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The Caregiver Cup Podcast
The Caregiver Cup Podcast is your space to pause, reflect, and refill. Each season dives into themes that matter most to caregivers—like self-care, boundaries, emotions, and rediscovery—so you can show up as your best self. Join a supportive community that believes when your cup is full, you can care with more strength, joy, and compassion.
The Caregiver Cup Podcast
Redefining Caregiver Self-Care: Finding What Truly Refills Your Cup
Are you tired of hearing “just take care of yourself” and wondering what that even means as a caregiver? In this episode of The Caregiver Cup Podcast, we’re busting the myth that self-care is all about bubble baths and spa days—and redefining what it really looks like for you.
After eight years of caregiving, I’ve learned the hard way that one-size-fits-all self-care doesn’t work. Real caregiver self-care is practical, personal, and purposeful—and it changes with each season of your journey. I’ll share my own stories of what didn’t work (like manicures that left me still exhausted) and what actually helped me refill my cup (like journaling at Kathy’s House or a slow walk after a long hospital day).
You’ll walk away with a simple framework—the 3 Ps of a Full Cup—to help you create a self-care plan that feels doable, sustainable, and right for you.
💛 Because when you take the time to refill your cup, you show up stronger—for yourself, your loved one, and everyone around you.
Well, hello there, friend, and welcome back to the Caregiver Cup podcast. It's Kathy here. I am so glad you're here with me today. Hey, recently it just rained buckets here, and that's usually what I say when we get about a half inch to an inch of rain, and I watch. I have a rain gauge right outside the front door of my house, in between some bushes, and I just watched the rain gauge fill up and the water soaked into this dry ground that we had.
Speaker 1:We had a pretty dry summer here in Wisconsin. When the sun came out, though, I noticed quickly that my plants perked up and my flowers perked up. The leaves of the plants look greener, the flowers lifted up. Even the grass seemed brighter. It reminded me of how we're not all that different between you know, mother Nature and the plants and us in caregiving. When we get what we need rest and nourishment and light we perk back up too, and that's what the season is all about here.
Speaker 1:In season one of what's in your Cup. Last week, in episode one we talked about, we looked at your cup and what fills it up and what drains it or empties it, and today we're going deeper into what it really means to care, give for yourself or to care for you, the caregiver, because here's the truth Self-care isn't a one-size-fits-all and it's definitely not bubble baths and spa days and going for a manicure. You know it's not Real. Self-care is personal, it's practical and it's purposeful, and when we define it in our own terms, that's when we start to try to refill our cup. So I want to really I want to break some of those myths that you may be thinking about, and more and more caregivers are starting to speak up about self-care, and that's something I truly commend.
Speaker 1:And I'm reading right now the Emma Hemming Willis book. I got to look at the cover here once I forgot the title. Hold on a minute. It's called the Unexpected Journey and it's called Finding Strength, hope and Yourself on the Caregiving Path. I recommend this book because it's so practical. Emma talks about it in the book, about finally taking care of herself, but I know other celebrities have talked about it, like Queen Latifah and Maria Schreiber oh gosh, there's so many more have been open about what it means to hold on to yourself in the midst of caregiving, and I've been talking about this on this podcast now for almost five years. October 20th will be five years, and so, yes, the conversation is happening and it's so so encouraging.
Speaker 1:But here's where I think we need to bust this myth. Self-care isn't just a walk around the block and you feel better. It's not going ahead and making sure you get a pedicure or manicure and then you feel better, you may look better on your hands and your feet, and it's definitely not taking a nap in a bubble bath. It's not when we have to squeeze it in. Those things are wonderful, but they're not always practical and they don't sustain us for the long run. Self-care isn't a short fix. It's a plan, it's a strategy, it's a lifestyle shift and, honestly, it's continuously a work in progress.
Speaker 1:I never thought for myself that I'd be sitting here eight years later in this caregiving situation and I thought I was actually getting into a high season. And at the time I'm recording this, dennis has now new onset neutropenia, which means his blood levels are off and he's at higher risk of infection, even after a stem cell transplant. So it's a constant thing. But I never thought I would find myself, eight years later, into caregiving. I'd still be learning and I never thought I'd still be learning how to sustain my energy and my emotional health when you're in it. First of all, you focus on just getting through the day, right, oh my gosh. But if we keep thinking of self-care as this extra thing or something you do when you're falling apart, we miss the picture. It's about building a rhythm that protects you every single day, and some days that rhythm is really something short and sweet. But some days you have the longevity to do a little bit more, and it's not just in crisis moments. You have to sustain this, because if I only focused on when things were chaotic and did my self-care versus a sustainability thing, I think I would be really hurting right now.
