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The Caregiver Cup Podcast
Empowering caregivers with knowledge, resources and tools so they can be the best they can be. This podcast focuses on ways for the caregiver to reduce stress, burnout, can embrace moments of joy in their new normal. Listen weekly to Cathy's personal experiences, coaching, tips, inspiration, and interviews.
The Caregiver Cup Podcast
Finding Your Routine in This Caregiver Season
Caregiving seasons constantly shift, and finding your rhythm during these transitions can make all the difference between barely surviving and maintaining your wellbeing. This episode explores how creating meaningful routines becomes your anchor when everything else feels unpredictable.
Cathy opens up about her current reality as her husband Denis undergoes a stem cell transplant, sharing how she's had to completely reimagine her daily schedule. From juggling hospital visits to maintaining her own health, she walks through the practical challenges of adapting to a new caregiving landscape. Her vulnerability about feeling emotionally overwhelmed while trying to establish normalcy offers a relatable perspective for caregivers in similar situations.
The heart of this episode focuses on the five key benefits of establishing routines: creating structure amid uncertainty, reducing decision fatigue, carving out essential space for self-care, supporting physical health, and providing emotional comfort during unfamiliar circumstances. Rather than prescribing a rigid schedule, Cathy offers a framework for building personalized "anchor points" throughout your day—morning activities to start positively, midday resets, and evening wind-downs that honor your current capacity.
What makes this guidance particularly valuable is its adaptability. Whether you're in a manageable season with some breathing room or completely maxed out, there are practical suggestions for incorporating small moments of self-care without adding more to your plate. From listening to calming music while washing dishes to creating "pause cards" with encouraging mantras, these accessible practices can be woven into existing activities.
Ready to reclaim even five minutes of your day for yourself? This episode might just show you how those few minutes could become your most powerful tool for sustainable caregiving. Share what season you're in and what routine is helping you stay grounded—your experience might be exactly what another caregiver needs to hear.
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Well, welcome, my friend, to another episode of the Caregiver Cup podcast. It's Kathy here. I just spent the day with my husband, dennis, who is inpatient in the hospital. He finished his transplanting of his new stem cells from my son, matt, last week and now his body is doing what it needs to do, which means that it's very uncomfortable for him Fevers, chills, the intestinal stuff and that takes about two weeks to get through all of that and he's absolutely miserable. And he's absolutely miserable. But I look at the positive side and he's got a great medical team that has every step ready and dealing with each one of them along the way, and they reassure me that this is a normal process. So I am back in the evenings and I'm back here, and then I'm going to walk back in the evening and just saying goodnight to him after I have dinner and then come back again and spend some time recharging. So what's really nice about where I am staying is it's probably equivalent to a three-block walk. I can see the place right across the street, but by the time I get to his room it's about a three-walk block and it's not really too bad.
Speaker 1:So let me get started today, though, with the episode by saying no matter what caregiving season you're in, calm or chaotic, your routine can either carry you or it can completely drain you, and I've lived on both sides of it. Have you? I bet you have and I find that a routine is very helpful and that's what I want to talk about with you. Prior to this challenging stem cell season, the start to my daily routines were really beautiful because Dennis was home and he was always getting chemotherapy and recovering and I no longer work full time. So I had this beautiful two hour window in the morning that I called my routine, where I walked my dogs, where I walked my dogs, drank my green spinach smoothie with all of the vitamins and protein and nutrition to start my day, and then I either did some quick journaling or stretching or both, and so that was really nice. Now it looks a bit different. I still get up and try to get in a shorter walk or a stretch, I shower and then I'm off to the hospital.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about why your routine needs to change with the season and why a routine is so needed to go ahead and really maintain your overall sanity and health and really maintain your overall sanity and health. So every season of caregiving requires different needs of you and of your overall caregiving routine and challenges. I want you to recognize if you're in a new season or what season you're in, and looking at that, I feel seasons are hard to diagnose or hard to label because we're in so many different new seasons. But we also recognize it when it's in a quieter season as well, when my loved one Dennis is inpatient. I needed to be there each day and I knew that. After the first couple days I found out the routine of when the doctors the mornings where, when the shift changes happened at seven and then. So you would meet the RN and the CNAs on his team for the next 12 hours, the CNAs on his team for the next 12 hours. I would meet the physician's assistant, I would meet the doctor and sometimes a physical therapist or a psychologist. So mornings always seem to be the best time to go ahead and do it, and I narrowed it down to about 8.30 till about noon is when you kind of see them all you know, coming in one by one.
