#38 — What Happens to Your Own Life While You're Busy Caregiving Someone Else's?
This week's caller has spent years as the one who notices. The one who sees a parent or grandparent declining before anyone else is ready to admit it. The one who makes the calls, drives the half-hour each way, puts their own life on hold again and again because someone has to.
They grew up Roman Catholic, in a household where death was simply part of life. Not something to fear, but something you moved through together. That early comfort with mortality became the foundation for everything that came next: years of caregiving, of holding families together while quietly putting off their own education, their own health, their own plans.
This is a conversation about what it costs to be the person who tells the truth when no one else wants to hear it. About what it's like to carry that weight while everyone around you insists everything is fine. And about how someone holds onto curiosity, faith, and even joy while living a life that keeps asking more of them than it gives back.
It is also a conversation about what "nothing" might actually mean. About a quiet afternoon with a book and a dog on your legs, and whether that kind of peace might be closer to the truth than anyone expects.
Book recommendation: Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube.
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