Speaker 1:You know, our loved ones often get training and education for their disease or their treatments, right? I think about Dennis when he would get chemotherapy training. Anytime he got a new chemotherapy drug he would get trained. But initially, when he went through chemotherapy, him and I sat through about a 20-minute walkthrough with the nurse, then with his stem cell preparation there were many moments where we got training. We got training on all of the pre-transplant processes. We got training on the actual stay. We got training on the mental side of it. Now, in just about a month from the time I'm recording this, he's going to get retrained on the vaccine process for him, because once you go through a stem cell transplant process, you have no protection in your body, and so he has to go back through and get all of his childhood vaccines all the way through the present, including things like a shingles vaccine and so on, and so he has to get trained on that.
Speaker 1:But no one ever hands the caregiver a training. They may give you a little guide, they may give you a little quick tab in a been a binder, but I never got anything formal, which I think that I know that the focus is on the patient, but I wish I would have been given something here's how like, maybe something like here's how you protect your own energy and your emotional health, because any type of tab or any type of little bit of training that I have, I've heard over and over again don't forget to take care of yourself. What the heck does that mean? That's where we're left to figure it out, and you and I have to go ahead and figure it out, sometimes through this mucky water and why.
Speaker 1:I want to bust this myth wide open in this podcast episode and throughout season one and beyond, because self-care isn't indulgence, it's maintenance, and when we start treating it as an ongoing practice, not really an occasional escape. That's where our cup starts to stay full and we learn how to keep our cup full Even when, like next week or the next episode, we'll talk about this throughout, but you might get leaks in your cup or you might get a cup that's empty, whatever it would be. So I want to share something with you right now and I want to be honest. I've tried all the self-care classic practices over the years. I went for a manicure, I went for a massage, I went for facials, I took mental health days and found somebody for my loved one, you name it. I've tried it and don't get me wrong, they feel good in the moment, but they weren't a strategy.
Speaker 1:But here's the thing as soon as I walked back into caregiving or went back the next day to caregiving, or whenever it was, the stress and the chaos were still waiting for me. So, friends, you know how many times have you heard just take care of yourself? Many times have you heard just take care of yourself? Friends would say to me just take a few moments for yourself and recharge. But what they didn't understand was you, and I feel guilt. We worry the constant mental load that we carry is unbelievable.
Speaker 1:Even when I went to a movie with a friend this is just funny I couldn't relax. I spent the whole time checking my phone, going off in la-la land, worrying if everything was okay at home, instead of embracing the moment filling my cup. It just felt like another thing that I had to check off on my to-do list. There would be times that it was a good movie, but I would be checking my clock going. Oh my God, I only have coverage until 45 minutes from now. I hope the movie ends on time and it's like I'm not even being fair to enjoying the process. And really, maybe that time was just not the right time to go to a movie for me, because I couldn't focus. How many times have you been watching something or doing something and you didn't want to be there because you worried?
Speaker 1:But here's where everything shifted, when I stopped chasing what I thought self-care should look like and started asking myself what I actually needed in this caregiving season. For me that worked. It wasn't fancy or expensive, it was simple and personal. So really, just to repeat it again, I stopped chasing what I thought caregiving should be and started asking myself what do I need in this moment or in this caregiving season right now? It could be simple, it could be personal, it could be totally different than when I thought. So I think that's the big thing here, like finding a quiet nook at Kathy's house to watch the sunrise with my coffee in a journal. In a journal, because that's what I needed in that moment.
Speaker 1:After days and days of caregiving or running back and forth to the hospital, I never got to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee, or if I wasn't drinking my coffee, I was in the hospital, which wasn't really relaxing for me. Another one is a slow walk around the block with my favorite music, while my mom, who was in hospice care, was sleeping. My brother and sister were there, and so I just said to them I just want to get out and breathe some fresh air, and I just walked around the block. I was only a block away if they needed something, but it just got me out to see that there's something else in the world besides sitting in my mom's apartment during that time morning to stretch and say a prayer before diving into the day. You could set your alarm five minutes, or, when your alarm goes off, you plop your feet to the side of the bed and you sit there a minute and you say a prayer or you stretch, or you make your bed and listen to some sort of motivation. You might only have five minutes that day, but what can you do in that time? And here's what I learned Self-care that isn't personal won't fill your cup, won't refill your cup.
