Tag Archives: community

How to Get Neighbors Involved in Long-Distance Caregiving

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A real treat today for me and for you. As you know, caregiver support and caregiving resources are two of my passions. And this article truly speaks to me as the community of care we were able to develop around my mother allowed her to stay in her home independently much longer than she would have without their support. Guest blogger Claire Wentz from Caring from Afar shares some helpful information about how to build that community.

 

Photo Credit: Pixabay.com

It’s hard to watch the woman or man who took care of you for so long become dependent upon you for basic care: making sure there are groceries in the house, checking for any wounds or bruising on their skin, changing the bed sheets, washing clothes, cleaning the house, managing money, and more. It’s even tougher when you live far away and you have to hope that your aged parent can still fix a meal or remember to take their medicine.

What’s more, these people don’t necessarily have to be your parents. They could be grandparents, aunts or uncles, or even older friends. In any case, if you live more than an hour away and you have been tasked with taking care of them, you are, according to the National Institute on Aging, considered to be a long-distance caregiver. And as Michael O. Schroederstates in U.S. News & World Report, the demand for caregivers is increasing as the population ages.

While you might feel you are the only one available to provide care, you actually do have allies who can help: your loved one’s neighbors. They can be your eyes and hands while you’re away,  and they might need to do a little more than simply knock on the door once a day to make sure everything’s okay. You will need to enlist them to actively help care for your loved one.

If the neighbors have lived next door or across the street from your loved one for many years, getting them to help might not be an issue. However, if you don’t know them, or if they’re new to the neighborhood, you’ll need to introduce yourself and explain what you need.  Here are some ways to set upa neighbor caregiving network.

  • Introduce Yourself and Completely Explain the Situation

If your loved one is a parent and the neighbors have known you for years, this should not be a problem. However, for newer neighbors, or if the loved one isn’t a parent, you’ll need to pay a visit and tell them about your loved one’s condition. If the neighbor agrees to help but isn’t familiar with your loved one, take the neighbor over to their house and have them meet.

Generally, try to get help from the neighbors on either side of your loved one’s house and maybe two others across the street. If there is a church in the neighborhood, speak with the pastor or church secretary. They might be able to recruit a volunteer to join your caregiver team.

  • Set Up a Meeting

Once you have your team set, hold a short meeting to discuss what is needed and which days each neighbor can check on your loved one. Prepare a list of daily tasksto perform. Ask the neighbors if they’re comfortable with performing such tasks as helping your loved one use the bathroom and cleaning up if there are any mishaps. Prepare a list of emergency numbers (your home and cell phone, the doctor’s, the pharmacy’s, each other’s, and another relative). Also, make sure they have your email address. Tell them when and how often you plan to visit. If they ever need to pay for something for your loved one, promise them you’ll reimburse them.

Don’t forget to give your allies small tokens of thanks for their help. Restaurant gift cards are always appreciated and welcomed.

  • Consider Live-In Care and Other Resources

If your loved one is in a location where there aren’t any or many close neighbors, live-in care — or even moving inwith a roommate — might be the best option. According to the Huffington Post, you can use either a home health agency or directly hirea caregiver. Other resourcesinclude companionship services, meal programs, and even organizations that provide care for those with specific diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer’s.

You put a lot of yourself into the care of your loved one, but having a network of neighborly allies can ease the burden of caregiving if you live far away.

 

 

Summer of Self Care – Day 14

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Self-care and Online Connections 

These days, there are a lot of troubling things happening all over the world. It used to be that we got news from a couple of nightly news shows, magazines or the newspaper. But now, we see news throughout various social media platforms and apps, which also provide notifications of breaking stories throughout the day.

This constant exposure to real time, shocking or upsetting information can lead to feelings of anger, frustration or fear. And these emotions can cause anxiety and increase our levels of stress.

Yet in times of stress, many of us crave connection with others. After all, it is this connection that helps us to feel loved and cared for, right?

Conversations on social media can be delightful, fun, affirming, overwhelming, time-consuming, frustrating or anxiety provoking.

Add to that a constant barrage of notifications that you have email waiting, some with the high priority symbol or a red flag, and you’ve multiplied those feelings exponentially.

How can you practice self-care by limiting or scheduling when you will consume this information?

We’ve already talked about Tech Free Days and how they can benefit your self-care routine. You may decide that you want to include Tech Free Days regularly and can find ways to manage your day-to-day activities while limiting or temporarily eliminating your social media.