Speaker 1:So really, for two months after my loved one is released, he'll be in the hospital until the 21st of May approximately. So I'm getting that figured out. But then what does it look like after that? That's going to be a new season for me as well, and I have to be not only there for the morning, I have to be a full-time caregiver for him, because what will happen and I'm using my past experience is he will need to go in daily to the hospital for labs and checkups and whatever treatment he needs, whether it be platelets or vitamins or whatever, and so that after he's released on May 21st is going to be another new season where I'm going to have to administer medications, make meals, laundry, help him with his showers, if needed, and taking him to daily appointments. And then another new season will happen when oh, I can't wait for this date, but I don't want to wish the months away but in July, approximately mid-July, he'll get to go home and that'll be another new season, and I'm hoping the rains will be lighter, since you know he will have figured out and he'll start feeling better. But that'll be a new season. I know you've been through it. So all of these three new seasons for me I'm going to have to figure out. I've not experienced these, although I have some experience in some of the new territories. So let's talk about new seasons would be more like appointments.
Speaker 1:Your loved one's condition changes that might be another example of a new one. Or maybe your energy levels change. Maybe a new season is when your loved one is diagnosed with a different illness or disease. Maybe it's a lifestyle change for you, where I've met many caregivers. Maybe they've moved, maybe they've had work done in their home and they're trying to juggle that. Maybe their career has changed. I know for a while for me, I went from full-time to part-time and so that was a new season to try to figure out. Or maybe a new season is when your loved one is sick, like Dennis is right now.
Speaker 1:So, thinking about it, new seasons are things that you have to go ahead and assess and then adjust to a different daily routine, and these routines may have served you in the past but may not now. Like I can't go ahead and take a two-mile walk, or I can't. A routine that I had in the past is I would meet up with a girlfriend once a week and do that. Well, now I can't do that unless I want to travel 200 miles and then 200 miles back, and I can't do that right now. So a few simple, another few examples might be where I don't have to make during this routine that I have. I don't have to make meals, still want to walk, but I'm going to have to find a new route and a new time and I miss my dog so much but I'm still getting my movement in. It's for you, this new routine is not about doing more. It's about doing what matters most in the season you're in, and that's the big thing.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the benefits of a caregiver routine or developing a routine for yourself. It provides validation and motivation, first of all for you as a caregiver and, let's be honest, when everything around you feels uncertain, a routine can become your lifeline. And no, I'm not talking about a rigid hour-by-hour schedule. I'm talking about simple, repeatable anchors in your day that help you breathe and function and find some sense of control, like in this season with my husband Dennis being impatient. I find myself completely out of rhythm and I did that for the first few days because I just was scattered, overwhelmed and constantly reacting to what was happening next and I had to figure out. Okay, there's going to be some things I can't control and instead of feeling defeated and exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed, I have to figure out what is kind of soothing or routine that I feel a sense of purpose in.
