Grief, Meaning Making, and the Power of Community: Audio Version

Welcome to the Whole Caregiver Podcast, the podcast for all of you. We are your host, Urna and Megan. Hello and welcome to the Whole Caregiver. I am Megan Thomas Hepton and I am here with my wonderful co-host, Urna Alfred Leosis. Hello. Yeah and we are so excited today to have a conversation with a guest, Sarah Rubens. I am going to turn it over to Urna to introduce Sarah. Thank you, Megan. Before I introduce Sarah, I have to offer a big thank you to my friend Sheila Collins-Makel because she introduced me to Sarah. So first of all, Sarah Rubens is a clinical hypnotherapist and she is the founder of Treestar hypnosis where she helps clients with the subconscious mind to create meaningful change. She's a certified NLP master practitioner, grief coach and end of life doula with the background in supporting people through major life transitions. Her perspective on caregiving is deeply personal. Sarah served as the solo caregiver for her grandmother, an experience that shaped how she understands stress, responsibility, and the emotional complexity of caring for a loved one. Today, she brings both professional training and lived experience into conversations about caregiving, resilience, and inner resources. So I'm sure you all can tell why we're super excited to get into this conversation with Sarah. Welcome Sarah. Thank you. I'm very excited to be here. So let's start with you and where your journey started. Yeah. So my journey in caregiving started unexpectedly and abruptly as I think many caregivers do. I was in my early 20s. I think I was 24. Commeantly, I was working for AARP. I was there for quite a few years and that gave me a pretty good background or one up on caregiving compared to most people at 24. My grandfather had passed away. My father had passed away and it was just my grandma and my mom left. I got a phone call in the airport on my way to finish my end of life due to the training and my mom had unexpectedly passed away of an overdose. She had struggled with substance, abuse disorder, and unfortunately she had passed away. And my life went into a talisman. I was in DC. I lived in DC. My life was in DC and my grandma was now by herself in Buffalo, New York. So I quickly canceled my flight. I got my luggage back. Another big ass suitcase and went back to the airport and flew home all together to start sorting out what would be my mom's funeral and also what I was supposed to do with my 80 year old grandma. So I ended up being home for probably like, I don't know, must have been like six or seven weeks. And we decided the best move forward was to move my grandma to DC to be with me, which also required us to, you know, sort through her 3,800 square foot house that had been in our family for like 50 years. My gosh. Imagine how fun that was. I ended up, thankfully, I worked for the most incredible team where I met Sheila and they really showed up for me during that time and I have nothing but amazing things to say when you have a workplace that supports you and going through major loss and caregiving. And thankfully, AirPete does a wonderful job of that in my TV even more so. I had teammates who flew in to help me clean out my grandma's house. I had another teammate who flew down to drive the U Hall back with me because I was afraid to drive it by myself. I had other people show up to help move her into this assisted living facility I found. So I felt very, very supported and cared for and they were also able to be very flexible and work with me to make sure I was still getting paid, which as a young professional was very important. So I moved my grandma to DC. I think it was like in February, I think there was a snow storm in the morning we left with the U Hall and we started by putting her in assisted living, which I thought was, you know, it was going to make life easier. I thought I see both everybody here is laughing. Yeah. But more time driving from DC to Arlington every day to make sure she was getting her insulin and make sure the cockroaches in her room were taken care of and the things that were falling down. I know that that facility, God, I know that it's a very hard job and God bless our souls, but they did not like me because I was on the front of them every day. You were just doing what you're supposed to do. Yes. And my grandma was pretty unhappy there. So we ended up buying a condo across the street from where I was renting an apartment in downtown DC. That made life easier and harder in many ways. Everything was on me to take care of her, but we had, you know, it was really both. I look back on that time of my life. I ended up caring for for three years until she passed away. I look back on that as both like the most stressful and overwhelming thing I've ever been through. So I always say I got these like really beautiful bonus years with my grandma and one of the coolest things she ever said to me, she was 80 at this time. She said, you know, I've never lived by myself. This is the first time in my entire life that I've had my own place. And I thought that was so cool that you can be 80 years old and just like relish not doing your dishes. That's pretty amazing. It's like you never cease to have new experiences. Yes. And she loved it. She loved, I mean, I would go crazy because she was pretty housebound at this time, but she loved it. She's