My wife Maria is a nurse. When her father got sick, she did what nurses do — she stepped in and took over. Appointments, medications, the hard phone calls, the harder conversations. She kept working her regular shifts the whole time. Everyone asked how her dad was doing. Almost nobody asked how she was doing.
I saw the same thing years earlier with my own mother. She had dementia, and when someone has dementia, all the attention goes to them — and it should. That’s where it belongs. But there’s another person in that story, the one keeping everything running. Holding down a job. Raising kids. Managing a parent’s care on top of it all. That person wears down quietly, in the background, and nobody notices because they’re too busy making sure everybody else is okay.
Nobody hands the caregiver a chart. Nobody checks their vitals.
The math doesn’t work
Here’s the part nobody tells you when you become a caregiver: the job doesn’t come with hours. It’s not eight to five. It’s the 6 a.m. medication check, the 2 p.m. call from the facility, the 9 p.m. conversation where you explain the same thing for the fourth time and keep your voice kind while you do it. And in between, you’re supposed to be an employee, a spouse, a parent, a functioning adult who remembers to buy groceries.
The math doesn’t work. Something always gives, and for most caregivers, the thing that gives is themselves. Sleep goes first. Then hobbies. Then friendships, because you keep canceling and eventually people stop asking. Then, if it goes on long enough, health.
I watched Maria carry it. She’s tougher than I am, and it still ground her down. Not all at once — that’s the trap. It’s gradual enough that you don’t see it happening to you, only to other people.
Rest isn’t a reward
If you’re in the middle of it right now, here’s what I wish someone had said to Maria, and to me:
What you’re doing is hard, and it counts, even on the days it doesn’t feel like it. The days where nothing went right, where you lost your patience, where you sat in the car in the driveway for ten minutes because you couldn’t walk in the door yet — those count too. Showing up imperfect is still showing up.
And rest isn’t something you earn after the work is done. With this kind of work, it’s never done. If you wait until everything’s handled to take care of yourself, you’ll wait forever. Rest is part of how the work gets done. A caregiver running on empty isn’t noble. They’re just running on empty, and eventually the person they’re caring for feels it too.
Twenty minutes
I’m not going to tell you to book a spa weekend. If you’re the one managing a parent’s care, you probably laughed at that sentence, and fair enough.
But twenty minutes is real. Twenty minutes that belong to nobody but you. Sit down. Have the coffee while it’s still hot for once. Read something that has nothing to do with medications or insurance. Call the friend you keep meaning to call. It won’t fix everything. It’s not supposed to. It’s just proof — to yourself — that you’re still on the list of people who get taken care of.
And if there’s someone in your life doing this work right now, ask them how they’re doing. Not their parent. Them. Then actually wait for the answer. You’d be surprised how rarely anyone does.
Why I think about this
Watching Maria care for her dad, and losing my mother to dementia back in 2015 — that’s the whole reason Lineage Lines Studio exists. I wanted to build something that gave families a way to sit down together that didn’t feel like one more task on the caregiver’s list. Something quiet and simple, built from their own photographs, that both generations could share.
But even setting the studio aside completely: caregivers are carrying more than most people ever see. If this found you on a hard week, I hope some of it helped. You’re allowed to be on your own list.