Speaker 1:And so once I stepped back and intentionally shaped a loose routine around this new environment like planning my meals and identifying my role in the hospital setting and what were the good times for me to come, and just deciding when I move my body each day it shifted everything. I found a morning routine, and this is really silly for me. I found a morning routine, and this is really silly for me, but I found a morning routine, and if I get up at six I can make my shake. I can walk around this block two miles which comes out to about two miles if I walk around it twice. And then I threw in a load of wash while I was doing it, because I take Dennis's clothes home every night and then I bring him back some new fresh stuff every day, and so instead of waiting for the laundry because there's a great laundry in this housing place called Kathy's House that we're at it gives me that time. By the time I'm back from my wash, then it's ready to go in for the dryer I go back to my room and drink my shake and journal, pull the clothes out of the dryer, then I'm ready to jump in the shower and then off I go. So it helps me identifying what I need to do in the morning and then what is my role in the hospital setting, even just deciding when the doctors are coming and how. That is helping me understand what's going on. My stress has not gone away, but I'm going to use the word softened a little bit. My energy returned in small ways, especially when I walked, and, most importantly, I started feeling this grounding that I needed to feel. So here's why I'm going to go through a few I think it's five things of why a routine can help you matter.
Speaker 1:Help you with how it can help you. I can't even speak today and why it matters. First of all, it creates structure in the middle of uncertainty, when caregiving throws you curveballs, and it's going to. Having a rhythm to your day, even a simple one, if it's morning or the evening or whatever, gives you that starting point or that ending point, and it's the difference between reacting all day versus responding with purpose. My routine gives me a sense of normalcy, even when I'm in a completely new environment like the hospital setting. Number two a reason why it reduces your decision fatigue. You already make so many decisions as a caregiver, like meds and meals and appointments and scheduling and symptom tracking. Without a routine, every moment feels like another choice to make and that can wear you down.
Speaker 1:Having the basic framework to your day, like I take a walk, maybe before lunch or during lunch, I eat the same breakfast each morning For me, I don't have to think about it. It eliminates the mental load and frees up your energy for more important things. Mental load and frees up your energy for more important things. I am, you know, mine too is. I went to the grocery store and I figured out what I was going to eat each and every day, versus coming back from the hospital exhausted and instead of pulling out a bag of chips to eat. I have my meals planned and I went ahead and got what I needed to. I used the deli at the local grocery store. I bought some chicken that was already cooked, so all I had to do is heat it up and so I had stuff. So even choosing like small walking routes each morning means one less decision I have to make. So think about it.
Speaker 1:Number three it helps you carve out space for you. This might be the most important benefit of all. A routine helps ensure you don't disappear in your caregiving role. It gives you dedicated moments to care for yourself, to check in with your heart, your breaths. It could allow you to cry or stretch or just sit in peace. Even just knowing that I'll get 15 minutes of quiet time at night makes the 12-hour caregiving day feel more manageable. Because I know, with the new routine back at the housing at Kathy's house that we're staying at when Dennis is here with me 24-7, I'm going to have to find some quiet time outside of the room so that I have that Number four benefit. It supports your physical health. When you're caregiving, your physical body takes a hit Poor sleep, you skip meals, you're sitting too long.
Speaker 1:A routine with small habits can help. Maybe you buy yourself a water bottle and you make sure you drink all your water and you take that with you and I take a water bottle with me to the hospital and I drink all that water. At least I know I get 16 ounces while I was there Eating real food instead of just snacks. I just talked about that. Stretching or walking or even just standing to breathe for two minutes. I love my Apple Watch because it tells me that I haven't stood in the hour and it tells me at 10 minutes to the next hour that you need to stand up and move, and I might go say to Dennis I'm going to just go walk around the floor for a minute. He might join me or I might do it myself. So here's another one. I'm sure to take the stairs instead of the elevator. In some instances it might be a small reminder to care for yourself.
