Quotes About Caregiving

You tend to ignore the structures that would guide you to take care of yourself if you are taking care of others too much.

If someone caring for you became angry or dangerous, the conscious mind buried that information as too awful to acknowledge

I've raised Michael. I changed his diapers when he was little.

I came back and started living with my parents, and you depend a lot on your parents. That was the time when my mother was diagnosed with an illness; she needed help and she could not be of that great help for raising my child.

My mother wasn't controlling at all. She was a stabilizing force who grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. Now it's the big circle game. Taking care of her is a great blessing for me. I'll tuck her into bed, kiss her on the cheek, wipe up the mess on her blouse from whatever she spilled.

When I started caregiving, I was not on very firm ground. My first marriage had dissolved. I was working at an ice-cream stand in my thirties. I learned that when you don't have anything to give, that's when you really give, and then you get back so much more.

When your child is in the hospital, suddenly somebody else is feeding them, somebody else is changing their pants, somebody else is deciding how and when they will be bathed. It takes all the autonomy of being a parent away, even for folks who have had a lot of medical experience. It would be that much harder if you were from another culture and didn't understand the purpose of all these things.

After a few months went by, Dee started leaving her own baby with Foua when she took Lia to medical appointments-perhaps the first instance in the history of Child Protective Services that a foster mother has asked a legally abusive parent to baby-sit for her.

often difficult for people to admit to themselves, is that there are great sources of anxiety and anger in their personal lives, like a bad marriage, trouble with children, having to care for an elderly parent.

It's very shocking, I think, for people caring for the dying to realise how unsaintly they feel, how much anger is mixed up with their grief. In fact, often I think the anger that they feel is a form of grief; it's a kind of raging against what's happening.

My grandfather had Alzheimer's. He would eat everything and anything that was around; then he wouldn't remember that he ate it and would demand to be fed again.

I don't know a great deal about Alzheimer's - just what it does.

When both my parents were unwell I was in that situation that will be very familiar to many women. I had young children in one part of the country, and elderly unwell parents in another. I was in a constant state of guilt. Was I there enough for my mother? Was I there enough for my children?

During infancy, a child does not distinguish between milk and tenderness, between solid food and love. Without food, a child will starve. Without love, a child will starve emotionally and can become impaired for life. A great deal of research indicates that the emotional foundation of life is laid in the first eighteen months of life, particularly in the mother/child relationship. The "food" for future emotional health is physical touch, kind words, and tender care.

Women, by nature, are a certain way; they think a certain way. Women are web thinkers. We think wide... Why? Because we have children. Why? Because we were born as women to have children and to be able to take care of them. We do so many things at once.

In India, women are still the primary caregivers. Whether it be for children, whether it be for old people or sick people, you are the primary caregiver. No matter what position you are in.

Being Stephen's carer was such a struggle, and it's a lonely job looking after a disabled person. Thinking back, I honestly wonder how I got through it.

First, there were the are-we-going-to-have-enough-money-to-pay-the-rent arguments. Then came the health problems that sidelined her father from work. Then Anita had to move in because they couldn't afford a nursing home anymore. Miranda juggled three jobs to make ends meet, barely seeing Jasmine and Ruby.

My mom had four kids, one with special needs. She had a full-time job, and she still came home and made dinner for us every night, from scratch. It was amazing.

The historical weight of gender inequality has tended to concentrate women in lower-paid jobs with fewer benefits and at the same time made them primarily responsible for care giving.

I cooked his meals. I cleaned his clothes. I looked after him every weekend. I look after him when he was ill. I took him to the doctor. I worried myself sick everytime he wandered off somewhere at night. I went to school every time he got into a fight. And you? What? You wrote him some fucking letters.

His mother had hated him for looking after her, then hated him for leaving. Five years living with an alcoholic woman and no one had thanked him. If there was such a thing as the moral high ground it was surely he who occupied it.

On s'empresse de les décharger de toute tâche pénible et de tout souci: c'est les délivrer du même coup de toute responsabilité. On espère qu'ainsi dupées, séduites par la facilité de leur condition, elles accepteront le rôle de mère et de ménagére dans lequel on veut les confiner.

Souvent, quand les malades souffraient un long martyre, je m'étais indignée de l'inertie de leurs proches. [...] Je me demandais comment on s'arrange pour survivre quand quelqu'un de cher vous a crié en vain : Pitié !