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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
Caregiver Reflection: What’s Changed In Your Cup? A Season 1 Wrap-Up
This final episode of Season 1 is your guided reflection and celebration — a moment to pause, breathe, and honor how far you’ve come on your caregiving journey.
Together, we revisit the heart of this season and explore what has shifted inside your cup — your energy, your mindset, your confidence, your emotional awareness, and your ability to care for yourself while caring for someone you love.
Here’s what we reflect on:
💛 What you carry and who you’ve become (Episode 1)
💛 Your energy story — what drains you and what restores you (Episode 2)
💛 Your emotional red flags and what they’re trying to tell you (Episode 3)
💛 How to catch, cancel, and correct negative thoughts (Episode 4)
💛 Why forgetfulness is overload, not failure (Episode 5)
💛 How to lighten “no choice” seasons (Episode 6)
💛 How guilt and shame lose power when named (Episode 7)
💛 How to know what you need — and how to ask for it (Episode 8)
This episode gives you space to ask yourself meaningful questions:
✨ What changed in my cup this season?
✨ Where did I grow?
✨ What story am I ready to release?
✨ What does my cup need next?
Whether you journal, think during a walk, reflect in the car, or savor a quiet moment before bed, this wrap-up invites you to pause and celebrate the progress you may not even realize you’ve made.
Because you’re not the same caregiver you were eight episodes ago.
You’re stronger.
You’re wiser.
You’re more aware of your needs and your worth.
And you deserve to move into the next season of caregiving feeling supported, grounded, and full of hope.
We’ll take a short break — then I’ll see you in 2026 for Season 2: Caregiving Your Way — all about routines, rhythms, and boundaries that fit your life, your energy, and your heart.
Take a deep breath, friend.
Look at how far you’ve come.
And remember — your cup deserves to stay full too. 💛☕
Well, hello, my friend. It's Kathy, and I can't believe we're already here. Season one of the Caregiver Cup podcast is officially wrapping up with this episode. And this season, it was all about you, your cup, your needs, your identity, and your energy. This final episode isn't about doing more. It's about pausing long enough to notice what's shifted in you, what's changed you in your cup, and what you're proud of the most, even if it's small. So let me throw some questions at you. What have you learned about yourself in this season? There were nine episodes. What's one thing you did that supported your well-being after you listened to an episode? Where do you feel stronger? Where do you feel clearer or more aware than you did in the beginning of the episodes when we first started? Let's take a breath together and look back, look inward, and look forward. Let's highlight and quickly review the episodes again this season. Episode one, I introduce what's in your cup. You explored what your what you carry, your roles, your responsibilities, your emotion, and you notice, or at least started noticing, who you are underneath the weight of caregiving. We talked about our identity. Then episode two, your energy story. You learn to track what drained you and what restores you, and you began to see your energy as a rhythm, not a flaw, not a failure, but a story your body is telling you. I got so many text messages and email responses about this saying, yeah, I finally recognize where my energy was being drained. I might not be able to fix it, but I understand sometimes my fatigue. Episode three, we talked about emotional overwhelm and coping with it. You identified your emotional red flags and why they matter, and you learn that overwhelm isn't a weakness, it's a calling, it's a signal calling for care when the emotions are high, when you know what what day or what task is an emotional red flag, you can then learn to prepare for it or even fix it. Then in episode four, we talked about those three C's, the negative thoughts with those three C's. Remember, you you practice catching, canceling, or correcting your thoughts and discovered how powerful your mind can be in protecting your thoughts, and really trying to work through those. And if you if you kind of as we're going through them, you're like, Oh, I don't remember that, you can always go back. Episode five of season one, we talked about caregiver forgetfulness. You realize your brain isn't failing, it's just overloaded. I talked about forgetting the keys all the time when I was taking care of my mom. And instead of blaming yourself, you learn to extend compassion to your tired, hardworking mind. Remember, that might have been your red flag. Season six, we talked about no-choice seasons. We explored what it feels like when caregiving becomes survival mode and how to make the heavy seasons lighter, more supported, and