The Caregiver Cup Podcast

Caregiver's NYE Practice: Harnessing Energy and Reflection for an Empowered 2025

• Cathy VandenHeuvel • Episode 246

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This episode focuses on the reflections and resolutions caregivers can embrace as they transition into the New Year. The host shares personal experiences, practical strategies, and the importance of self-care to cultivate energy and resilience moving into 2025. 

• Reflecting on personal experiences during the New Year as a caregiver 
• Creating new traditions and finding contentment in quiet moments 
• Recognizing personal victories and challenges in caregiving 
• Utilizing journaling as a tool for reflection and self-discovery 
• The significance of self-care in nourishing the caregiver's spirit 
• Choosing a focus word for the year to guide intentions 
• Developing actionable strategies for maintaining personal energy 
• Emphasizing community support among caregivers 

Prioritize self-care, set boundaries, and lean on your support systems. Reflect on your victories, no matter how small, and acknowledge the challenges you've overcome.

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Speaker 1:

Well, hello, my friend, and welcome to another episode of the Caregiver Cup podcast. If you're listening to this on the day I publish it, it is New Year's Eve 2024. Oh my gosh, where has the year gone? I don't know. As I get older, the time flies by so much faster, or at least I think it is. But on this New Year's Eve, I thought I would focus on the past year and then the new year ahead. As a caregiver, you might not feel like celebrating or feel like the new year is anything at all.

Speaker 1:

I remember my first New Year's as a caregiver. It was 2017, going into 2018. I remember sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself because my spouse had just finished his chemotherapy and went to bed early. How dare him. On New Year's Eve, I was sitting there at nine o'clock in my pajamas alone and watching I don't know if it was the Dick Clark or Ryan Seacrest, but whatever it was, it was the ABC New Year's Eve party on TV and thinking, hmm, I remember the New Year's Eves when my husband and I would go out for dinner, we would take in a movie, we would go to a small theater, local theater show and now it felt different. That's what I felt like in 2017. And, to be honest with you, I now love the quiet New Year's Eve. Maybe it was that the universe going ahead and saying you know, this is what you need to prepare for, or you haven't even experienced the quiet New Year's Eve at home, and now I love it.

Speaker 1:

I live in Wisconsin in the winter here, so it's usually cold or there's a chill in the air. Sometimes there's snow and ice and all that kind of stuff. I love being home and I love the tradition of being in my pajamas and watching a movie or doing something like that. But now I've created over the last few years, I've created a tradition or maybe I call it a habit on New Year's Eve that I do first, before I really sit down and relax, and I wanted to share this with you because I think it's something that maybe you can take bits and pieces from and make it your own. This is what I usually do on New Year's Eve I usually take a hot shower, I put on my pajamas and I make myself a beverage. Usually it's a warm cup of coffee, because this girl loves her coffee. It's decaffeinated because it's in the evening, or I will not sleep decaffeinated because it's in the evening or I will not sleep.

Speaker 1:

I usually turn on some music and find a comfy chair and my journal and I like to go ahead and reflect on the year and go through some questions and journal those out and then really focus on 2025 or the next year. So I go through three questions and you can pick and choose whatever questions or journal however you want to. But what I do and I'm going to be doing this year is I want to say to myself in 2024, what am I most proud of this year? And I'm going to share a little bit of what I'm thinking about journaling. Now it may change a little bit because it's not New Year's Eve right now for me as I'm recording it. I'm recording it on the Monday before, but if I were sitting down and it was New Year's Eve right now, I probably would say I'm most proud of my morning walks.

Speaker 1:

I walk each morning with my fur babies, my two dogs, lucy and Eddie, and they're big dogs so they're not easy to walk sometimes and there's been maybe a handful that I haven't done because I was either sick or it was thundering and lightning out or the snow was so bad I couldn't walk in it. So there's not very many. I would say probably well over 355 days. So I probably miss maybe five to 10 days of the whole year because I find the mornings, this is my time to get moving, and if I'm in a crabby mood I walk it off. Or if I'm in this funky mood I can walk it off. I'll either listen to music or a podcast, and I love to see what the mornings hold. There was one day in the last couple weeks that the sun was rising and the moon was setting and it was in the same look. It was so amazing, it just gave me goosebumps.

