The caregiver's lens

Cover image credit: Shot by the author when she was in Espoo, Finland.

My first job was at 12. I hired myself to be my mentally challenged mom’s caregiver. It was a foundational experience that went on for almost 25 years, which changed the course of my career but helped develop my core values of Tenacity, Resiliency, Empathy, and Enthusiasm (what I call my TREE).

Back then, I thought that being her caregiver was my calling and stifling my dream of being a veterinarian and working with wolves in the Yukon was the price I had to pay. It’s just a dream and in a faraway land, but this is my reality.

So the exchange was made, but someone kept knocking from inside.

July 2002

That knock started to get loud when I chose to go into engineering to earn enough to pull mom out of her condition. It got louder every time I smashed my goals. Continue to be one of the toppers so you can get that scholarship to go further to get that well-paid job to go further to keep mom safe to go further to get her psychiatric help to go further and just keep going to go further…

Surely, I’m not the only person who has had to raise her mother and herself. And like many of those young children who were their parent’s caregiver, I encountered resentment when I turned 19 (cause no parent is lovely anymore when you are 19).

November 2007

In the midst of my sleepwalking and chasing goals that I had no interest in, I unexpectedly crashed into a pure bundle of joy named Frazer who made me a conscious caregiver and even paid attention to that loud knocking from inside. I’ve been blessed in so many ways that simply being alive seems like the greatest revelation of an uncanny melody.

A caregiver’s caregiver is what Frazer was. A job that he and millions like him are executing with boundless joy.

January 2020

Mom had a stroke in 2019, so I had to leave my job to be her full-time caregiver. Her post-stroke journey is on Instagram: Geriatric Relearning After Stroke-induced Paralysis (GRASP)

After almost nine months, I got some breathing space to reflect on how much my routine has changed after mom had a stroke. I no longer wake up at 04:00 and don’t even exercise anymore. No more yoga, no MMA madness, and absolutely no 10K runs.

But being present to life and not chasing goals has been a transformative experience; one that has brought me close to my childhood dream and helped mom become a child again. She is no longer mentally challenged because the stroke wiped her slate clean. She is still bedridden and cannot speak, but her stresses are related only to food and poop.

And she has the exuberance of a child.

A few lessons

• Be willing to change your schedule to meet caregiver emergencies
• Listen to your body when it wants to call it a day
• Watch career opportunities come and go
• Accept life as it unfolds

From one caregiver to another 👉 Weakness is to strength as silence is to melody.

August 2024

In honor of my caregiver, I created the Frazden School of Boundless Joy and its initiative called Give B9 Tokens. It is an effortless contribution by me that inspires you enough to donate nine dollars, in cash or kind, to an organization in your neighborhood that is serving a cause that matters the most to you.