like, I do what I want. I stay at my pajamas until two in the afternoon. Like I watch whatever I want, whatever decibel I want. Sorry to all my neighbors. You know, it was a really cool experience. That was my rocky road into caregiving and kind of the journey I took with my grandma. You definitely went from zero to 60 in like five seconds. Yes. But a lot will be receiving and then to quickly figure out how to move forward. I know that your team, your workplace was definitely a big part in helping you move forward. Were there other folks in your life that also supported you throughout this time? Like what did that system of care look like for you as Sarah? Yeah, that's a great question. I could not have gotten through what I've gotten through my life without my community. And I'm in this unique position. I'm an only child. My whole family has passed away. So I remember when my grandma finally died, I was like, oh, weird. I'm in Northridge. It's just me now. I'm the only DNA in the world of my family line. But it's interesting as more people in my life died, like the stronger my community got. And I made an intentional choice to invest in that as well. So throughout care I had friends who, my neighbor, they've been my friends for years. One time my grandma fell and I could not get her up. And I really didn't want to call the ambulance. So I called my friend Gabe and he showed up and just picked her up. Like she was nothing. And I was like, oh my gosh, I've been trying to do that for an hour. That was incredible. And I also had ended up through that experience. I was part of like a metaphysical church community that was really helpful to me, but they had like a retreat with a past life regression that I always been interested in experiencing. And I'll just put it out there. I'm in the womb. We'll just practice this by saying you're going into the womb. And I ended up meeting this man named Joe Mancini who was a spiritual hypnotherapist and like the coolest human I'd ever met in my life. And I ended up joining as he had a monthly circle. And it was through the circle that I discovered he had an end stage renal failure. And he was approaching death like, you know, consciously. Like he wanted to be prepared. He wanted to be ready spiritually, emotionally, physically. And at this point, I not only cleaned out my grandma's house. I cleaned out my two of my dad's houses and downsize my grandma multiple times. And I said to him, I'm like, I'm very good at this. If you'd like me to come and help me clean out your house. You're like, basically, this should be on my resume. I could do this on my sleeve. I can do this in a week's late. Let's go. Let's get this done. So he'd be grudgingly. Let me come help him. And this turned into like many weekends of just going through different rooms in his house. And we kept laughing or like, oh my God. What if we go through all this stuff and I ended up living? And he did. He lived like two or three more years. And we had to go to goodwill. And we had to buy back his dishes and clothes. That's wild. Yeah. So then we went on all these adventures. We bought a boat. We drove all over DC and Maryland. I apprenticed under him and he taught me everything you knew. And this was all happening in tandem while I was taking care of my grandma. So I had this, I was talking with Erna about this, but I had this really unique experience of falling into this role as kind of like a forced caregiver with my grandma or I won't say forced, but like unintentional caregiver. And into an intentional caregiver with Joe because he didn't have any family. And I will say like having him in my life is that mentor and like parental figure to me was like hugely helpful during that time. I don't think I would have made it like I know there's no quid sentences because I don't think I would have made it through without that type of support, especially not having any parents. And weirdly enough, my grandma ended up dying before Joe. Joe is the one he came with me to see her at the funeral home. And then the next day I'd really like to see her. wanted a dog and you know everybody says don't make any big changes after loss and I was like nope I'm getting a puppy. So we went and picked out a puppy together and and then he ended up living another year so I'm not even sure what the original question was but I'll say that though the community right I ended up through my losses right like building more community and finding people who to relate to and kind of get through that time it without that I don't know how people do it without community it's really tough yeah we talk about community a lot on this podcast because Urna and I have really had to lean into that in our own caregiving experiences and I think beyond too you know like I think sometimes caregiving is like when it's over it's over but I just think it changes your whole life you know like it not only like leaves I think of physical impression with like the a lot of caregivers end up having chronic health issues post caregiving but I also think there's like an emotional and spiritual impression that just doesn't leave you after that's done and I was really interested you talked about having a faith community which is where you found Joe and I'd love to hear more about how you feel faith and a faith community have played into your journey as a caregiver and then kind of that grief