Speaker 1:It will feel like an obligation and we don't want that to be, or another should. But self-care that meets you where you're at and where you are at that time, that's the kindness that restores you, even in small doses. I think about something as simple as you have appointments for your loved one all day, so you know you have to get on the go and go. What could you do from a self-care perspective? Is it making a shake the night before to go ahead and drink while you're driving your loved one, so you're getting the nutritional self-care that you need? Is it while they're getting their lab work? You know you can sit in the waiting room without them, and so here's your time to take some deep breaths or take a walk down the hall and come back. You know, think about what you can do in the moment and come back, you know, think about what you can do in the moment. So that's a piece that you want to think about. So let's break this down into something simple you can actually remember and use. What I'm going to call this is your three P's of a full cup Three P's, and so there's going to be three words that start with P, because here's the truth Self-care that lasts isn't random or occasional, it's practical, it's personal and it's purposeful.
Speaker 1:And so let's talk about practical first. It fits your life right now. Self-care has to be doable in your season. You don't need two hours of free time, you need something that works in the margin of caregiving I remember talking to in my earlier podcast episodes. I interviewed a lot of different caregivers, and so, if you want to go back and listen, there was one, rosa, who loved to paint, and she loved to paint outside, and so when her mom took a nap, she would go ahead and go outside with her easel in the backyard and paint. Whether it a half hour, whether it was 45 minutes, she got that time to recharge and do something that she enjoyed. For others, it might be five minutes of deep breathing in the car before walking into an appointment, or sipping your coffee while looking out the window instead of scrolling on your phone and totally losing track of time, so practical.
Speaker 1:Next one is personal. It has to match you. For me, I can't do high intense workouts and right now I pulled my hamstring, so yoga is really hard for me. So self-care only works if it feels like you, not what you're seeing on Instagram or not what your friends swear by. It's what actually restores you and you might have to experiment with it. If you're energized by people, maybe it's having a cup of coffee with a dear friend. That kind of lifts your spirits. If you're more introverted, like me, maybe it's journaling or sitting in silence for 10 minutes, whatever it would be.
Speaker 1:The third one is purposeful Refills your cup in a way that helps you show up strongful. So you want to think about a purposeful moment of self-care. Self-care should leave you equipped to handle what's next. It's not an escape, it's fuel, and maybe you feel your heart racing or anxiety hitting in, and you know right away. Or anxiety hitting in and you know right away, I have to put my hand on my heart and I have to take a deep breath, or I have to put down my phone because it's making me angry that all of my family members are at an event and I'm stuck at home taking care of my loved one. Put down your phone, what it is. Another example is movement that boosts your energy. You know, I've interviewed, like I said, lots of caregivers and I can picture her name I think it's Lisa, if I remember right. She loved to dance and so she would just move. If she had a few minutes, making a meal or whatever, she'd put on some music and move and get booster energy. Or maybe it's prayers that ground you Saying some prayers, maybe it's laughter that lightens the heaviness of the day.
Speaker 1:Get into the videos, whether they be I don't know Reels or TikTok, I don't know what they are, but I watch them and I watch the pet videos. I watch the crazy, crazy things out there that happen. If you love to laugh, maybe it is. I was going back and I was starting to get sitcom videos like All in the Family or Full House or whatever, and I never thought they were funny at the time. And now I rewatch them and I'm like, oh my gosh, they make me laugh, and sometimes to the point where I end up choking because I'm laughing so hard. So that's an important piece. So you want to figure out what works best for you, and here's something really important you may have to try a few things before one sticks Go in with the mindset that self-care is going to be an experiment for you.
Speaker 1:When I stayed at Kathy's house and that's where the hospital housing was the house was created for Kathy with a K. Her last name was Vogel and she died of lymphoma and she saw in the hospitals that families needed a place to stay close to the hospital, and so her family, in honor of her, built this house. And so when I stayed at this beautiful housing facility, I had this plan that I was going to go ahead and stay there. I was going to get up at 6 am, I was going to walk three miles every morning before coming back and showering, and then I would head to the hospital. It sounded like a great thing, great thing in theory, but I quickly realized it was too much for me in the season to have this structure. It was just I really needed more calm and less intensity. So instead I found peace in short walks around the block after leaving the hospital instead of in the morning, so I could go ahead and process the day and process my emotions Versus. In the morning I just took it slow. I went ahead and made sure I had a good breakfast, I had coffee, I chit-chatted with people in the shared kitchen area and dining area before leaving for the day, instead of having this high pace, high energy, and then I walk into his hospital room and like, yes, I'm all excited because I had a really good day, and then I was let down and I'm like I can't do that. I have to kind of ease into the day because it was so stressful.