Speaker 1:

Also, when you're thinking about journaling, or when I'm thinking about journaling, what am I most proud of? I would put on there my caregiving strength to keep going, even when I want to roll up in a ball and cry or I want to run away and just say take me away. I embrace the tools that I've talked about on this podcast. I lean into positive people like this community, like my best friend Julie, like my sister Connie. I'll lean into them and I always say I'm going to embrace the suck even if it's hard.

Speaker 1:

Another thing I'm most proud of is delivering this Caregiver Cup podcast each and every week and not missing one or making excuses. This Caregiver Cup community is so very important to me, and I do it because of you, but I also do it because of me. I'm continuously learning new things about myself, new things about caregiving, new things about this community, and I want to continue to go ahead and commit to it. It can be hard to commit when you don't feel well or you have challenges, but knowing we all need each other is why I do the Caregiver Cup podcast. I'm also proud of that. I've met some wonderful guests on the podcast, both famous guests to caregivers every day doing the hard work. I'm most proud of getting messages from you that make it all worth it.

Speaker 1:

And then, another thing that I'm most proud of and it's personally is I finally got my act together when it came to my financial health, and it's been something so heavy because in 2000, I'm trying to remember when Dennis went in for a stem cell transplant 2022, my finances and our finances were a mess. We were so behind. As a matter of fact, the year before, as a matter of fact, the year before, I sold my car so that I could pay off some medical bills and I didn't feel like I had a good grasp on what I had and how I could utilize my money, and so I found a great financial advisor that has really helped me plan out 10 years out, 15 years out out, 10 years out, 15 years out, just helping me plan and seeing what I have and what I don't have, so that I don't have to sit and have this heavy backpack on my back worrying about every little thing, and so I'm grateful for that. It was so scary to go ahead, and it's kind of like standing naked in front of a mirror when it comes to your finances, but it was so refreshing to be able to say, oh, we have this all figured out the good, the bad and the ugly. So, okay, the next question as I'm reflecting on the year I put down what challenges have I overcome in 2024? Now, there could be kind of crossovers here, but it helps me dig deeper.

Speaker 1:

Now, I'm not doing this to reflect on the hard times. First of all, I want to say that because when I say, what challenges have I had to overcome? Yeah, some of them were hard, but some of them were challenges, and I don't want it to be a negative thing. Yeah, some of them were hard, but some of them were challenges, and I don't want it to be a negative thing, but to show myself and you how you have overcome and conquered things. Now, one of the things that I feel like I am continuously working on but I've overcome a lot of it is my mindset, and I can't thank you all enough, because, as I'm doing podcast episodes, I'm creating some strategies that I'm sharing with you, that I'm working on myself.

Speaker 1:

I was never really connected presently to a lot of things. I've always been a person that wants more and more and more, and so what I'm trying to get at is I'll give you an example, this is probably a better way to say it I never am content with the present, and so, let's say, I would go ahead and get 10,000 downloads. When I first started in my podcast, I got 10,000 people that listened to an episode or the episodes of the month or whatever it would be, and instead of celebrating and being so proud of myself which I did but as soon as I got it, I was like, okay, why wasn't it 20,000? What can I do to get better? And so this year, what I did is when I reached a goal, whether it be a business goal, or asked a good question at the doctor's office or figured out something, I would stop and celebrate and embrace the fact that I figured it out. When I stopped and embraced the day or the week, I really started feeling the joy. I started feeling the joy of it all, and so I physically had to go ahead and come up with a plan and saying, okay, you just accomplished this. Up with a plan. And saying, okay, you just accomplished this, and let's say it was the 10,000 downloads.

Speaker 1:

I would say to myself, okay, no, looking ahead, today, it's all about celebration, it's all about being proud of myself, it's all about it. And the same would apply for my husband. When he would get a good lab results, I was still trying to find the bad ones in the rest of the labs instead of celebrating that his platelets were good. Today, oh my gosh, we should be celebrating that your platelets are good, versus looking at another one that's low and so, yeah, I always would look at that and I continuously worked on that this year.

