What I’m thinking about
Preview: In this section, I’ll share a short note about what’s on my mind this week.
Welcome to the first issue of Our Parents, Ourselves.
I started to care for my mom, Carol, when I was 25. She was eventually diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease a few years after I first started to worry about her – and a few months after I began buying her groceries and paying her bills.
Since then, I’ve continued to care for my mom and started a business to support other people who care for their parents, too. I’ve also done a lot of reading, thinking, and talking about caregiving. Now, I’m publishing Our Parents, Ourselves to pull together what I’ve learned and share it with you.
I have a few goals for this newsletter, but the biggest one is to offer a different perspective on caregiving – one that better reflects the complexities of your family relationships and the realities of your caregiving roles. How?
I want to normalize caregiving as a part of family life. We all have two parents, and most of them will need more help as they get older – just like their parents did. (And just like we will.)
I want to expand what ‘counts’ as care. Caregiving includes a wide range of medical, financial, and emotional responsibilities, and in most families they’re taken on gradually by children and partners.
I want to create a new vocabulary for caregiving. Words that are more personal and practical than metaphorical or macabre can make uncomfortable topics like illness, injury, and old age more accessible to more people.
I hope that you’ll start to look forward to this newsletter’s arrival each week, and that the few minutes you spend reading it will help you feel more connected to the millions of other people in the United States who care for an older family member.
That’s it for now. I’d love to hear from you with stories, ideas, or feedback any time. You can simply reply to this email, or send me a new one at libby@quiltcanhelp.com.
Talk soon,
Libby
Lydia and her Mother at Tea by Mary Cassatt, 1800 (Cleveland Museum of Art)
What I’m reading this week
Preview: In this section, I’ll share links to ten of the best articles I’ve read this week.
Shravan Kumar Carrying His Parents in Baskets to Places of Pilgrimage by Bhagawati Devi, 1975 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
One Good Resource
Preview: In this section, I’ll share a good resource that I think you should use.
Tomorrow Health is a new source for medical equipment and supplies, created for people who care for a family member at home.
I really like how its simple website lets you connect your insurance plan (e.g. Medicare) directly so that you can see how much money your insurance will contribute toward the cost of each item while you shop. After you make a purchase, Tomorrow Health can also help you navigate the reimbursement process.
The website launched about a week ago, so there are still a few limitations. The biggest one is that Tomorrow Health only sells about 500 products across eight basic categories including mobility aids, respiratory supplies, and catheters – a smaller starting selection than you’ll find through other online retailers.
What do you think? I’m curious to know if this sounds useful to you, too.
One Good Quote
Preview: In this section, I’ll share a good quote that has stuck with me.
So now, at the center of my heart there is a fantasy, and a mystery. The fantasy is small, and silly: a shopping trip, perhaps a pair of shoes, a walk, a talk, lunch in a good restaurant, which my mother assumes is the kind of place I eat at all the time. I pick up the check. We take a cab to the train. She reminds me of somebody’s birthday. I invite her and my father to dinner.
The mystery is whether the fantasy has within it a nugget of fact. Would I really have wanted her to take care of the wedding arrangements, or come and stay for a week after the children were born? Would we have talked on the telephone about this and that? Would she have saved my clippings in a scrapbook?
Or would she have meddled in my affairs, volunteering opinions I didn’t want to hear about things that were none of her business, criticizing my clothes and my children? Worse still, would we have been strangers with nothing to say to each other? Is all the good I remember about us simply wishful thinking? Is all the bad self-protection?
“Absence Makes the Heart Grow Curious” by Anna Quindlen, 1986 (Chicago Tribune)
One Good Book
Preview: In this section, I’ll share a good book that has an original perspective on caregiving.
“Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” by Roz Chast
This unusual graphic novel was one of the first books I bought after my mom being sick started to feel more like a fact than a worry. I still remember how its bright purple cover – and New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast’s squiggly illustration style – stood out among the pastel color schemes and floral motifs on the Amazon search results page for “books about aging parents.” I’m grateful for the many laughs it brought me during a time when laughs were hard to come by.
One Good Ad
Preview: In this section, I’ll share an ad for a good thing that I think you should know about. This issue includes a ‘house ad’ for my own business, but I’d love to share your business, product, or service with the people who read this newsletter. Reply to this email to get in touch.
Are you worried about your parents? I want to help. Through my business, Quilt, I offer a new kind of online support for people who care for their aging parents that includes phone or video check-ins & unlimited support over email.
Searching for My Parents by Huang Xiangjian, 1656 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
One More Thing
Preview: I’ll share one more good thing – always interesting, but not always related.
I’ve followed the Instagram account @mothersbefore for several years, and I’m always delighted and intrigued by the little stories in its captions. It recently became a book of essays, titled (What else?) “Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers As We Never Saw Them.” I think it would make a really lovely belated Mother’s Day gift for a friend or family member – or for you.