Caregiver Check In - 5 Self Care Staples to Swear By

Forget the bubble-bath checklist. We dig into a practical, body-first approach to caregiver self-care that actually holds under pressure: better sleep, objective stress data, scaled movement, protected solitude, and preventive health that keeps you in the game. I share how a therapist’s tough wake-up call led me to a sleep study, what “daytime sleepiness” really means on the road, and how an oral appliance changed my oxygen, sleep quality, and mornings. We explore why you can feel exhausted after a “full night” and what it takes to make sleep count when you’re balancing the relentless demands of caregiving.

From there, we talk tools that don’t hijack your attention. The Oura Ring has been a quiet revolution for tracking sleep stages, HRV, and recovery without another screen buzzing on your wrist. Seeing stress in numbers helped me shift workouts, add breathwork, and take short walks that actually bring my system down rather than push it over the edge. Movement becomes strategic: on good days, run or lift; on strained days, yoga, stretching, or a slow ride. Ten minutes can change the tone of an entire afternoon.

We also get honest about solitude. As an introvert in a loud, hands-on role, scheduled quiet time is non-negotiable. Thirty minutes in a dark room, no texts, no talk, can reset a nervous system that’s been on high alert for years. And we round it out with annual checkups, lab work, mammograms, and eye exams—the dashboard lights for the most important machine you own. The theme is simple: personalize your self-care to your body’s weak links, measure what matters, and treat maintenance like mission-critical safety. If you’ve ever felt unseen by generic advice, this conversation hands you a tighter, smarter playbook.

If this helped, subscribe, share it with a caregiver who needs backup, and leave a review so more folks can find us. Your story might be the nudge someone else needs.