journey as you navigated the loss of a lot of people in your life like that you have had a profound loss and yeah I just like that's I'd love to hear more about about faith in that yeah it's it's an interesting it's a good question I you know I was raised and had a weird like I went to a Catholic school a Lutheran school and a Methodist church and my grandma was a spiritual medium so it was very confusing growing up also police but I did always find myself very drawn to kind of like like the the spiritual elements of faith and you know as you go through your rebellious years I'm like I'm agnostic I don't believe in anything I run along to religion and then I slowly kind of came back to my own reckoning of like what is my own faith and what does that look like and for me it's it's not really rooted in religion but it is very rooted in a belief that there's there's something greater that we are we are all energy and we are creative beings and because of that like we get to choose how we create our life and our reality and we have we have the ability to to do that and and some people can find that very kind of like abrasive like I didn't choose to create this reality of being a caregiver I don't want it's what's it one way yeah I mean I'm many many a nights on the floor definitely and I I found that when I could kind of try on the perspective of like you know what is this doing for me or what am I learning how is this helping me grow as a human spiritually and emotionally attended to be a little easier to be a caregiver so whether it's you know for me at least like whether it was like I was creating that or not right the path of least resistance was just like let me try on this perspective of how can I grow from this and what is this doing and and that also like you said Megan doesn't mean like there weren't times that I was not nice to my grandma or myself because let me tell you I was not always the nicest person in that experience but when you have a lot of really crappy things happened to you in a short amount of time like for me it's almost like I had to believe there was a reason like I had to I had to make meaning of it because I think the alternative would have been I just I don't know if I would have kept existing like it's too much pain to have nowhere to go and that's where I found my at least for me that's where I found my faith really helps to shift that perspective or like create meaning out of thing right like David Kessler talks about this with grief like the sixth stage not that there's I will say here and we got all so box for grief there are not five stages of grief the five stages model was created by Elizabeth Hula Ross to talk about the five stages of grief when you have a terminal illness not necessarily normal grief grief is like a very wide reaching full body experience but David Kessler does have a new book that talks about the six stage of grief which is making meaning and I think that's what I've seen too in my work with caregivers and with grievers when we're able to move into what is the meaning of this or like what does it mean to me maybe if it's not religious or spiritual and what can I learn from this what perspectives as it gives me it tends to I'm not gonna say create an easier time but it almost gives you something to hold on to that validates the pain so that makes sense yeah I would say like I'm actually both a religious and spiritual because I think people can be religious without really being spiritual and vice versa so like I am part of a faith community but I also like kind of from that believe in like not only God but like I believe in a higher like human purpose too like of connection and of meaning making and I think that that as you're talking about that it really resonated with me because I feel the same way like if I can't create meaning from loss or from challenges I can't keep going like it can't like I don't necessarily believe in a God that's like a chest master like just moving pieces around you know and just like oh let's see what happens now you know like I don't believe in that but I do believe that like our lives are created for purpose and for growth and so like when we encounter difficulty it's not because like God created this difficult situation for me it's that like this difficult situation gives me an opportunity to choose and to decide what I do with it and I also appreciate the fact that you're like just because you have like a spiritual foundation doesn't mean it's not hard right like it's still hard because that's another thing that I see in my religious community is it's like the heart is like brushed under the rug like I have faith in a redemptive power so this hard thing is not hard and I just don't believe that like I really believe that like things are hard and we should be able to like lean into that and acknowledge how difficult losses how difficult caregiving is how difficult life can be sometimes but it's not without hope and not without love and not without meaning so I just all that to say like amen to what you said I loved it I love that it's the duality like we have something greater and we're mere humans I you know Sarah I've got getting to know you I there's just so much that you have held throughout your time on this earth and like you I don't believe in coincidences I feel like yep you were meant to meet Joe you were meant to be in that space where you