Speaker 1:Number five benefit it reduces your emotional overwhelm by adding familiarity. Familiar routines bring comfort, especially during seasons when everything else is unfamiliar or out of control. So repeating some of these rituals may help you as well. Maybe it's your favorite smells, maybe you put on lotion every day that brings you lavender lotion. Or playing music while you eat your dinner alone in Kathy's house, like for me, or for me too, it's like maybe I go find it sit out in the hall area where everybody else is eating, and I do that on occasion. So I meet some other people and we talk about something else.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the next thing I wanna talk about is how do you build your routine or, better yet, if you're in a season, how do you rebuild it? The framework for me is you have to assess your season, that you're in. What season are you in? Is it manageable right now, is it moderate or are you maxed out? So you have to play into that and say what can I do? Because if you're maxed out, well then maybe just bringing a bottle of water with you or forcing yourself to go ahead and drink your water is all you can do right now, or taking a walk in the hallway is all you can do right now. Or maybe you're in a manageable season. Take advantage of that and saying you know what I'm going to do something in the morning, that I love to do that, and saying you know what I'm going to do something in the morning that I love to do. Maybe I'm going to go sit out on the patio for 15 minutes and drink my coffee this each morning now, and that gives me a break.
Speaker 1:You have to be honest, too, about your time, your energy and your over emotional bandwidth. The worst thing you want to do right now is give yourself more to do, so you want this routine to be something that fills your cup. For me, walking in the morning, sure I may be like, oh, I would love to stay in bed. But you know, once I get outside and the sunshine is up, this morning this is kind of crazy. Our radio station in Green Bay, this oldies radio station, plays the 70s songs on Saturdays and Sundays and there is I don't remember who the DJ is, but they go back in time and play some of the songs that were back in the 70s and all of songs that were back in the 70s and all of the top 100 hits of the 70s from 6 am to 9 am. So I did that because it brought me some familiarity. It brought me just some fun music, and one of the songs this morning was Disco Duck Of all things. You know it was a weird song, but I giggled and I laughed while I was walking.
Speaker 1:I think you have to find out what you can do during that time and what's going to boost your energy and get your mind away for just a little bit from the challenging moments. Maybe it's a call to your best friend, you know, or whatever it would be. So you want to assess your situation first of all and figure out where are there opportunities and what would bring that, and then you want to pick your anchors. I call these your anchors, because it's almost like what can start your morning first of all. What's something that could start your morning that's not going to be heavy, that's not going to be another thing added to your plate. Maybe you shower in the morning and maybe you do a few stretches or you listen to to some music or you do some deep breaths in the morning that you can do, or maybe it is a walk, or maybe it is sitting out and watching the sunrise.
Speaker 1:What could be a midday reset for you. That's an anchor. Are you eating? Eating? There are so many women here and men that are caregivers that before they take their truck over to the hospital or before they start their day of appointments, they have their little lunch boxes or lunch bags, and I was looking going. I need one of these. Mine is old and not fun looking and they make their lunches and they pack their fruit and some of them are making salads, some of them are making sandwiches because they're going to spend the day, and that might be their midday reset for themselves. For you, it could be something different. Maybe you just get outside a little bit and walk, or maybe you go ahead and call and check in with somebody little bit and walk, or maybe you go ahead and call and check in with somebody, whatever it would be. And then what is your evening wind down? What are you doing to treat yourself to 15 minutes, 20 minutes of a relaxing wind down Again? Maybe it's deep breaths, it's coffee brews, it's gratitude journaling, maybe it's a short prayer while you're brushing your teeth? Kind of think of ideas.
Speaker 1:Another step is layering in your priorities. What's absolutely a must that you get done from a caregiving task perspective, and what are all the things that you have to do? So spend some time thinking about that. And then where can you sneak in your moments? Where can you do that? Walking during a call, stretching at night, putting on that lavender lotion? Where can you sneak in that time? And then, what's one thing for each day that is like a treat for you, that is a special thing for you. Maybe it's listening to music, maybe it's listening to this podcast, maybe it's hey, I've been cooped up all day and I haven't even been out in the sun. It's amazing what a walkout in the sunshine will do for you. It's just amazing.
Speaker 1:And then number four is give yourself grace and permission. If all I do today is breathe and keep going in a challenging day. That's enough. If all that I did is packed my lunch and made sure I had enough water, well, that's it. As I'm thinking about that, I'm gonna drink a little bit of water here once, and that's it. So what can you do Now? The next one, the next section I wanna talk about, is ideas to reduce and release stress daily. We go through this all the time in this podcast and there's many episodes of it, but I'm going to give you just a few of my quick tips to add to my routines. Like when I'm doing the dishes, I'm listening to a calming playlist, especially now.