more sustainable. Because sometimes we can't change those chaotic seasons or those heavy seasons. We have to just go into survival mode, but how can we show up better in those survival modes? And then just a couple weeks ago, episode seven, we talked about guilt and shame. You learn that your worth is never measured by perfection. You began releasing the stories that tell you you're not enough and replace them with truth and grace. Stop feeling the guilt, stop feeling the shame for taking a little bit of time for yourself or even thinking thoughts and being, you know, angry and resentful. Well, those are red flags as well, or those are what make you human. We talked a lot about that. And just last week, episode eight, what you need and how to ask for it. You clarified your that your real human needs are they can be physical, they can be emotional, they can be mental, or they can be soul needs. And we talked about practicing the courageous act of asking for support. Oh my gosh, thank you for for those of you stepping up and saying, Yeah, I'm going to ask for support, even a prayer, or somebody asks you how you're doing, you can say, I'm not doing as good as I should be. So can you just pray for me? Or accepting somebody's offer and saying, Yeah, I could use, you know, a chat next week. Give me a call. So now let's shift the spotlight to you and your wins, your growth, and your small steps. Let me ask you this in our final episode of episode one. What have you learned about what's in your cup? What have you learned? Or what are you continuing to learn? I hope you think about this. What boundaries have you started setting? Even if you're not completely done with them or you're testing them, what are you doing? Celebrate those. What did you create? Even five minutes of space for yourself if you've created that. Maybe it's a nighttime routine. You know, one of my clients, oh, a couple years ago, Lisa, had said she realized she needed to bring back her nighttime routine, which meant that she would go ahead and shut everything down at 9:30 so that she could go ahead and read her book, which brought her just some stress relief in her enjoyment of reading. Another question is, what guilt have you released or softened? When you're feeling guilt, are you holding your hand on your chest and granting yourself grace? Another question is, what needs do you finally need name out loud? I need a day off. I need you know, to eat a good meal. What are your needs? Finally say them out loud. I need somebody to help me give mom a bath because I'm my back is hurting so bad. Whatever it is, you address the need. Now look at your options. What moment made you say, I'm proud of myself? I hope you are. Take some time and use that as a journaling prompt or looking in the mirror and saying, I'm proud of myself because your growth a season might not look loud or dramatic. It might look like one breath, one pause, one boundary, one need named, one cup refilling moment. Celebration matters because caregivers rarely stop long enough to see how strong they've been. Not very many people will come up to you and tell you you're doing a great job. So you need to celebrate those. They're more interested in asking about your loved one. And I know they mean well. So if you're not getting that, celebrate your wins. Now let's talk about what happens next, the small sustaining steps you can keep taking after this episode and after listening to the entire season one. Today, before we wrap up and this entire season, I want to take a moment to speak directly to your heart because here's the truth, friend. Everything we've talked about in season one comes back to one thing: your cup, and how your cup matters every single day in every season, in every messy, beautiful, exhausting, sacred part of caregiving. And I want you to take this with you as as you move forward. Your cup matters most than more in most and more than you realize. What I'm trying to get at is your cup and sustaining it and keeping it, filling it and keeping it full matters the most. Refill moments count, even the tiny ones. So finding those refill moments, you're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to change your rhythm, you're allowed to help and ask for help. You're you or you don't have to do any of this perfectly, and you deserve support just as much as you give it. Let's pause right now because so often caregivers believe the opposite. We tell ourselves we have to push through. We tell ourselves we'll rest later. We tell ourselves ourselves everyone else comes first. But what is what if moving into the next season of caregiving didn't require a huge transformation? What if it simply required one choice, just one? So as you think about what's next for you, I want you, I want to offer you a few gentle options. Choose one morning practice. Maybe it's a breath as you're putting your feet on the