were receiving that knowledge but also where you were making connections and expanding your community and yep you were meant to tell Joe you know what Joe take care of you I can make sure you are okay and I am not asking I am telling you I actually I actually one day I'm gonna write a book about Joe and I wrote the first line in the book was just because you're dying doesn't mean that you're living and I'm not gonna let you forget it so like I was like yeah yeah and sometimes people mean others that's why community is so important it doesn't sound like Joe was like he had a grasp on what was happening and to Megan's point and your point it doesn't mean it was not hard to show up every day to go through the motions every day that's where the community comes in to help prop you up even when you don't ask but it's you have eyes and feelings and you felt to his energy and you're like I'm gonna help him and you did and then that opened up a whole other world for you as well so your chair giving experience it spans different types of care different categories of care but then that opens out something very unique to you which I found really just really profound because as someone who I'm spiritual I grew up very religious and took a break and that's why I'm so now how are I gonna break but I mean I also believe in higher power and I believe that we are here for a reason and just interacting with different people I continue to validate that belief and I continue to recognize yeah that's what has allowed me to move forward in my different experiences but the other piece was when my mom passed I joined a support group which I would always tell people to do but I would never do myself and that is where I was able to truly accept that grief and it started my journey of processing I know I didn't have the tools to process it like I literally got myself therapist when she died because I was like I need help and then this group just gave me that extra piece I suppose that I didn't know I needed but I really I guess deep down inside I knew I just didn't have the tools for it and I think it's really important to remind people that a community is absolutely critical we are social creatures we are meant to be with each other but the other piece is you don't always have to have all the answers that's the point of the community if people jump in and out of your life at different seasons for different things. opportunities like support groups, reef counseling, you name it. This umbrella category of support that many people don't know about goes a long way. So I wanted to acknowledge that, but I also wanted you to talk a little bit more about that umbrella category. Your bio consisted of a lot of things that some people might know about and others don't. So I would love for you to give a little bit more insight to folks. And before I do that, I'm just going to piggyback and say, re-community. There's not a community out there that you need. It's also very easy to make one. When I was caregiving for my grandma, I was drowning and I'm like, I just need to be around other young people. Who else is 26 and trying to find a husband and taking care of an 80 year old grandma? I'm going on adventures with a 70 year old. What is there for us? With two cats in a dog, I don't know. So I was part of a young caregiver Facebook group and I literally just posted in there. Would anybody like to just vent on Zoom once a week? And do we have like 10 people that would come every week? I think the groups actually might still be going on. So there's always people going through it, you're going through. And sometimes you just got to say, does anybody want to come together and have a coffee? Yeah. And complaint. We all need to complain. Rather human, live a bio. So the umbrella, I think there's lots of ways. This is what I just love about being human in this world. There's so many different ways to kind of get to a similar outcome. You can go to talk therapy. You can have a support group. You can do hypnosis. You could do breath work, right? Somatic work. Like it's just when I look at all of energy healing, when I look at all of these different modalities, right? That are all in different ways helping you to process and alchemize what's being stored in your body. I just find that so inspiring and amazing because go talk therapy doesn't work for you. Great. Try something else. There's 500 other options, right? And a lot of times you just don't know what those are. For me, I found a great deal of healing in hypnosis with processing like many things. One grief, like my family not being there and missing them. Like I got to do a lot, I did this with Joe. A lot of really great work with actually like creating some closure like in the hypnotic state. You don't need a medium to talk to your loved one, right? You can connect with them. Anybody can do that. Not saying if it's also great to go see a medium, I definitely have done that too. But that was really powerful for me. It also helps as you talked about Megan, like caregiving and grief have a huge toll on your physical body. Like I was 24 and I had such chronic back pain. I couldn't even walk and hypnosis can help with chronic pain with kind of moving that energy through the body. But you know what actually what I'm going to say is what really helped me with that was my death due to the training. As part of the training, they did