Are you taking care of parents, spouses and friends living with significant brain changes?  It sounds natural and we want to ease their way.  Is it simple to care and love? Yes!  Is it easy to carry out?  Not in my experience. However, we can do it.  Navigating this new world brings paradox into full light-it's difficult and easy, discouraging and hopeful, arduous and enlightening.

Spring 2020 Join me to discuss "caregiving from a distance". Let's use our energy, hearts and minds to bring forward the best of ourselves in the worst of situations. 

See the latest posting:  Dear Caregivers Blog to discover processes that work for you.

I have keen interests in enlivening our lives through caregiving as we are asked to change and respond with each new phase.

• What are our methods of living meaningfully while caregiving?  This requires caregiving with a process for you and your loved one.  Discover processes that have common elements, however, they are carried out in ways as individual as we are. 
• Trust, honesty, joy, humor and hearts breaking open.  Can we surf the emotional waves with more awareness and kindness? As our lives take new shape, we have a process.

All caregivers, professional and family members, are showing up to care for elders AND at the same time we are living our lives.  I resonated with what Bill Murray once said in an interview, “be your best at being you because it feels like home”.  How might one carry out our life purposes while caregiving?  What strategies work to "be you" in this situation?  Which methods allow you to surf this rollercoaster of caring and living meaningfully?

I could never have imagined the time, roadblocks, downright weird rules, and chaos of emotions in the years we’ve cared for my Mom.  If you’re like our family, our situation contains the spectrum of change--from vibrant living to big loss and grief.  Meanings of existence are brought to the forefront and we are grappling with and for them. This has lead to my interest in another area:

• Can we create new ways to care for our loved ones within institutions (not made for innovation) and enliven, to find the ease in dis-ease and meaning in life as they are launched into new realms?  Develop methods that allow for experience and research to inform our practices, change and create impactful living spaces.  If you’d like to explore this arena, call to set up a custom retreat or appointment schedule.

I am called to lead, as Brene Brown stated, wholeheartedly! 

Discover your way to care meaningfully.

Inspiration Point Coaching with Jan Marie Erickson (612)402-7906

Feel "at home" again.