floor. Maybe it's a stretch as you get done brushing your teeth. Maybe it's a quiet moment in the morning before you start your day. Maybe it's a prayer, whatever it would be. I want you to choose one boundary, something small that protects your energy. What would that be? Choose one system. Maybe it's a pillbox, maybe it's a checklist, maybe it's a delivery of groceries, anything that makes life easier for you. Choose one person to ask for support, even if it's just a check-in text. It could be somebody that's already offered help to you, and you go back to them and I said and saying, Yeah, you said you if I needed anything, I'm I'm asking for it now, or I'm I'm checking back in and saying, Yeah, this is what I need. If by chance you run to the store, I'm looking for this. Choose one tiny pocket of joy this week, something just for you. Maybe it's listening to your favorite song, maybe it's reading a couple pages of your book, maybe it's taking a break after you went ahead and ran your errands. You stop at a coffee shop and you just sit down by yourself. But listen closely. Your worth will not shift. Your worth will not shift, your strength will not disappear. It won't. Your strength will not disappear. Your humanity will never be lost. You are still you, even on those hard days, especially on those hard days, when you are not proud of maybe some things that you're thinking or doing. You are still you. As we prepare to close out season one, I want to guide you into one of my favorite practices: a moment to reflect, pause and notice what's changed in your cup. Before a moment to breathe, a moment to reflect, a moment to notice what shifted in your own in you over the past weeks, even if the shifts were small, quiet, or unexpected. You've done a lot of inner work this season. You've listened to your body, you've listened to your emotions, your energy, and your needs. And whether you scribe in your journal or you've just nodded along in the car, your heart took it in more than you realize. So let's gently reflect together. And I'm gonna give you these prompts again in a little bit different of a way. And I want you to think about could I go ahead and put these in a journal? And you could come back to this episode and just come to this this time in this episode, or you could go ahead and pause this right now, knowing that I'm gonna come back and reflect on this later. But what changed in my cup this season? Let me give you a few more prompts. Maybe you've become more aware of what drains you. Maybe you've started noticing your red flags, maybe you found small ways to refill your cup. Remember, 1% is good. It's not bad. It's 1%. This question helps you see the quiet victories you've overcome. So take that and jot it down in your journal. Where did I grow? Growth isn't about always loud. I think caregiving, we have grown so much as caregivers, especially from an awareness perspective. It might look like setting one boundary. It might be asking for help. It might be I've I've now learned how to be a better advocate by writing down my questions. And so it takes a lot of the pressure off of thinking on my feet. I've learned to ask for help in my own way. Maybe I'm not good at asking for help through a phone call. So I've created a text chain of people. Maybe it's catching a negative thought of mine and shifted it, or simply admitting you're tired. And you can do that. Growth is any moment you choose yourself, even a little. What another prompt is what lessons do I want to carry forward? What am I going to continue to do? And I, you know what? Sometimes what I do is I take a sticky note and put it on my mirror so that I can do it, or a sticky note somewhere that I'm going to see it every day. And I'm going to continue to work on something, whatever it would be. Maybe it's that guilt that doesn't define you. And you're going to say, you're going to put something about, maybe you're going to draw a circle with a line through it and put guilt in the word there so that you stop feeling guilty. Or that asking for um for your needs is brave. Every time you ask for help, you put a dash or a slash on that post-it note. Or that your body whispers before it screams, and you start noticing those whispers, and you start paying attention to those so that you don't start, your body doesn't start screaming. Whatever resonates, that's a lesson your future self will thank you for and thank you for holding on to. Another prompt is what story am I ready to release? Maybe it's a story that you must do everything. And you need to stop telling yourself this lie or this disbelief, or that asking for help makes you a burden. I still am working on that. And I'm struggling right now, thinking, well, I oh, all these people that helped me, a Christmas present this year. And I'm like, is that really going to release my guilt? Maybe it's just a Christmas card that I can fill out to