“How’s your mom doing?”
When my mom was sick, I heard that question all the time.
At church...
At the grocery store...
From old (and new) friends and familiar faces.
By then she rarely left the house except for doctor appointments and cancer treatments, so I was usually the one people saw.
My answer was almost always some iteration of the same thing:
“Fine.”
Or…
“We’re doing alright.”
Looking back, I think about the answer I gave as much as the question nobody asked.
“We’re doing alright” wasn’t a lie.
We were getting through the days.
But underneath it, I was carrying fear, grief, and exhaustion.
And none of that fit into a three-word reply in a grocery store aisle.
The easiest true answer
Most caregivers have their own version of that answer:
“I’m tired.”
“Just stressed.”
“It’s been a lot.”
Those answers are true, and that’s what makes them so useful.
They’re acceptable almost anywhere.
They don’t require explanation, and they let the conversation move on.
They’re also usually incomplete, and not because anyone is hiding something.
When several feelings arrive at once, they tend to register from the inside as one general heaviness.
The feeling you end up naming is the one that’s easiest to say.
Sometimes it’s the only one you can find, even when you’re the only one asking.
Think about a daughter on the afternoon she moves her mother into memory care.
She might feel relief that her mom will be safe at night.
And guilt about that relief.
Grief for the end of her mother’s life at home.
Anger at a brother who said he’d show up, but didn’t.
Then a rush of love when her mother reaches for her hand in an unfamiliar room.
That evening, if someone asks how she’s doing, “tired” will probably be the word that comes out.
And it’s true.
But it’s also the smallest part of her day.
More than one note
I spent years playing piano/keyboards, and something about chords comes to mind here.
Play a chord, and most people hear a single sound.
It has a character.
It might sound bright, tense, or unsettled.
But that sound is several notes played together, and you usually only hear them separately when you deliberately listen for them.
“Tired” often works like the name of the chord.
It describes the overall sound accurately.
But it doesn’t tell you which notes are in it.
And that matters for a practical reason.
What rest can reach
Tiredness is depletion, and depletion has a familiar remedy: sleep, a day off, someone covering for a weekend.
When everything you’re feeling gets filed under ‘tired,’ rest can become the first solution everyone reaches for, including you.
Rest helps with exhaustion.
But, it doesn’t do much for grief over a father who is still here, resentment toward a sibling who calls from three states away with opinions, or fear about a decision you made last month.
Those can still be waiting when you come back from the weekend.
It’s easy to conclude the break didn’t work, or that you’re somehow failing at taking care of yourself.
Often the break worked fine.
It just reached the only part it was able to reach.
Listening a little closer
You don’t need to take inventory of every emotion you have.
Most caregivers don’t have time for that, and the circumstances producing these feelings may not change, regardless of what you call them.
But the next time “tired” is your answer, to someone else or to yourself, it might be worth asking one follow-up question:
If I got a full week of real rest, would this feel different?
If the honest answer is yes, tired may be most of it, and rest is worth protecting.
If the answer is “only partly,” something else is likely in the mix.
See if you can name one more piece of it.
Not all of it.
Just one note.
Then decide what that piece needs.
Some feelings mainly need to be understood, so you stop treating them as evidence that you're handling things poorly.
While others need to be heard by someone.
The friend who asks how your mom is doing might be the right person to hear, “Honestly, I’m tired. I’m also scared about what comes next.”
Or they might not be.
That’s your call to make.
Naming a feeling more clearly won’t always change the situation behind it.
But it can change what you ask for, and who you ask.
With you,
Bryce
P.S. If you’re in the middle of trying to hold all of this together and it’s getting hard to see clearly, that’s what I use Care Strategy Sessions for.
We take everything you’re carrying and lay it out so you can see what actually needs your attention and what can wait.
You can book one 👉🏾 HERE
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