letting Go 2 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

Daughterhood: The Ultimate Career Disrupter

The idea of “daughterhood” as a career-disrupter occupies little social media, blogging, and media real estate relative to motherhood. BUT, being a daughter can wreck a woman’s professional plans faster than anyone can say, “lean in,” or “play big.”

Taking care of an aging parent is the furtive, not-talked-about “de-railer” of women’s careers — not to mention their own health and sanity. I write and talk a lot about caring for the frail elderly. It’s what I have been doing for the past 20 years.

Here’s what I know about how this new life challenge takes the motherhood-career dilemma and makes it look like small time problems.

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in Common Challenges 7 comments