Speaker 1:When I come back and I come back now from sitting, sitting with Dennis all day and I find myself so emotional. All I want to do is cry and I feel alone. My mental brain is going in 10 different directions and I find myself nope. Kathy, put some calming music on and just do the dishes. Another thing is maybe, when you're doing your, you're brushing your teeth. What can you do? You have to brush your teeth for at least a minute and get those pearly whites all clean. Is there a way you can move your body? Maybe you do squats. Maybe you march in place. Doing that Don't forget five minutes of meditation or prayer is going to do wonders for you. Maybe you do that before you jump underneath your covers. Maybe you do that when you get up in the morning. When you get up in the morning, don't forget too.
Speaker 1:You can create what's called pause cards. I found these in the hospital where they had some. They had a stack of like index cards and the first few were written like powerful quotes were written on it, and then they left the extra ones blank. And so I found myself writing pause cards. And you can have those in different spots, like I put them on my dresser, I put them on my mirror, I put some in my purse and it's just a moment to say, okay, what's my mantra today and what am I going to pause and think about today? Maybe there's a theme for the day or a theme for the month, and you write a couple of cards throughout based on the season that you're in.
Speaker 1:So right now I can control my early mornings and my evenings while Dennis is in the hospital, but I know what's going to change. But I know for the next probably 20 days I'm going to plan on my walks in the morning If I need to do wash. I'm multitasking there and it makes me feel really good. I'm multitasking there and it makes me feel really good. I'm going to control my breakfast because I am the type of person that my digestive system gets whacked out If I don't go ahead and keep a routine with that Evenings. Now I just went to the grocery store and have my healthy suppers really mapped out for about a week. I'm going to do a bit of socializing and really trying to go ahead and do that, and then I'm going to try to relax and not let my emotions get the best of me.
Speaker 1:So, as I wrap up this episode today, I want you to really think about you know, what part of your day could you reclaim for yourself right now, this week? I really want you to think about it. Is there anything that you could add? That is a routine that's not going to stress you out, that's not going to be one more thing added to your plate, and it just is five minutes that you could fit in. What could you do that could make the difference? And it might be that you have to experiment and try things. Maybe it's a pause card, maybe it's finding a quote of the day. Maybe it's, you know, taking some time and looking at the sunrise and and or the sunset and really just focusing on nature right now. Maybe it's. Maybe you fell off the bandwagon when it came to gratitude and it's really important for you to focus on gratitude. I want to encourage you to go ahead and share these with me.
Speaker 1:I'd love to hear about your routines right now and what season you're in. I'm in a new season. This is the routine that I'm going to try or I'm going to be. I'm in a good season right now and this is what I'm doing. And I'm in a good season right now and this is what I'm doing. And it's kind of like, if you're running a marathon and you're in a good season, this routine is going to keep filling your cup and building stamina, and then so, when you're in a new season, you're going to have some of that stamina built up and you're going to have some of that knowledge of what's been working for you and you just have to tweak it during this new season. And so don't forget to hit that text and tell me what season you're in, what routine you're going to try or you're working on right now, and what's helping you and how is it helping you.
Speaker 1:I know I gave you a lot there, but just you know what I'm talking about. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode and I hope that you think about the importance of this routine, which really falls into taking care of yourself in the good seasons, the bad seasons, the new seasons, the moderate seasons, the hectic seasons, whatever it would be, because you deserve it, my friend. You have to show up as your best self and we have to continue to find ways to go ahead and do that. So finding a routine gives you a purpose, builds your resilience and, in the end, helps you become a better caregiver. So take care, my friend. I will give you updates on Dennis next week, as well as another episode of the Caregiver Cup podcast. Happy May and happy caregiving, my friend. Bye for now.