This is the Whole Care Network. Music Helping you tell your story one podcast at a time. Content presented in the following podcast is for information purposes only. Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and guest and may not represent the views and opinions of the Whole Care Network. Always consult with your physician for any medical advice and always consult with your attorney for any legal advice. And thank you for listening to the Whole Care Network. Music Think about the twilight zone of handing your teenagers the car keys while at the same time trying to wrestle them away from your aging parents who should not drive. You're sandwiched in the middle of that time of someone gaining independence and those losing independence and you're navigating it all. In this episode I'm talking with my dear friend, Christy Byrne Yates. She's a licensed educational psychologist, author of Building a Legacy of Love, Thriving in the Sandwich Generation. So today we're sharing five tips. Welcome. We are Sue Ryan and Nancy Treister. This podcast brings our years of experience in a variety of family caregiving roles to prepare you to navigate your caregiving journey. We're sharing our personal experiences, not medical advice. And because it's our passion to support you on your journey, we believe no topic is on limits. Let's get started. Music Christy, introduced to us what the sandwich generations mean. Sure. So typically the sandwich generation has meant someone raising children under the age of 18 in their home, so typical family, but they're also then now caring for aging parents. And it was a term that was coined back in 1981 by a social worker who found this in her practice. But really the sandwich generation is anyone who's kind of squeezed between different constituencies that they're caring for. So if you think about a sandwich shop, right, a delicatessen, there are a multitude of varieties. And that's kind of what we see in the sandwich generation too. It could be people who are at home raising grandchildren. Maybe their young adults got married and moved back home. It could be multi-generational living. There are a lot of different combinations of how we might feel sandwiched. But the key point is being squeezed between people. We, the person in the middle, are trying to support, serve, however we're showing up for them. You know, this is something that's growing in our communities. It's really becoming more and more of a thing. And the issues that the people are facing are somewhat different with the different kinds of dynamics. And it's important that we understand that there are a variety of them and they're facing them. And one of the fastest growing ones, because our fastest growing demographic is people 85 and older, that has created an additional level of strain on that sandwich because you, you know, historically, somebody's looked at, okay, we're taking care of ourselves and we're taking care of our children. And then now there's kind of more pressure with potentially their family, their parents in the family, and now the grandparents. So you're going up multiple generations. And so when we look at it, we're talking about being squeezed or sandwiched in the middle of a variety of different ones. So let's go ahead now and talk about, if you see yourself in there, you're wondering if you're there. We've come up with five tips. And the first one is talking about choosing. Talk a little bit more about what you mean by that. Sure. I, you know, I really tried to pull a framework together. So I, I use the acronym CARES. And so C is choose. And what do I mean by that? A lot of times I hear people say, well, I didn't choose this. It just kind of, you know, I just, I had no choice. I had to do this, but we always have a choice. Even not making a choice is a choice. Right. So, you know, we can say, oh, I have no, I don't know what to do. And then boom, we're, we're swept along and we're doing a whole lot of things. I really think what makes a difference in a caregiver's journey is to really take time to, and not, not a lot of time. I'm not talking days, right? But a little soul searching and really commit, really choose. I am now a caregiver for this, these people or this person. And when you can do that, then you can start setting up some strategies. You can set up some boundaries. You can figure out what you're willing to do. And it's, there's also a little bit of value, values work you need to look at. Like what's my North Star so that when I feel really overwhelmed, what can I come back to and say, this is what I need in my life right now to keep me on track. You know, for me, it was, I saw myself as a mother first, not that I wasn't going to do everything I could for my parents. I did. But I always knew I wanted to make sure my kids were growing up in a way that they felt seen, heard and valued and involved. And so that was an important North Star for me. So I think it's just, it's just yet taking time to really, you know, commit and consciously choose it. You know, Susan, we, you and I both know a lot of people don't even identify themselves as caregivers. And so when we don't even do that, we can't, we don't have any agency. So I think it's important to have agency. That does lead into probably the number one reason why people wouldn't do it, which, which is address. And you talk about addressing the elephants in the room. Yeah, absolutely. I do feel like we have to have conversations early and often. And I, so addressing either, you know, before you have to make this decision to be a caregiver. And I want to also say in that choice of being a caregiver, if you have siblings, those are conversations you need to have. And that gets into that addressing thing. You have to address those elephants in the room, but it's things like financial status, understanding where are your parents financially? A lot of families don't talk about money. It's important to talk about money. It's important to talk about medical issues. It's important to talk about sibling relationships if you have them. So those are all the elephants that I think are all dancing