Speaker 1:

Now I wish I could say cancer for my spouse, but that's not possible. You know, when it comes to what challenges have I overcome in 2024. But I've learned to be prepped and respectfully assertive say that again, respectfully assertive in my advocacy. This may sound harsh that I'm saying this, but I no longer worry about asking a question or pushing for more or sharing my thoughts and my opinions when it comes to his care. And I've learned to go ahead and do that and I feel like I have overcome that challenge because I would. Then I would beat myself up feeling guilty for going ahead and saying, well, that's in my opinion, there's got to be something else to do here. That's just not good enough for him. I would say something like that and I would then go home and like, oh my gosh, was I a big B today? No, I was being a good advocate, and so I learned that I had to go ahead and be this way and that's a challenge that I've overcome and that's like beating myself inside. I've overcome the challenge of really doing that and I use a journal each and every day and track his care, dennis's care.

Speaker 1:

It seems very detailed, but for me I've learned that tracking his especially since his cancer came back this fall, tracking his daily progress, is a game changer for me, because I can't remember every single day and then when you would go into the oncology doctor for his checkup. The nurse would come in and take his vitals and then she would go through a series I swear there's 50 questions and she would just rattle them off. Would you have you had diarrhea? What's your fatigue? Like you know, leg pain, head pain, and she'd just go rattle, rattle, rattle. And now if I have this journal that I take and it's green, so it's something that's not my color, so it sticks out with me and I record each day and I go ahead and do it in bullets and they're very short so that when I have to go back on them it doesn't look like big long paragraphs.

Speaker 1:

And just yesterday I put on there simple things like oh, dennis seemed a little bit better today. He did the dishes, so he did something, and if you remember my podcast, he's anal when it comes to dishes. Or he went outside and took a walk around the block, which he hasn't done in about a week, but if he did that. But then I would list out the concerns, like discoloration, he looks yellow today, he's got pain in his stomach, he took this anti-nausea medicine, and if there are things that I want to talk to the doctor about. When we go back, I go ahead and put a little dog ear or a little like a tag on there and so that I could pull them out. And then, once I go ahead and talk to him, I pull those tags off and I feel so much more on top of things. And so I was trying to figure out a way to go ahead and be on top of it and this has helped me and I can highlight, I can see patterns of concerns, even when he's at the doctor's office. What did the doctor say? And being able to, after we're done, I can record those things down.

Speaker 1:

So those are the challenges I had overcome in 2024. I want you to, I want to encourage yourself. The first one was what am I most proud of this year? What challenges have I overcome in 2024? You want to go ahead and do that. And then what have you done to take care of yourself in the year, in this 2024? And this one is really hard for me because I can see all of my struggles. Really hard for me because I can see all of my struggles and I can see what I didn't do, but I wanted to focus in on the positive things.

Speaker 1:

I walk in the morning, do some exercising and stretching. So I do some like leg lifts and sit ups and stuff like that. I'm drinking more water than I did in 2023, that's for sure but I struggle with my nutrition. I have good days and I have bad days, and so I put that down. I continue to work on my mental health, but it's a work in progress. Other things, though, I've done is I've continued bowling, and I love it just for the socialization, and I've strengthened my relationship with my sister, and we have some really, really, really good conversations. Some of them are so deep it's like I didn't know my sister that deep, and so I want you now to.

Speaker 1:

You can use these three questions, or you can change them up. It doesn't have to be three, it can be one, it can be five, whatever it is, but it's up to you. I know there is power in reflection and being very honest with yourself when you go back and reflect on 2024. And you're going to see some aha things. You're going to see some things that maybe you've done that. Hey, I never knew I was that strong and I could do that, or I never knew that I accomplished this healthy boundary. Whatever it is, it probably will take you about 30 minutes and then I get up and I stretch and then I refill my beverage or maybe grab a cookie or whatever it would be. You know, just kind of. You know getting up and moving around. Then it's time for the new year.