this amazing grief. The last day was a grief ceremony where you'd come into this room and they'd have people playing music, like melancholy music. They had women who were corners, professional mourners, simulating the sounds of mourning. And you'd all sit in a circle and you would just let grief move through whoever needed it. And as grief moved through that person, the community around them would support in whatever way they felt called. So it kind of moved from one person to the next. And this is one of those crazy moments, you know, where people are like miracle happened. Like I went into that group and I could not walk because I'd really actually hurt my back very badly from lifting my grandma's wheelchair. I sat down and I sobbed like nothing else I've ever sobbed before. And I was just held in that by this beautiful community of women. And that went on for as long as it needed to, maybe an hour. I don't even know. And I will say that after that experience, I stood up and I had no pain in my body. Like full stop, never experience something like that in my life. So that's the form of an umbrella of healing. I never even think of, oh, just sitting in a room with all these women, your adult is just sobbing. Like just letting the energy out created so much healing in my body. That's I think kind of to bring it all together to maybe a little tight package here of like how it informs what I do. These experiences, which I've dabbled in many different kinds, I tend to bring to my work with people. And I was when we were connecting before this podcast, like big advocate of grief, education, because but not in the everybody knows grief for death. Right? Like when you're when somebody's died, you know you're grieving. But like most people don't know grief of caregiving, of getting married, of good things happening, of identity, right? Grief is part of every experience. And what grief is, right? To know grief, you must know loss. Is the is anything that is less than it was before. Grief is the energy that's created in the body by loss. And grieving is the experience of moving that energy through the body. And this is Megan, Megan Reardon Jarvis's work. Who's a wonderful grief therapist. That's how she explains grief. So when and I began to think about, wow, this is interesting grief. Grief is actually energy, stagnant energy in the body. You're like at least grief that hasn't been expressed. When I work with people, even if they haven't come to me for grief work, we often end up finding grief somewhere stored in the body. And hypnosis is one of the ways to get in touch with that and guide it through the body. But I also might teach people breath work, or I might also just sit with them, well, they cry and let it out because I know how powerful that can be. I might show them different relaxation techniques, right? So there's a lot of different ways to get to a similar outcome. And what I would say to people is if it's the way you're trying isn't working, that's okay. There's 500,000 other ways. Feel free to give me a call. I will recommend people who you're like, I have, you know, there's many ways to find help and nothing is hopeless, right? And that's again, I'll bring it back to being. That's the beauty of being a creative human. There's so many different avenues to get the help you need. And it's okay if the one that works for a lot of people doesn't work for you. I love that. I also love your characterization of grief because I have taught nurses for a long time. And one of the things that nurses are often not super well prepared for is navigating like end of life just because the curriculum doesn't really focus as much on that as like the skill-based things that need to happen to keep patients safe. I mean, I would argue that helping people through end of life is about keeping people safe too. It's just like a different type of safety. I would always in the palliative care and hospice sections of our class ask them to think about a loss they had. Like you don't have to be at the end of your life. You don't have to have experienced the death of somebody to understand what it is to lose something because I do think it like if you can conceptualize grief in that way, it allows you to have more empathy, you know, like to be like, okay, like you are navigating loss and grief and I can understand what that is even if I'm not living your same experience. So I really appreciate you sharing that with our community because I think there needs to be more of that understanding that loss can go hand in hand with joy. Like you mentioned marriage, that is an amazing experience but there also is kind of a loss of the single self, you know, like in some way. And so I think that's important. And then the other piece I just, but struck me is your experience and I'm going to really mess up what you called it, but like moving through grief in the group and I love that. I love that like being able to just let go, you know, to be like with people and I'm probably going to cry, but to be with people and to be held and just to be supported and to not have to keep it together. Like I also think we need to make space for that more and to like not only make space but to hold people. Like I just think that's so beautiful that there was just a structure that allowed you to move through that and to be able to let it go. So thank you for sharing that. That was very