The Guilt That Never Fully Leaves
No matter how much you care, how much you do, how many nights you don’t sleep and how many
things you get right — it’s never perfect. Not for me, and I don’t believe it’s perfect for any caregiver. I
want to write about two moments that still sit with me, because I think a lot of caregivers are carrying
something almost identical, and maybe hearing mine will make yours a little lighter to hold.

My Dad, and the Nurse Who Was at Dinner
I was 24 when I was my dad’s caregiver during his hospice care, and the medications were entirely on
me. No one really explained dosing to me — it was written on the bottles, and that was it. I was terrified
of morphine and Ativan. Terrified of giving too much. So I followed the label exactly, to the letter, every
single time.
On what turned out to be his last day, he was in real pain and clearly uncomfortable. I called the on-call
hospice nurse and told her I’d already given him morphine an hour or two before and that he needed
more. She told me she was out to dinner and that I should just follow the directions on the bottle.
I listened to her. I always will carry guilt for that. Not because I did anything medically wrong — I later
learned you can’t actually overdose a hospice patient by following proper guidance, and I was following
exactly what I’d been told — but because my gut was telling me he needed more relief, and I let a
stranger’s indifference on the other end of a phone call override what I already knew as the person in
the room with him.
If I could go back and tell 24-year-old me one thing, it would be this: when you are the one there,
watching, caring, paying attention every single day — trust that. More than any on-call nurse who’s out
to dinner and doesn’t know your father. More than a label. Your gut, earned through months of showing
up, deserves more weight than it’s often given.
My Mom, and the Week I Sent Her to Respite
With my mom, the guilt looks different.
At one point I sent her to respite care through hospice — a short stay meant to give caregivers a break.
While she was away, I used that week to repaint the living room and dining room, shampoo the rugs,
return all of her old medical equipment, and replace it with new: hospital bed, nebulizer, oxygen
concentrator, commode, walker. I even added a bell to her bed so she could never get up again without
me knowing.
The respite facility didn’t take care of her the way they should have. They didn’t follow a single
instruction I’d written down for her care. And I’ve wondered since whether she may have even refused
to admit she felt worse there, knowing that saying so would only bring me running to check on her.

She came home from that week and never got up on her own again. She was too weak.
I carry guilt over sending her there in the first place, even though respite exists precisely because
caregivers cannot run on empty forever, and even though I used every hour of it trying to make her
homecoming safer and better. My own mother reminded me more than once to “get over it” — which, if
you read my last post, you already know was never said at the right moment.

What I Want You to Take From This
If you’re a caregiver reading this and you have a moment like either of mine — a call you didn’t push
hard enough on, a break you took that you now second-guess, a decision that looked right at the time
and haunts you now — I want you to hear this clearly: doing your best while exhausted, scared, and
under-informed is not the same as doing something wrong. Guilt convinces us otherwise. It lies. It
takes the fact that you loved someone enough to notice every small change and twists it into evidence
that you failed them.
You didn’t fail them. You showed up in an impossible situation, with less information than you deserved
and more responsibility than anyone should carry alone, and you did it anyway.
That has to count for something. I believe it does.

My mom’s name was Mary Dorothy, but everyone
knew her as Dottie. During her hospice care, we had
more than just the hospice team around us — we had
family friends, some who are still in my life today and
some who aren’t anymore, and neighbors who
showed up in ways I’ll never forget. We were lucky.
Genuinely, deeply lucky to have good people around
us at that time.
But I learned something during those months that I
think every caregiver eventually learns, and I want to
say it plainly for anyone reading this who has
someone in their life right now who’s caregiving: stop
asking “how are you?” Stop asking “what do you
need?” Stop asking “what can I do?”
Just do.

