Using Stories to Cope With Caregiving
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Caregiving is one of the most challenging things to do in life, whether you’re caring for an aging parent or a disabled loved one. It’s important for caregivers to take the time to take care of themselves, but that can be difficult when you’re caring for someone who needs round-the-clock care.
Sharing stories — both your own stories as a caregiver and stories from other caregivers — can help you learn how to cope with caregiving. In fact, listening to others’ stories can help you grieve, cope and thrive as a caregiver.
Finding Stories
Where can you find caregiver stories to help you cope with your own situation? That can be more difficult than you might think, as not everyone is comfortable telling their story. However, you can tap into plenty of resources to find these tales of hope.
The Whole Care Network is a web-based resource that shares caregiver stories in blog posts and also in the form of the podcast. This is a great place to find stories similar to your own and even tell your own story if you feel comfortable doing so. Other websites, like Caregiver.org, allow you to do the same — read the stories others have submitted and even submit your own.
Sites like Medium, the free blog publishing platform, can give you a voice. Platforms like Medium are often better for this than starting your own blog because they come with a built-in audience, so you can tell your story without the stress of marketing your content.
There are even videos and documentaries that might help you puzzle out the problems of your daily life as a caregiver. Do a little research and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how many resources you find to share your story online.
Telling Stories
Have you ever considered telling your own caregiver’s story?
Not everyone does. Sharing a story about your experiences as a caregiver is an emotional decision, but it is one that could help other individuals who are having problems with their own situations.
If you’re having trouble with one aspect of your life, writing about it can help you look at it from a new perspective. In addition to this, the story you share about your own struggles might help someone else who is going through the same thing.
You don’t have to write or publish a book for people to listen — just write your story and share it.
It’s All About Hope
Being a caregiver isn’t easy, even for the strongest person. The one thing everyone has to hold on to is hope, and hearing stories from others who are going through similar experiences can help make it easier to hold on to that sliver of hope. Hearing stories of someone else’s grief can also help you in navigating your own experiences.
Sharing stories is all about hope. That’s why sharing your own stories and reading the stories of others is so important — to foster hope for the future, hope for a better life and hope that you’ll be able to make it through your next day as a caregiver.
Authors Bio: Kayla Matthews is a lifestyle and productivity writer whose work has been featured on Lifehacker, The Next Web, MakeUseOf and Inc.com. You can read more posts from Kayla on her blog, Productivity Theory.