beautiful and something I obviously needed to hear. There's great power in not trying to change and fix things that needs to be a t-shirt. Yeah. It might need to be a chocolate in your book as well. As we love to fix things because we think control is actually the thing that is going to make everything better when in fact it doesn't always work that way. And some things just need to be. I appreciated for my inner webs did something weird. Everything that you were speaking about, especially the reciting of the breakdown of grief and the energy, just as you were speaking I was visualizing all of that. Probably some stuff still in here. Get out. Yeah. We'll be making it to explore all 500 ways. The reality is figure out which one is personal to me. No. We don't talk about any of these things. This is where I love the individual self. I love making space for getting to know ourselves. But we only do that as a society with a very limited perspective. We don't get into the soft squishy areas because that is scary for people. That is real work. It's real unearthing, mimeing, it's uncomfortable. So people just gloss right over it. But the old I get and the more just understanding of my own self, the more I realize there's a lot of power in unearthing and actually resurfacing some things because it helps explain a lot, but also I'm big on closure and some of that to your point Sarah allows us to do that and we need that to fully move forward into whatever whatever we're here to do and I just I think that's really powerful and we don't talk about that at all. Not as a society, we don't talk about that within caregiving because we barely talk about that. That's just it's worth emphasizing. Everything that you said is worth emphasizing, but for me, I feel like that that definitely resonates. Yeah. And like speaking of caregiving and we don't talk about it, like there's a great deal of grief that comes with caregiving, right? You're the grief of losing your identity as a person who doesn't have to be bound to someone else. The great the ambigure or anticipatory grief of knowing the person you're caring for is going to die. And then and then maybe something a lot of people don't talk about like the shame, the grief you feel for kind of wanting that sometimes like the relief that you know will come when that happens. So I find that for caregivers particularly like being able to to own their experiences of what I'm experiencing as grief like is greatfully greatly powerful. It gives you when you can name it, you have power over and you know what's going on in your body in mind. Yeah. I quote Mr. Rogers a lot. And I think I've said this quote like 5,000 times on this podcast, but he said anything mentionable is manageable. So like we should just be able to say it. Yeah. Yeah. Like Erna and I were talking about earlier like we don't need to be on a pedestal as caregivers. We need to be able to be real and be supported in our real experiences. Absolutely. One thing I want to make sure we touch on is this after I put that in quotes caregiving experience. How are you navigating this? You again, unique journey that has brought you here, but how how are you going through this and what would you tell someone who's caregiving journey quote unquote ended and now they are faced with figuring out what? Nags. Great question. I'm going to say I'm three three years post my caregiving journey. So I'm still fresh and figuring it out. So take what I say with a green absolve. It's you know I think first and foremost you know and I even kind of alluded to those and joked about it earlier, but I think there's an old adage that people say don't make any big life decisions after a loss. And you know what? Sure. Don't go spend your savings. But like sometimes the only way to exist in a new paradigm is to accept it as a new paradigm. And like sometimes you need to make a big change. Sometimes you need to start a new job, start a business, move, adopt a puppy by yourself at like a week after your gramidine. Sometimes you need to make big choices because the container that once was your life no longer can contain what your life is now. And it's it's deeply uncomfortable. This is me saying I mean I'm not endorsing going to spend your life savings, right? But I'm saying if if you if you finish your caregiving journey and you're feeling like I don't think I can be here anymore that's okay and that's normal and listen to that, right? I think another piece of it is at least what in my experience is I find in this tisic back end of grief I find that you never finished grieving and grief just starts showing up in different layers and levels, right? And I have a whole now D grief is like Mario brothers, you know like over Mario brothers where you play I'm updating myself now but you play like you know you play the whole world, right? Like you get through that first world that's all sunshine and disease, right? And you finally beat worry on your like yeah finally like I beat the big guy and you're so excited and then you're like wait now I have to go to the water world and then you have to go to the ice world and then you have to go to like whatever other plate the space world I don't know what the new Mario has, right? And that's a lot like grief. You're like oh yeah, finally yeah like a couple years I'm post-loss, I'm post-caregiving, I'm starting to find my way and then all of