Speaker 1:

I love resolutions and goals. I do, and not necessarily always New Year's. I love setting goals, I love planning. So I'll just share a couple of fun ones that I've did, and this one's pretty old. One year, my New Year's resolution was to make sure that I never missed an event or a celebration for a family or friend, and it was. I called it card giving year, and so what I did is on January 1st I went and bought all of the greeting cards that I needed for the whole entire year and I bought this is back in the day where I bought myself an according folder Every birthday. I knew I had a calendar and I knew whose birthdays were in January and anniversaries and all of that. I knew everybody's events. And then I bought extra ones for Valentine's Day and Easter and all that kind of stuff and I went ahead and made sure that every Sunday I would send out the following week's birthday cards or cards or whatever it would be, and I would send those out with a specialized note on them and being able to send it. I made it the whole entire year because I set myself up for success. I did it was so fun, it was so rewarding I don't know how in the heck I did it, but it was so fun. And I bought the stamps. All the envelopes had stamps on them, so there was no excuse. There was no excuse One year and that was when I started.

Speaker 1:

In 2017, I committed to when I was a caregiver in the fall, I started journaling. But in 2018, I committed to journaling and I committed to journaling and gratitude, journaling and really going ahead and doing that. And then in 2019, I started journaling my future self by saying I am. After I journaled, I said I am, and then I would say things like I am strong. And then I would say things like I am strong, I am a podcaster, I am whatever, and I wasn't there yet, but I was working on those goals for myself, so I started doing that to get my mindset in there. I learned that from Rachel Hollis. And then there was the normal goals, too, that I never finished. There was the normal goals, too, that I never finished. What do they say? Like January 20th or 13th, whatever two or three weeks after you set your New Year's resolutions, people, there's a quitter's day, and so maybe it's the 15th or the 16th, but whatever it is. But I committed to eating better, losing 15 pounds.

Speaker 1:

Where my mistake for setting those New Year's resolutions is, I never set a strategy or a plan in place, like I did for the cards, and so I never set myself up for success. I made it for a week or two and then I would be off the wagon and forgetting about New Year's resolutions, and I think that's why people hate them. So either easy resolutions or goals motivate me and it feels like a fresh start, but pretty soon they wear off if you are not committed or passionate, or life doesn't go the way you want it to go, and we all know that when it comes to caregiving, because caregiving throws us arrows and hills and valleys and dips, and oh my gosh, there's so much. So that's why this year I'm switching it up and I hope for you that you can find a way that I'm gonna share my way, and maybe you can find a way that I'm going to share my way and maybe you can find a way like this too. This year, instead of setting a goal specifically, I'm going to focus on a word, a word to focus in on and then have some strategies behind it. The word that can keep me grounded and committed in 2025. And the word I picked this year is energy. I want energy and I want sustainable energy in 2025. And I want to be brutally honest with you I'm not doing well emotionally right now. I don't want to move into 2025 because there's a chance this is not going to be good for me. The door looks like for me, the 2025 door that I want to open up looks black, it looks scary, it's creaky and it's foggy. That's my visual of the door of 2025.

Speaker 1:

And it all evolves around my husband and his aggressive metastasized cancer. It's scary. He's now had three rounds of this extremely aggressive chemotherapy. That has been tough. The first round he was really sick and struggled with the recovery of that. He was sick downright, really down and out, for two weeks and then he had one week of feeling okay. The second round he was in the hospital with they thought was sepsis, but they still don't know what it was If it was an allergic reaction, a bacterial infection? I don't think we'll ever know. And he had his third round on the 23rd and 24th of December and up until probably today he was down and out. He's finally kind of moving around and trying to do things, but then he'll do something and he's completely exhausted after he does one little thing.

Speaker 1:

So we get the. He has a PET scan on Thursday and it's making me very nervous, because if the PET scan shows that the cancer is stable or there's some improvement, that's a good sign. If it shows that it's growing okay, then I don't know what the future holds. And so we go to Milwaukee, wisconsin, on Monday January 6th to meet the freighter oncologist that is an expert when it comes to the stem cell transplants, stem cell transplants and prior to that he had his two siblings that were qualified or that were healthy enough to go ahead and be donors. They were tested and they weren't a good match. You have to be, I think. They go on a one to 10 scale and they were only a five, so they were only a 50-50 chance of matching dent's and so they were ruled out.