in our room. Those sound like pretty, pretty good elephants. So let's move on to the third tip, which you talk about recharging and recharging is, is kind of is related very closely tied to self care. And this is so especially important in the different types of sandwich generations, because self care is going to look different. What recharging is means different things to different people, but the magnitude of the importance of it increases when we're in roles of caregiving. So walk us through what recharging means for you. Sure. I mean, I definitely have always leaned into self care, right? In my book, I have a chapter called Ruthless Self Care and I called it that because I think about again, as a parent, if something happens to your child, we typically are going to do everything we'll move heaven and earth to make sure that what they need, they get and we help them, right? We're going to do what we have to do. And that's where our tiger mama comes out or whatever it might be. But we don't always do that for ourselves, right? And we run our battery all the way down. And then what happens? Well, if we're not fully charged or at least optimal charging capacity, right? Energy capacity, then our children are left with, you know, a parent that's subpar and our parent or person we're caring for is left with somebody who doesn't have the energy. And we don't make great decisions when we are on empty. We just don't make great decisions that way. So we want to make sure that we are keeping ourselves charged up. But it's also a mindset of I do matter. I do count and me taking time away from my children or my parent is going to serve them. It's not taking away from them. It's serving them. I what I want to say to everyone to sandwich generation folks is your kids are as worried about you as they are about their grandparents. They may not have a great relationship with a grandparent may not know you may be long distance caregiver, but they're very worried about you. And even if they don't say it, they notice it. So it is important to talk about it and to confront it. Tip four is enlisted. You're not meant to journey alone. And there are times, especially when you're in the sandwich generation and and there are times I've talked with people who've got their own current and future needs. They're supporting somewhat their parents, somewhat their grandparents. They've got children they're dealing with. Some of them have adult children and they're also providing some levels of support now for grandchildren. So there are a lot of different demands on them. And this is a time where we're definitely not meant to journey alone. And so you've got to build a team to support you. We talked about we created a podcast episode 40 about building your own personal care support network. However, when you're in the sandwich generation, there are some additional dynamics of what that needs to look like. What are some of the specifics of that for people to be able to focus on when they're members of that sandwich, whatever their whatever their version of the sandwich generation is. So I do feel like one of the first things to understand is we used to live in villages and all of this was something that was community, you know, is communal support. And we've kind of moved away from that. But one of the things we have to kind of relearn how to do sometimes is how to ask for help. And I want you to imagine any time somebody's asked you to help them. And you did. How did you feel? I mean, for me, I felt good. I didn't feel like I was I felt good. I didn't feel like a burden. If I couldn't do it, I said no. But that feeling I got, I need to realize it's okay for me to give that feeling to somebody else by saying, can you help me with this and be specific about what you need? Because it is important. People do want to help you. The other thing that I would say too is with your children is lean into when I say enlist, you know, you're going to have certain people on your list already. It's going to be any family members that are around you. It could be neighbors. It could be, you know, if you've got children involved in different activities, you might want to get on some parent list so that any carpooling you can on a day when you maybe have an emergency and can't take your child to soccer, someone else can take them and pick them up. And, you know, those are kinds of ways that people can help out. But it's also if your child is enrolled in school, you know, talk to the school, talk to your child's teacher. Or their team or find out if there's a counselor available because there are. I know I worked in schools and it's important to let schools know what's going on because what happens at home comes to school with kids. So when they're stressed out because you're stressed out, that's going to show up at school. So letting the staff know, here's what's going on. My dad, I had this happen a lot of times where a parent would say, my dad just moved in with us and he's got stage four colon cancer and we're all frantic. Well, okay, that tells me why this child is a little upset during the day and maybe tired and different things. And so what strategies can the school do to support? And the school will. They want to help your student. So lean into those kinds of things. What I've learned with the sandwich generations is we're not hiring a team for one part of it. We may have three or four different teams. For example, we've got the team for when we need support. We've got the team for when our care receiver needs support and we've got the team for when our children need support and perhaps there's the grandparents. So when we're enlisting support, we're identifying people who have capacity. It's putting together some pretty significant lists when you are sandwiched in the middle because you've got a variety of different needs and a variety of different people who would be providing the support for them. Let's get then, Christy, into this last tip, tip five, which is surrender. And that's coming to terms with the fact that, you know, hello. We're not in charge of everything and things are continuously