the sudden like for me I got married and I'm like well she now I'm in last night, I just say she's all like our without any delay. Now I have to re-experience my grief as somebody who's getting married without their family and then I assume next might be buying a house and wishing my dad was here to help tell me how to fix things, right? Our grief is going to show up again and again, right? And you're going to have to work through that and understand like how my new identity fits here because your brain part of what happens your brain is it has a GPS map in it and it maps the world around you. So it's the reason that you can wake up in the middle of the night, walk to your bathroom and walk back without turning on the lights is because of your brain's GPS system. Your brain also GPS maps people. So when somebody dies where your caregiving journey ends, right? Your GPS map has not yet downloaded the new version, it's like the old school garment that takes forever, right? It's not like the Apple GPS. It takes a long time for the new GPS to update and for you to realize oh this is the new world now but the thing is your brain also GPS maps all of the future like thinking about your dad walking down the aisle or thinking about going on vacation with your mom when you're both retired, right? Like these different points in time your brain expects that person to be there or even forgets like if you know, I don't know like when you've been caregiving for so many years like your brain has really ingrained that GPS and it's like who am I? Like what do I even like outside of this, right? So what I'm saying here is the identity post care giving isn't ever evolving, never ending process and that's okay and it's okay to be messy. Like would love nothing more than to call up my mentor and say how do I like I'm starting a business? What's what am I doing? Right? I'm figuring it out but but knowing that that that messiness is part of grief and it's part of the identity shift again, you're able to name that something can help know what's going on and why why this is hard again. Yeah, does that make sense? Was that helpful? It does, it does. I will say as someone you know I'm seven years into my journey and a lot of what you said fully resonates and also fun fact doesn't go away because it is a vault and so if you're someone like myself who's had multiple decades of pouring for someone, I mean I still on occasion will want to call my mom and think about our phone number and then I'm like say that's somebody else's phone number or drive by the nursing home and say you know I have wait what? What do I do? Like just weird things will happen because that is so very much part of what my life was and the way that I'm processing this all is to just be open to that and let those memories come, let those feelings come, sometimes those feelings come with tears, sometimes they come with laughs. I'm just open to them all at this point and I'm also open to the fact that there is a definitely is a reason for me to remember those things because there are other people that are going through those things right now and they need to hear that these things they don't happen in isolation, they're not unique to just a person that this is part of the experience, there are many different semirils within the experience and they all matter and you are going to get through them. It's going to be super messy, painful, challenging, you'll have some laughs but like just keeping it real, it's not puppies and rainbows every day, it just isn't and it's okay like you said it is okay, it is okay to acknowledge that and okay to recognize that and okay to know hey I can actually raise my hand and ask for help sometimes and if I'm really lucky I'll have people that come to me before I even raise my hand. So that's just how I'm looking at it, I think it's important for people to hear that too because again you would think now we always hear things about caregiving always relative but we're definitely going to hear more of it now than let's say 20 years ago but it's still very surface, it's not this is what it really is, it's not this is the daily whatever and we, the three of us and everybody else in this community frankly has an opportunity to let people in, to let people recognize hey this comes in all kinds of flavors, hurting one flavors please we're beyond that. Just all kinds of things, we don't even have to put a number on it because we're still figuring things out and learning new things about one another just being able to talk about it is very freeing thank you. Yeah thank you so much for your time and for all the wisdom you shared of Sarah it's just truly been a joy and I've learned a lot and I'm resolved to be more messy. Yes that is that makes my heart happy, let's them let's run out, let's put them out. Yes exactly and yeah just you know let it out and let's build communities where we can and hold people while they are. So thank you for your time. your part in doing that in our world. I can only imagine what a difference the work you do makes for the people that you support. So thank you for that and for being here with us today. And we'll say goodbye to Holkiger family and wish you well until the next time. - Thanks for spending time with us today. - We appreciate the work you do in the world. - Till next time. - Bye. - Bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)