Daughterhood Blog - Daughterhood

June 18, 2015January 17, 2016 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.

May 21, 2015September 27, 2017 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.

May 6, 2015January 17, 2016 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.

in Medicare / Your Parent's Hospitalization 32 comments

April 8, 2015December 14, 2017 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.

in Navigating Change and Letting Go 2 comments

March 25, 2015January 17, 2016 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.

in Assisted Living / Home Care 8 comments

March 4, 2015March 15, 2018 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?

in Navigating Change and Letting Go 2 comments

February 18, 2015January 17, 2016 by Anne Tumlinson

Your Parent’s Death: Facing Fear and Finding Meaning

In my next life, I want to come back as Dr. Kathy Selvaggi, the palliative care doctor who appears in a new Frontline documentary series about how our health-care system handles end-of-life care. I think we should all idolize clinicians who escort people to and from life — midwives, labor and delivery nurses on the one hand. Hospice nurses, chaplains, and palliative care physicians, on the other.

Dr. Kathy Selvaggi and Dr. Atul Gawande (author of Being Mortal, the book on which the Frontline series is based) both say that it is really, really hard coming to the realization you or a loved one is dying. They tell us that, for most people, when it comes to dying: Fear Rules.

in End-of-Life / Feeling Guilty 12 comments

February 3, 2015January 11, 2018 by Anne Tumlinson

The Three Pillars of Parental Care: Add Up to One Impossible Job

My best friend from college and I use a term “the hard professor,” as shorthand for situations where our heroic efforts haven’t felt good enough. It comes from an analogy I created to make a point. It worked like this: If you were in a class with a professor who, in 20 years of teaching, had never given a grade higher than a “B” and you earned a “B+,” would you be mad at yourself for not getting an “A?”

I’ve learned that when you lose perspective about the value of your efforts, it’s always nice to have a friend point out that you are in the hard professor’s class.

in Common Challenges 4 comments

January 19, 2015January 17, 2016 by Anne Tumlinson

Why Daughterhood?

I was trying to explain to a male colleague why I am naming my new website “daughterhood.org.” He’s both an expert on aging and shares responsibility with his sister for their mother’s care. So, I wanted his advice on creating a resource that helps families care for their parents.

But when he heard the name of the website, his first reaction was: “So this isn’t for me?” A couple of other men were confused too.

in Common Challenges 11 comments

January 5, 2015January 17, 2016 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.

in Common Challenges 7 comments