It also starts with an awareness of how you’re feeling about each media source.  Does Facebook or Twitter continue to bring you joy? Or are you constantly feeling angry, helpless or hopeless? Make a list of what you consume every day and start making tick marks in the Joy or Stress column to see if the good feeling you get when participating outweighs the stressful and anxious feelings.

If you want to keep up with news, you might limit watching just before bed or first thing in the morning. This can start or end the day on an anxious note. The beauty of technologies is that you can access most of this information on demand, allowing you to decide exactly how much and when you will take it all in.

Scheduling time to check email and/or social media throughout the day can protect you from unwanted assaults or interruptions. This strategy can definitely increase your productivity – most of us who respond immediately to a notification from news or social media tend to then spend at least 10 additional minutes online after reading the article or post that brought us there. Multiply that times just 10 notifications a day and you’ve spent 100 minutes online without even intending to. If this happens during the work day, you’ve lost 100 minute of productivity. This may make you feel like you can’t get caught up, intensifying your anxiety and stress.

Setting a reminder to check email and social media three times during the work day may not work for everyone, but you can certainly give it a try.  If you check first thing in the morning, just after lunch, and again about an hour or so before the end of the work day, that keeps most people up to date. Of course, if your work requires an immediate response no matter what, this scheduling technique may not work for you. Or perhaps you can find a back-up or strategy to connect to those emergencies without being tethered to the notifications constantly.

Consider ways in which you can connect with people IRL (in real life) again. It’s interesting to me how I still sometimes resist having coffee with someone because it means I have to put on makeup, dress a certain way, leave my house and stop what I am working on for a period of time. Or we email someone rather than call them for something because it’s… what? Easier? Faster? Convenient? Avoidant?

Face to face or voice to voice connections will become a thing of the past if we let them. But truthfully, they can be beneficial to our self-care. I give and receive this experience with a lot of fellow coaches because we can become very isolated in our primarily work-at-home-alone routine. Inevitably, one of us says, “I really needed to talk to you today. This really helped me a lot.”

On the flip side, social media can, for some, be a form of self-care and connection. Reading another blogger’s take on this recently, this hit home for me. Here’s a post from Rest for Resistance on self-care for the radical social media user.

“Offline self-care works great for some people. Yet it’s harder for those of us who don’t have space to sequester ourselves at home with friends and family. Due to isolation, many of us don’t have room IRL to even believe that we deserve space in our own lives. Social media is simply a better source of hope than the outside world.

We all deserve community, and many of us find that online.”

The bottom line is that, aside from the requirements of your job, you get to decide how and when to connect with email, news and social media sources and design your self-care plan around what works best for you. Maybe for today, your act of self-care is just being more aware of how you’re feeling and what might work better for you tomorrow.

 

 

 

A Values Driven Philosophy

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I created a visual representation of my values today using www.wordle.net.  (Thanks to Meg Hoffman for leading me to this great site!) I think any time you can see something visually it helps you to incorporate it more fully into your life and work. I also use a Values Assessment as fieldwork frequently as I think it is critical in assisting me as a coach to discover what opportunities provide the most authentic meaning in a client’s life and work. In other words, how can any of us engage in a meaningful life or career if we aren’t connecting to things that are important to us?

I used my values when creating a mission and philosophy for 4 Elements Coaching and for my other business, Nonprofit Staff Success International. During the creation phase of my business foundation. I included my values in my business plan and posted them on one website.  By communicating what I value most, I assist my clients in discovering more about me as a coach and as a business owner. And, whenever I come to a personal or business decision that feels heavy, I check in with my values to see whether the opportunity aligns with one or more of them. Because I value community, for example, I may decide to partner with a fellow coach to facilitate a weekend self care retreat which  connects women to other women who share the same challenges and can support solutions. Whenever I create new training content, I am actively aligned with my desire to enlighten my clients and to assist them in discovering new and innovative information that they can apply in their work. There really isn’t any aspect of my coaching businesses that isn’t somehow connected to one of these seven themes.

Do you know what you value? How does it show up in your work and in your life? How often do you check in to see if something you want to do, or feel compelled to do, is aligned with what matters the most?

Even if you aren’t ready to hire a coach, I’d love to help you discover your values and how you can apply this information to your career or to a situation where you need more clarity or movement.

Contact me at LaurieJohnson@4elementscoaching.com or by using our contact us form here and ask for a complimentary values assessment and coaching session. Don’t you owe it to yourself to create a rich life and satisfying work that flows around the things that are an integral part of who you are?