Speaker 1:

And so we asked at that time if we could do look at the domestic or international donor and they had said let's wait till you meet with the freighter doctor on Monday and get the PET scan results back, and so that kind of brought me down and so life is kind of on hold and everything after January 6 is like an unknown for me and it's really. It's causing me a fear. Feelings of fear, feelings of worry, feelings of anxiety and unbelievable stress. I wake up in the middle of the night and trying to. It's almost like I am a scientist trying to solve this cancer and I must be dreaming about it. And I've really physically made myself sick. On Sunday I was in, down and out, I went to bed at what? 630. And I slept till Monday morning. Today that I'm recording this until 10 o'clock and trying to go ahead and fight whatever stresses I have.

Speaker 1:

So that's why I picked energy for my 2025. Because I can't control the things that I can't control. I can't control what cancer is going to dish up. I can't control, you know, the outcome of this whole thing. I have to put my energy on the things that I can control, and that's myself. That's you know. It's myself, that's, you know, everything to do with me and my showing up as my best self, and whether it be caregiving, being a good mom, being a good grandma, you know, being a good person to myself. I can control my physical health, my mental health, my social health, my spiritual health, and I can say it. I'll be honest with you, but it's damn hard. It's damn hard, and I know you know this too. So what I have to focus in on is my nutrition, my hydration, moving my body, my positive energy and my personal strategy when things are hard. And what can I do to get through my mindset issues and saying no to other things and really doing that?

Speaker 1:

Now, whatever word you pick in 2025, whether you pick energy or something else just don't pick the word. You need to figure out how you will use the word, how you will sustain it and how you'll gain benefits and rewards from this as well. And so here's what I'm going to do, and I'm just these are kind of like all over the place, but I think you're going to understand. I am making this word visible. I want to make sure that the word energy is on my phone. It's on my mirror in my bathroom, I'm thinking about putting a quote on my refrigerator and anywhere else. You think you need to see it. You know, in my journal. I'm going to go ahead and put things in my journal. I'm going to go ahead and put things in my journal you could even make a quote or saying relatable to it.

Speaker 1:

And, as a matter of fact, I just went out and Googled give me quotes on energy and sustainable energy in my life and I found one from Oprah that says energy is the essence of life. Every day, you decide how you're going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal and by maintaining focus. Tony Robbins says here when focus goes, energy flows, and when energy flows, whatever you're focusing on grows. So I'm going to put some of those out and being able to visually see those because when you see those, then you're going to go ahead and being able to, you know, to continue to remind yourself of that. And then when do I feel like I have the best energy? And I'm going and I'm sitting down now journaling this out because I picked energy. Now I'm going to go ahead and try to figure out how am I going to go ahead and apply this to 2025. And one of the things that I want to do is when do I feel like I have the best energy? I want to journal this, or I want to recognize this in 2025.

Speaker 1:

How much sleep am I eating? What did I eat the day or two before? That's impacting my energy. I want to think about. After a walk, how do I feel? Am I getting sun supplements? Do I need to go ahead, especially like vitamin C or magnesium, to sleep? What supplements can help me and I might have to test and play with those what brings me joy and energy?

Speaker 1:

So in my journal, I'm going to give myself an energy score. That's what I decided and why. So I'm going to like an energy score like from one to 10, what is my energy like today? And I'm going to track it for myself and I'm going to look for patterns and things that have happened. But, most importantly, why do I give myself that energy score, that rating? If I gave myself a five, why is it a five? Why isn't it a 10? Or why isn't it less? I want to go ahead and do that and make a list of how you can build and sustain my energy. I'm thinking about what I can do.

Speaker 1:

Like I said, this is a work in progress. It would be great to feel energized every day, but that's not reality. Nobody feels a top 10 energy every day. It's not humanly possible. You know, if you've had four days of no sun or if you've been sitting by your loved one by the bedside for four days, you're not going to have the same type of energy if you were moving in and grooving all around.

Speaker 1:

But when you feel energy drain, what can I do? That's what I want to talk about. Is it a power nap? Is it getting up and moving or walking outside? Is it an uplifting book or watching a romance comedy movie? Is it lunch with friends? What can I do? And I don't think I can come up with a complete strategy until I start tracking things and trying things. It's kind of like an experiment. What can I do to continually work on it?