Speaker 1:That's the beauty of these three Ps practical, personal and purposeful. We'll look different depending on your day, depending on your energy and depending on your season, and that's okay. Here's what I want you to do this week. I have an assignment for you to do and you can do it now. You can do it as you're driving, you can do it whenever and it won't require a lot of work. But it's just something. Choose just one of the P's personal, practical or purposeful Don't try to do them all. Pick one as an anchor that feels right for you and start practicing it and, if you want to take it even further, take some journaling. Which of the three P's.
Speaker 1:Does my cup need most right now? Does it need something practical? Does it need something purposeful? Does it need something personal? Maybe it's the combination. What's one small way I can go and use this as a practice this week. What could I do? And maybe it's just drinking your water so you stay hydrated and you don't have headaches right now. Or maybe it's going ahead and setting out my clothes for the morning, because I know gas starts right away. Whatever, it would be Okay to kind of conclude here. I just have a few more thoughts.
Speaker 1:I want to give you a quote here from Leila Delia. I think it's how you pronounce it, but it's one of my favorite quotes of Leila. Self-care is how you take your power back, isn't that true? Think of it as when I go ahead and do something that's going to fill my cup and it's purposeful, practical and personal, I take my power back and in caregiving, so much feels out of control for you right now. But choosing self-care, in even small and perfect ways, is how you reclaim some of your power. So here's my invitation again Grab your journal or just pause for a few minutes and think about what that would look like for you.
Speaker 1:What would that do to help you steady your cup, or give you some more in your cup. Jot down a few things and then pick one, or brainstorm in your head a few things that you want to try. But remember, don't add something that's going to stress you out. Don't say I'm going to get up 30 minutes every morning and I'm going to do X, y and Z, unless you know that's going to recharge you. You know that's going to recharge you. Maybe it's while I'm folding the laundry. I'm going to listen to my favorite music as a recharge, because this is the time of the day I start feeling groggy. Whatever it would be, because here's the truth. It's okay if your self-care looks different from mine or anyone else's. What matters is that it works for you right now. When you define your self-care on your terms, you protect your energy and give yourself a chance to thrive, not just really survive.
Speaker 1:So before we dive into episode three next week, I'm going to skip a week and I'm just going to use next week as a bonus. It's going to be a pep talk. We're going to combine filling your cup and this episode, and we're also going to talk a little bit about your cup isn't empty. It's just leaking Because, all of a sudden, if you visualize your cup and you're trying to put in self-care and it still is emptying faster than you thought it would be, maybe it's just leaking. And it's a quick burst of encouragement to help you spot where your energy is slipping and how you start plugging those leaks. And we're going to talk about that and it's going to be a little bit shorter, but it's still going to be really one that's going to be impactful for you.
Speaker 1:And then, after next week, we're going to I'm looking at the date it's going to be November 4th that we're going to take on episode three. It's going to be November 4th that we're going to take on Episode 3. So just follow along, it'll be fine. But Episode 3, we're going to talk about the many roles of you juggling it and why that matters, of recognizing this, and we're going to unpack what your roles and the impact of your energy and your identity and your cup is when you're trying to juggle it all, and your identity and your cup is when you're trying to juggle it all. So just make sure you go ahead and tune in every Tuesday or check on us every Tuesday. If you're listening at a later date. Just go to the next episode and I want you to just look at it today.
Speaker 1:If this episode encouraged you, can you do me a favor and just share it with another caregiver, or tell another caregiver about it? Better yet, click that follow if you're not following on your favorite podcast app. Or send me a review, or hit a review because you know what, the more we bubble this up, the more it's going to help other caregivers, because none of us should have to walk this path alone. We learn from each other. That's why I love getting your send Kathy a text message. That helps as well, and just as a reminder, when you send me your text, I don't get your phone number. The program that is used from this podcast hosting site that I use scrambles the numbers and only gives me the last four digits, because the last four digits then help identify a potential of where you're located. So I get the last four digits and where your phone number is pinging from, and that just gives me an idea.
Speaker 1:I don't really care about that. All I care about is your message, and if you want me to know your name, just sign your name at the bottom. I'd love to hear from it and if there's any advice that we find from those text messages, I share those in the podcast episode. Okay, that's enough of me today, but I hope you enjoyed today's podcast episode and I hope you look at a small different self-care that you can do in this chaotic season or in this quiet season of caregiving that you're in, what can you do to continue to help your cup stay full? Take care, my friend, and we'll talk to you again next week. Bye for now.