say, you know, I want to thank you again for all your help this holiday season and all of this past year. And that's better than a monetary gift, since we're I'm financially burdened right now. Or that you have to, another one is, or you have to be perfect to be a good caregiver. You know what? Nobody is perfect. You're never ever going to be perfect. You're going to hold yourself to this idealistic disbelief that you're never going to be able to be the perfect caregiver, no matter how hard you try. And when things aren't perfect, maybe you make something humorous out of it. If you, you know, for me, I've I forgot those darn keys, I don't know how many times, or, you know, I burnt something and wasn't paying attention because I wanted to get the laundry done and the pillbox filled and so on. And I forgot that I had chicken in the oven, you know. So letting go of those old stories frees up space in your cup and opens up your soul a little bit more. And then I want you to think of a what does my cup need next? What do I need next? And I know soon everybody will be ready to set New Year's resolutions. And maybe this is the one that you lean towards to say, you know, I'm going to work on my cup this year. And I'm going to work on what my cup needs. Maybe I need more rest. Maybe I need more structure. Maybe I need another boundary. Maybe I need more joy. Maybe I need more nutrition. Maybe I need more support. Maybe I need one day off. Whatever it would be. This question connects you to the next right step. Not the perfect step, just the next one. And I know I said it before journaling isn't works for everybody. So remember, these prompts can be, you know, things that you say out loud, these prompts can be. Writing. And I'm going to make a promise to you today that in the email that will be sent out to you this week, that email will have these prompts in it. And so if you're listening now and thinking, oh my gosh, I got to go back and I got to remember these, you know what? I'm going to have these handy and dandy for you. So if you're an email reader, you can see them on paper. And then you can go ahead and utilize that email and look back at it on your phone, or if you're a printout kind of person, it's going to be there. Um, and so you maybe can just pick one and go for a walk, or you can pick one on your drive or whatever it would be. Refle is is is good. And when you go ahead and do that. So as we close this season, I want to honor you. Honor you for your courage that it takes to pause and reflect and see yourself with honesty and compassion. You've done that. You're doing that, and you're doing it beautifully. And I am so proud of you. And I'm here as your biggest cheerleader to keep going on and keep working on yourself. So let's wrap up season one with gratitude. Let's be grateful for your growth, for your resilience, and the way you continue to show up with your heart. So I want to go ahead and just wish you the best after season one. If you're listening to this during real time, I want to wish you a happy holidays. I know holidays aren't always the greatest time for caregivers, but um, if you are a holiday person and and you celebrate, I hope it's a beautiful holiday season with your loved one and you make it a memorable season in the best way you possibly can. If it's a hard season for you, I'm sending you a hug. Caregiving isn't a great place to be when you are trying to go ahead and feel the holiday spirit because some of the traditions are not going to be things you can celebrate. But my little wish for you is that you find little things, start little uh little traditions yourself. I remember um like during the pandemic and many years with Dennis not being able to go out with his immune system. We would go ahead and drive around and look at Christmas lights and turn Christmas music on for an hour in the evening, or we would watch a Christmas show, or we would play a game, that sort of thing. We started new holiday traditions that way because gathering together was hard. Who knows what the holiday will hold? It's a few weeks away, but um, I want to wish you the happiest of the holiday season. And guess what? We're going to be back in just a few weeks for season two of the caregiving podcast. Uh, and let me look and see what it is here once. I want to make sure you know care season two. I'll have a uh I call it a trailer coming out and the first week in January, so just a few weeks away. Um, and it's going to all be about caregiving your way. That's what season two is going to be about. We're going to focus on routines and boundaries and finding your flow and the flow that works best for you. So until we meet again in season two, just keep keep doing what you're doing and keep looking at your cup in different ways that you can go ahead and continue to keep your cup as full as you possibly can in the good and the bad seasons. Bye for now.