Transcript

Opening And Why Self-Care Matters

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It was my therapist who said, girl, if you don't start getting better sleep, you're gonna die before your mom. I realized very much so during this caregiver journey that if I don't have some time alone, I'ma pop. I don't even have to do nothing. I can just be laid in my bed. Because my goal is to be the best caregiver and human being I can. But listen, I can't be working with broke equipment. Like imagine if you never put gas in your car, or if you never got your new tires, or you never rotated the tires, or you never got the damn thing in alignment. Right? You don't do none of that. You don't get the car aligned, you're gonna be driving crooked cat a corner all across the highway, knocking shit out of other cars. Just because you didn't do what? Maintenance. What's up, parenting up family? This episode, we are digging into self-care. And I mean digging, digging, digging. Everybody talks about it. Everyone wants everybody to do it. But what the hell is it? And how does it really work in our community? We're about to get into caregiver self-care. Uh-huh. Come on. Parenting up Caregiving Adventures with comedian Jay Smile is the intense journey of unexpectedly being fully responsible for my mama. For over a decade, I've been chipping away at the unknown, advocating for her, and pushing all time of awareness on anyone in anything in the heart. Caregiver newbie, OGs, and village members just willing to prop up a caregiver. You are in the right place. Hi, this is. She says, if your mom doesn't have the capacity to call out or press a button, all caps, they should not be alone. They need a caregiver or to be an assisted living. First thing I want to say, Rhonda McKnight, 2596 is I agree. If your career cannot think through pressing a button or calling for help, they should not be alone. Zeti is never alone. She has 24-7 caregivers. However, nobody has a person with them. I should say nobody. It is rare for a person to have 24-hour 100% supervision. Because Zeti has one-on-one caregivers at home, but guess what? They gotta go to the bathroom. So they leave her somewhere safe and they go to the bathroom. Or they have to fix her meal. And in those two to 10 to 20 minutes, something could happen. And what I was suggesting as an engineer and a product designer is wouldn't it be amazing if there were devices invented such that a person with dementia, if they fall or go unconscious, something alerts 911, or maybe the caregiver that's in the other damn room that doesn't realize their mama or they daddy just slumped over and fell out the fucking chair. Having a loved one that cannot communicate their needs is the toughest thing I've ever had to do in my life. You're constantly guessing what they need and how to provide what they need. So, yes, please have someone watching over your loved one. Maybe it's just you have cameras that you can see, and then you can go and assist your loved one when they need something. But overall, do whatever it is to keep them safe. If you want to be the recipient of a supporter shout out, you know what to do. Leave a comment and a review at Apple Podcasts or YouTube. Alright, y'all, self-care. It is the new worn-out phrase in everything medical. Take care of yourself, self-care, prioritize your time, and uh go get a massage and read a book, do a bubble bath. What? I'm gonna tell you my problem with these. All of those I just listed, and many more, they are so general. Anybody that's alive will be like, yeah, I want a bubble bath from a baby to an old man. Yes, that's relaxing. But how do we layer it on the lives that we lead as family caregivers? I'm gonna tell you right now, me going out with my girlfriends for a paint sip, drinking some wine, and fucking up one of Picasso's, paint by number, little dilly-dallies. While I have a good time, that actually doesn't relieve my stress. So, J Smiles is here to tell you about my version of self-care for caregivers, caregiver self-care, and how I've redefined it after over 14 years in this space. Y'all, first of all, hanging out with my friends and letting off some steam, that doesn't help if my cholesterol is shitty, if I'm overweight, if I'm not sleeping well, if I have diabetes, if I got cataracts, if I haven't gotten my eyes checked. So I'm squinting like this. Everybody's listening to the audio, I'm being very, very, very squinty. And old school comedians would say I was being Asian. I'm not saying that, because that's racist, but I'm saying that's what they would have said. That's what I have figured out, y'all. The greatest form of self-care as a caregiver is to make sure my body is functioning as best it can. Fix what's broken with Jay Smiles. Luckily, I don't have heart problems. I don't have diabetes, so that's not my issue. Let me tell you what my issue is though. And it has always been an issue, way before being a caregiver. Sleep. Me and sleep are frenemies. I need it, but I don't like it. I don't like going to sleep. I never did. Even as like first, second, third grade, I ain't have a bedtime. That's another episode. But now as I've aged, menopause is whipping my ass, and I've been a caregiver for more than 14 years. Yo, sleep is like water. So, what was I supposed to do? I'm not good at sleep, I don't know how to sleep, I don't even take naps well. It was my therapist who said, girl, if you don't start getting better sleep, you're gonna die before your mama. Now y'all heard me say this before. That is the first way. If you want to make Jay Smiles change something, tell her she's gonna die before Zeddy. And beep, beep, beep, beep. I'm slamming on brakes and backing that thing up because I don't want to leave Zeddy here on this here, earth. So I'ma fast forward a little bit through it, but basically what happened, my therapist said, Jay, you gotta sleep. And I was like, I get into bed, but I'm not sleeping well. She ultimately sent me to a sleep psychiatrist who sent me to a sleep dentist. Did y'all know that's I didn't even know that you had that? There's like, I know about braces doctor, I mean dentist people and the oral surgeons and the people that can put the fake teeth in your mouth. But what the hell does dentistry have to do with me sleeping? Anyway, that's how come therapy helps. Look at how the therapist then got me over here. Y'all help him asleep. See, so talk to somebody that got some sense. Oh, I like to say that she did get a PhD at Howard, but that's how I went. I learned that after I was there. Anyway, the sleep psychiatrist sent me to have a sleep study. And as luck would have it, I'm right there on the line. I I my sleep wasn't disturbed enough to be sleep apnea to get a CPAP, but they said, girl, you have daytime sleepiness. You are one step below being narcoleptic. You should not drive a car if you haven't had eight hours of sleep. Do y'all know how many times I have been a dangerous weapon on the road? Do you know how many times I have driven a car with less than eight hours of sleep? Like every day. Pretty much every day since I've been driving since 16. I ain't had eight hours of continuous sleep. That sounds silly. Like, I'm the master of naps. Give me two, three, four naps of two or three hours a day, I'm in there. Except, y'all, that's not good for your body. Long term, it's not good for your heart, your brain, your