changing and it's just awful, isn't it? If we could just be in control, if everybody could just do it my way, it would be so much easier. But that doesn't work, does it? No, it doesn't. But it has a specific dynamic in the sandwich generation that's different when it's just us. So specifically to the sandwich generations, what does surrender mean? Well, for me, I add this in because I think when we are aware that we have to sort of surrender control, we give ourselves so much more grace because we can't control everything. And we want to. We want to plan that this is going to happen and this is going to happen. And I've got everything in place and I've done all this work to make sure that this team member is helping my parent here and this person's helping my child here and I'm going to work over here. And then something happens, right? It could be your child gets sick and you've got to stay home with them. And then there you go. All those plans went out the window. But it's surrendering that we can't control all the things that are going to happen. I'll give you a really clear example of a situation that happened with me. The year my son was a senior in high school, just before his graduation, my father had fallen and broken his hip. And he was in a rehab facility. And on Friday night, there was he was graduating on a Saturday, but on Friday night, there was a baccalaureate mass and we were going to take him to that. And I had tons of family coming in for this. I knew my parents couldn't attend the graduation, but I had lots of other people coming and I got a call from the nursing home saying, well, Christy, we're releasing your dad today at four o'clock. I am not prepared. I thought he was going to be there another week. And I was just, I thought, I don't know what to do. I've got all these people coming in. I've got things to do. I don't have a place for him. I don't know what's going to happen. Why can't they keep him longer? Well, the insurance just told us today he's got to go. I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't know. So see what I'm saying. I had to surrender that I could not control this. I was blessed in that I was able to privately pay for him for another four days. We do need plan B. We need plan C. And then we also need to have the grace to say, okay, wow, you know, I am dropping back and I'm punting this because I don't even know what to do here, you know. So, and realize, because we can get very upset about not having it work our way. But we, but that takes away from us. So it's important to realize that up front. And have a lot of grace. And what I've learned in my experiences from the sandwich generation experiences is that when we teach everyone else in our family about that grace so that you don't feel guilty. It's, you know, you want to give everything to your child. You want everything to be perfect for them. You want everything to be perfect for your parents. And you also want your own life. And so you want to have everything that could possibly be great for everyone. And yet it's, it's a struggle because like you said, when something completely comes out of the blue, when we're in that sandwich generation and we set the expectations, we have the conversations, we say, these things are going to happen. How do we want to address it when they do? How do we want to feel about it when they do when something comes up and there's a major disappointment or there's a major disruption? You know, let's talk about it. And if we're struggling with it, you know, let's make sure first of all, when we've got, you know, we've got our plan that we've, we have been enlisting other people and we've got our support group. So we've got those pieces in there, but there is still you want to be fully present to your parent, you want to be fully present to your child. And you know, and you can't do that. And you feel like, okay, I'm letting someone down. So a lot of the challenge with the sandwich generation is you feel like you're continuously letting someone down unless you, you navigate with them with great clarity. You know, let's talk about it. Yeah. And what I want to add in there is, you know, the example I gave you about the nursing home calling me and releasing him, my dad, I had to go back to that very first point of choose. And in that, I knew my North Star was I, I knew in that at that time, you know, my dad's going to be okay if he stays for more days. But my son will only graduate high school one time. I need to be there for that. That's important. Christy, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so very much. Please do me a favor. Tell me how our listeners can find you. Sure. The best way to find me is on my website and it's Christy Yates.com and that's Christy C H R I S T Y Y A T ES and I say I spell my name out because there are a million ways to spell Christy but it's Christy Yates.com. And there you can find my book. You can find the offers that I have for coaching and I do a lot of work with employee assistance program or employee resource groups. And then I also I'm starting to do more work with assisted living and providing some, some in-house support groups there. So online support groups. So I have a lot of different offers. So I would love to hear from you and yeah. Well, thank you very much. And let's summarize. You shared five tips. Choose. Address. Recharge. Enlist. And surrender. And those are great ways to work through this temporary season in our lives where we are sandwiched in the middle. Taking care of ourselves, our aging parents and potentially grandparents and our growing children and sometimes grandchildren. If you have tips in addition to these tips, we'd love to hear about them. Please go to our Facebook page or our Instagram page. Those links are in the show notes and we're going to put all the information that we shared today in the show notes and we'll put your tips out there also for other people to see. And as you can tell, this is one of the more comprehensive parts of our caregiving journey. However, what we want everyone to know is we're all on this journey together. Thank you.
