EP 18 How to Protect Your Quality of Life While Caregiving
Planning for caregiving is the best gift to yourself and to your loved ones.
At 72, Deborah Greenhut is an international speaker, author, educator and an advocate for Caregivers around the world.
So often we fall into the role of caregiver, unprepared and quickly exhausted by the 24/7 responsibility and the multiple roles of nurse, accountant, attorney, health advisor, financial planner, housekeeper, etc.
Deborah discusses the complex balancing act of caregiving while maintaining personal well-being, and she shares invaluable advice for caregivers, stressing the need for setting boundaries, seeking resources, and building a support network to avoid burnout.
“It’s pointless to tell a caregiver they need to take a bubble bath or take a walk, when there is no one else there to stay with the loved one while they do that.”
Deborah shares her personal strategies for ensuring she doesn’t become a burden to her own children as she ages and highlights the enduring power of community support and self-education.
“We need to start doing more intentional, not random, acts of kindness!”
Get ready to be inspired by Deborah’s wisdom on proactive aging, the idea of "sharegiving," and how to embrace new opportunities later in life without being hindered by ageist beliefs.
Order a copy of The Rational Caregiver here and a copy of The Horder’s Wife here.
Please visit Deborah’s website to find more resources, including the Survival Guide for Family Caregivers: https://www.deborahgreenhut.com.
Find a Meetup near you or create a community using the Meetup platform: https://www.meetup.com/
Deborah loves to connect and share her experiences and advice. Feel free to reach out to her through her websites or on social media. While she’s a solo operator and currently on a speaking tour, she promises to respond as soon as she can.
Learn more about LifeBio here, and visit Ionacare, the platform for family caregivers here.
Here’s a link to Denise M. Brown’s website for caregiving mentors: https://www.careyearsacademy.com.
If you found inspiration from this conversation, we’d love to hear your thoughts, so be sure to hop on over to Don’t Be Caged By Your Age on LinkedIn or Instagram. Or leave a message on the website here.
Listeners, please remember – you have so much to give – don’t let those internalized ageist beliefs prevent you from pursuing new dreams and opportunities – no matter your age.
Tune in and let's crush ageism together!
Waving from Boston – cheers!
Ande ♥
CONNECT with me online - I'd love to learn how you're shattering ageism!
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Deborah S Greenhut (Deborah)
Author/Speaker/Educator
International Speaker, Author, Educator and three-time family caregiver, Deborah S. Greenhut, PhD is passionate about sharing her experiences to help other family caregivers set boundaries for effective family caregiving. Deborah's recently published book, "The Rational Caregiver," an Amazon Best Seller and Top New Release, shares her framework for approaching caregiving with rational awareness, acceptance, and responsibility to survive caregiving.
A beauty pageant winner at age 3, Deborah has interviewed caregivers in North America and Thailand, formulating her solutions for caregiver burden based on her own experience and the stories of other caregivers. Her professional life has alternated between university teaching and corporate training and keynote speaking for more than 50 years.
During her consulting and training career, she developed and delivered communication, problem-solving, and TQM facilitations skills to corporations, government services, and academic organizations throughout North America and in Western Europe in addition to fostering literacy improvement in K-12 schools.
Dr. Greenhut graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. from Middlebury College and holds a PhD from Rutgers University. A prize-winning poet, she authored an award-winning novel, The Hoarder’s Wife, published by Woodhall Press in 2022, a personal look at the devastating consequences of untreated mental health issues within a family. Deborah’s first book was a study of British poetry about women in the era of Queen Elizabeth. Dr. Greenhut shares he… Read More
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