Why the Questions Don’t Work
I know those questions come from a good place. I
know people ask them because they genuinely want
to help. But when you’re deep in caregiving, being

asked what you need is its own kind of exhausting. It
puts the work back on you — now you have to stop,
think, figure out what you need, figure out how to ask
for it, figure out if it’s even reasonable to ask for it.
Most days, you don’t have the bandwidth left for that.
The people who helped me most were the ones who
never asked at all. They just showed up and did
something. A neighbor who dropped off a meal
without checking first. A friend who just started a load
of laundry because she saw the basket. Someone
who said “I’m taking the dogs for a walk, be back in
twenty minutes” instead of “let me know if you ever
need help with the dogs.”
What Actually Helps
If you know a caregiver and you want to genuinely
help them, here’s what tends to land:
A meal you don’t have to cook. Anything. Truly
anything, as long as someone else made it.
A coffee run, especially if the person you’re caring
for wants something specific from somewhere
random. Caregiving often comes with fast food
runs and “can you get me a coffee from that one
place” on repeat, and it adds up.
Twenty minutes of freedom. Sit with the person
being cared for so the caregiver can shower, do

laundry, walk the dogs, or just breathe alone for a
few minutes.
A few minutes of company for the person you’re
caring for, so the caregiver gets a small break
without having to arrange it.
None of this requires a grand gesture. It requires
showing up and doing the small, unglamorous thing
without making the caregiver ask for it first.
To the People Reading This Who
Want to Help Someone
If someone in your life is caregiving right now,
especially for a parent, especially under hard
circumstances — don’t wait for them to tell you what
they need. Most of us don’t know how to answer that
question anyway, or we’re too worn down to figure it
out. Just pick something small, and do it.
You’ll never know how much a stranger’s twenty free
minutes can mean until you’ve lived without them for
months at a time.

Caregiver “Anyway”

This Is Where My Story Begins: Caring for My Mom and Dad ❤️

I’m 51 years young, born and raised in New Jersey—and I love my home state. It’s given me a lifetime of memories, both good and hard, and it’s where this whole story starts.

I’m the youngest of four kids. I’m married to my husband, Patrick, my rock since 2018. We don’t have kids of our own, but we have four dogs who fill our space in ways I never expected. Fair warning: there will be dog content here too.

But the reason I’m starting this blog isn’t the dogs. It’s the other part of my life—the part that shaped everything else.

The Caregiver I Became

I was the primary caregiver for both my parents, back to back, years apart.

My dad passed away from cancer. My mom passed away from emphysema and COPD after I cared for her through 17 months of hospice, in our home. Years before that, I cared for my dad through 18 months of hospice, also at home.

That’s a lot of caregiving for one lifetime.

But it’s not the whole story.

My relationship with my mom was complicated. She struggled with alcoholism, and there were years of abuse—mental, emotional, and at times physical. I’ll be honest about that here because I think honesty is the only way this blog is worth anything to anyone.

I was essentially on my own from the time I was seven years old, cooking for myself and taking care of myself while she was in the grips of things she could not control.

My dad was my best friend, but he worked brutal hours to keep us afloat, so even that relationship had its own kind of distance built in.

And yet, when the time came, I showed up. For both of them.

I took care of my mother the way she should have taken care of me.

Why “Anyway”?

That word is the whole point of this blog’s name.

I cared for her anyway. I showed up anyway.

Despite everything that happened between us, despite every reason I could have pointed to and walked away, I didn’t.

I’m not writing this to say that makes me a saint. Caregiving for a parent who hurt you is complicated, and I don’t think there’s one right way to feel about it.

I’m writing this because I know I’m not the only person who has lived this particular kind of hard, and I never found much out there written by someone who actually understands it from the inside.

If you’re caring for a parent who was not always kind to you—or who wasn’t kind at all—I see you. This blog is for you as much as it is for me.

What’s Ahead

This is just the introduction. In the posts to come, I’ll be writing about:

• What it actually looks like to be a caregiver for someone who hurt you
• The hospice years, for both of my parents, in detail
• How grief gets tangled up with old wounds, and how I’ve made peace—or am still making peace—with that
• Rebuilding my own life afterward: relationships, grief, learning how to live without mom and dad
• Some big life changes I’m working toward
• And yes, plenty of stories about my four dogs, because they have been part of my healing, too

I don’t know exactly how many people will read this. But even if one person finds something here that makes their own “anyway” a little easier to carry — I did it anyway, and so can you.

More soon. ❤️