Speaker 1:

Some things that I went ahead and looked at. I asked, like AI, I have chat GPT on my computer and I said what can I do to go ahead and improve my energy? And they had said one thing they had said is set boundaries, define your limits clearly, understand what you can and cannot do which I just talked about and communicate these boundaries to others, like for Dennis when he was in the hospital I talked about, and he was totally fine with it. I can't sleep in the hospital, unless it was really really serious. But knowing that you're in good care and you're alert, I know that I can go home and we can FaceTime. So he understood that. That was a clear boundary that I set. Learn another one that ChatGPT said is learn to say no. It's okay to decline additional responsibilities when you're feeling overwhelmed. And so what are those additional responsibilities? One of the silliest things, but the most crazy thing, is I didn't cook Christmas dinner with the family. I had it catered in. It was something that I'm like I am not going to go ahead and work four hours before everybody gets there, making all the meals, feeling exhausted and then not enjoying the time with them. That was a boundary that I had set.

Speaker 1:

Another one that you could do is allocate time for yourself. Schedule regular periods where you can engage in activities that recharge you, whether you go to a yoga class, whether you go to a painting class, whether you say, okay, afternoons, from three to four are my time and this is what I'm going to do during my time. That's my recharge time before dinner, or whatever you want it to do. Okay, another thing that I thought about when it comes to this energy word and what I can do is when I'm journaling and rating my energy. I want to list out how your energy gets drained, what's happening that you don't feel the energy Like I said. What did I eat before? Did I drink enough water? How was my sleep the night before? But also things like what emotions am I feeling today? Because, I told you, I'm worrying, I'm fearful. When I do get stressed, I emotionally eat and I grab a cookie or two or four or 10. I'm just that's the way I am and I need to be aware of that, because yeah, I'll get that sugar high and then I'm drained after that. What's your sleep like Now? If you say, yeah, I get nine hours of sleep at night, are you really sleeping during those times or are you waking up?

Speaker 1:

For me, I'm obsessing over finding answers. I'm constantly right now, and I had to physically put my phone away from the bed last night because I'm trying to find an answer. I'm trying to find a case study where it's working and somebody tried something different. So I'm like researching for the doctors, trying to find that golden, that needle in the haystack which I don't even know if there's a needle in that haystack and so, and then I'm impatiently waiting for the sixth, instead of enjoying the week and really looking at the week and New Year's and the weekend and whatever it would be, and so I know those are draining me and so identifying what they are. And then, once I identify them, I have to start experimenting, come up with a personalized action plan you can take when you are losing energy. That's what I put on my little notes that I'm going to actually do tomorrow night or, as you're listening to it, tonight, on New Year's Eve actually do tomorrow night, or as you're listening to it tonight on New Year's Eve.

Speaker 1:

You know what it reminds me of, when the smoking thing was really big and there was a day dedicated to giving up smoking in November. I'm probably aging myself, but I remember being at work and the smokers that day would say, okay, we're not going to smoke for the day. And we would have, we would know in our team who was smoking, who was a smoker, and we would go ahead and put little care packages at their desk that day, little notes to say you rah-rah, you're doing your best and we got your back and we're going to help you. We would leave them gum and we would leave them hard candy. There would be this fun little. It was a rubber band bracelet but it had a little note on it saying snap your wrist if you need to go ahead and remind yourself that you don't need a cigarette. And then there was buddies who would urge them on. That was our personalized plan for them, and I was a frontline leader for a team and we did that for anybody that smoked on the team and it was really an exciting day and we would celebrate with them at the end of the day if they didn't smoke and they were all like, oh, but it was really good for us. It was like a team building activity.

Speaker 1:

Well, same applies for your action plan or my action plan on energy. What can I do when I feel energy going away and it's depleting? What can I do? Things that work for me. I want to figure out what can I do that's going to work. Is it getting up and dancing? Is it going for a walk? Is it drink a full glass of water? Is it having an apple that has some you know natural sugars in it? That is going to keep me? Is it a power nap? What is it that's going to work for me? And I think one, not one size fits all of my energy depletions and then? So I want to get in front of it and that's what I'm going to track. Depletions so I want to get in front of it and that's what I'm going to track. So, as I move into 2025, like I said, my word is energy, and here are the things that I've decided that I'm going to do and I'm going to post the word so it's visible, or quotes, or whatever it would be. I'm going to track my energy on a one to 10 rating and identify why I rated it that way.

Speaker 1:

I'm also going to proactively look ahead to those hard weeks and ramp up for them. If I know, like January 6, I have the freighter appointment going on well that weekend. I'm going to eat really well that morning. I'm going to have a good breakfast. I'm going to eat really well that morning. I'm going to have a good breakfast. I'm going to stay hydrated. I'm going to walk that morning and days before I'm going to be prepped. I'm going to use relaxation techniques and lean into my support people my best friend Julie, my sister Connie. I'll talk with Dennis. We'll really kind of lean into that.

Speaker 1:

I'm also going to assess each failure. Yes, failures are opportunities to learn and people hate to use the word failure, but we fail every day. We fall every day, but how we get up and how we improve is that, you know, is a good thing. So I'm going to assess each time that I'm not feeling my best and really trying to identify what was it and look at opportunities to move forward. Just in time. I'm going to use just in time stress techniques, the times when you feel like your mind and body is overworking. You know what that feels like? It's sucking all the energy out of you and you just feel like. It's kind of like if you would go for a walk and your legs feel like jelly. Well, that's the way your body feels when you're using too much energy. And what is that? Taking deep box breaths Think of a box. Breathe in one side, breathe out another side. Breathe in one side, breathe out another side. Do the box breathing so that you can ground yourself.

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Meditation whether you do an online meditation or you just sit there and relax and let your mind think but then force it to go away. I'm going to double down on my gratitude, because I know that works for me. Focus on what you can control. So I'm going to focus on what I can control. Every time I get to a spot that I think I can't control, I'm going to use that mindset that the smokers had is like like snap that rubber band on my wrist and stop it, kathy, whatever that would be and then obviously calling somebody and saying, hey, can you be my buddy? Because right now I am obsessing over this as well.

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Now, if you have other suggestions or you have a word that you want to share with me for 2025, hit that text message and send me a text. Let's talk about what you're doing in 2025. If you want to join me with the energy word, let's do the Energizer Bunny together, and it reminds me of my mom. I used to call my mom the Energizer Bunny all the time. She would know how to go ahead and keep her energy levels up, and I want to go ahead and work on that and I would love to hear from you. So, to conclude, today I want to just read a short statement that I typed up here.

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As we stand on the threshold of 2025, I want to leave you with a simple yet powerful thought Choose your word, embrace it with power and let it guide you through the journey ahead. Find that word that you need to work on. For me, the word is energy, a reminder to nourish my own well-being so I can continue to care for others with strength and compassion. To all caregivers listening especially you remember that your energy is precious. Prioritize self-care, set boundaries and lean on your support systems. Reflect on your victories, no matter how small, and acknowledge the challenges you've overcome. It's okay to feel overwhelmed and vulnerable. You're not alone in this journey.

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As we welcome the new year 2025, let's commit to sustaining our energy by focusing on what we can control and letting go of what we cannot control.

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Whether it's through daily walks, journaling or simply a moment to breathe, find what recharges you and make it part of your routine. So I thought you know. I think that sums it up good and I really want to thank you for joining me on this first New Year's Eve, or on this New Year's Eve, whether it be your first New Year's Eve as a caregiver or your 10th New Year's Eve as a caregiver you know your resilience and dedication inspires me every day, and together we can create a community of support and understanding. Here's to a 2025 filled with sustainable energy, growth and unwavering strength to face whatever comes our way. My friend, again, you are not alone on this journey, and let's care for ourselves together and know that we are making a profound difference in our caregiver's life or in our loved one's life, but we also have to make a profound difference in our own life, and that starts with energy, compassion, grace, gratitude, whatever it would be. Happy New Year, my friend, and we'll talk again next week. Bye for now.