kidneys, your lungs, all your liver, all that good stuff. So I went to Dr. Sue, and it's S-U-W-A-Y, Dr. Sue. Dr. Sue. And he fitted me for this device. And I'm showing y'all. There is a upper and a lower, and it keeps my jaw, my bottom jaw stuck out. So it looks, it makes me have an underbite when I'm sleeping. But it gives me that extra bit of oxygen because it's opening up my throat. And so now all my sleep numbers are right. So if I get a nap, or if I get a whole eight hours, either way, the sleep really counts. How many of y'all are sleeping and waking up just as tired? Okay, that's not normal. I found that out from the sleep pot though. I was like, yeah, hell, I'm still tired. No big deal. They were like, no, Jay, you're not supposed to still be tired when you wake up. That means you're not having quality sleep. If I'm not whole and healthy, stress is gonna hit me harder. So again, I'm talking about that self-care for caregivers where you look at the needs of your body and you fix that shit. The other thing that is necessary, now I've only had it a little over a year, but it has been a game changer, which is the aura ring. O-U-R-A. And I had a ring on and I'm spinning around to show y'all. I had the Apple Watch, I had Fitbits, I was getting on the scale. I have a pressure cuff here. I got the little thing, the little pulse ox to tell you what your blood and all that. I have all those gadgets in the house. Do I use them every day? Hell no. And my Apple Watch, to be quite honest, it can do too much. It has so much shit going on on it that I end up just texting and answering the phone. Unless I'm going for a run and then I set something. But all those other things, there's too much swiping and pressing and gadgetry going on. So it gets overwhelming if I'm in the middle of trying to pick Zetty up off the floor. But aha, aha, this aura ring, what's so great is it don't have any digital display thing on the ring. So I don't get distracted trying to figure out, am I stressed? Did I get enough sleep? I just look at the app when I wake up in the morning and kind of midday, how did I sleep? It has changed the game for me, y'all, because where it registers my stress being too high, I then know, okay, you know what? If I was super stressed yesterday and didn't realize it, do y'all know I've been living in a high alert stress for 14 years and didn't fucking know it? I was like, oh, this is not, I'm not supposed to feel this extra anxiety every day. No? That nobody else is feeling that? Everybody's not feeling that? No? You telling me that there's no tightness in your chest. Oh, okay. All right. So the aura ring for me has been an amazing tracking device to see how I am sleeping and how am I receiving the stress of the day. And I ain't gonna lie to you. Now, if my stress numbers are too high throughout the day, I will take a minute, take a 10-minute walk, do some deep breathing. Y'all, then my little stress numbers go down. That's how I'm caring for my body, Janae's body. Now, the rest of you, you might not have stress. Maybe you sleep great. Well, then don't worry about this damn dental device or this ring. Do you? But the point I'm giving you is I had to figure out where was Janae's body inefficient and a little bit off track. The other thing that I gotta do all the time is I have to move some. Everybody don't like exercise. I actually do like exercising. But there are times when, because of my aura ring or because of the sleep I didn't get, because sometimes I forget to put that sleep that might say in my mouth. My stress might already be too high for me to go run full speed. Like, don't, I don't want to stress my body working out trying to lift 75 pound weights if my body is already stressed. Y'all feel what I'm saying? So those are the days where I just say, you know what? I'm gonna do some slow, warm yoga. Because I don't want to add stress to my system. I got one body. And I'm trying to ride this motherfucker out at least as long as that is alive. So swimming or yoga or biking or walking, I have to move something every day or even stretching. They have phenomenal, free, okay, five, like 15, 20, 30-minute stretching videos on YouTube. Just put in stretching, home stretching, and the amount of time you want. Home stretching for 10 minutes. It's amazing. I put that shit on. I'm letting my coffee brew in 10 minutes, I'm done. And my heart rate is down. This next one, y'all gonna say I'm funny acting. But I'm giving you my truth. Time alone is my self-care. I can't be around people all the time. Are you an introvert or extrovert? I am an introvert. Nobody wants to believe me. They're like, oh, but you're a comedian. You always make a talking, you got a podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. I am social and I'm animated and I'm outgoing and I'm an introvert. Just like I'm black from Alabama and a Catholic. Those don't go together either. I realized very much so during this caregiver journey that if I don't have some time alone, I'm a pop. I don't even have to do nothing. I could just be laying in my bed staring at the ceiling. But nobody else can be in my bed. Without, listen, okay, since I'm not married, uh there's nobody in my bed. Okay, Zeti? Oh, I only sleep with my mama. Okay, did I fix that? Have I cleaned that up, y'all? Shit, that went off the rails. Okay, so in any case, even half an hour or an hour. And I just won't answer the phone or text messages unless it's about Zettie. And my caregivers know if I say, I need downtime, that I have hit a wall, and I go in a room in the house, in the dark, play some music, usually fall asleep, have a nap. But the point is, sometimes your self, my self-care isn't active at all and don't involve no fucking people. And there's no fun. It's just quiet. Night night. I only started doing this after the pandemic. I get my annual exams now for real. I get my mammograms. Yes, I get these Tata squos and squos good. I do the blood work to make sure my A1s, C34s, C3POs are all wherever they're supposed to be. I get my eyes checked. I'm looking for catalgs and all these kind of things. Because if my medical history shows a jump or a drop-off from year to year, then I can manage something. Because my goal is to be the best caregiver and human being I can. But listen, I can't be working with broke equipment. Like imagine if you never put gas in your car, or if you never got your new tires, or you never rotated the tires, or you never got the damn thing in alignment. Right? You don't do none of that. You don't get the car aligned, you're gonna be driving crooked, catacorner, all across the highway, knocking shit out of other cars, just because you didn't do what? Maintenance. So, caregiver self-care to Jay Smiles, it's maintenance on your own body, your own system. The human body is the most phenomenal machine on the planet. And humans didn't invent it. So go figure that. So just take care of it because you can't get another one. Um, I hope this new angle on self-care or the Jay Smiles angle uh make sense to you and it rests well with you. I'm sure y'all let me know if you disagree, and that's fine. I like when we have a little bit of sparring and stuff within the community. I want to play the game of life. I don't want to be injured on the sideline watching somebody else make decisions for me or my mama, because I done fucked around and let myself fall apart. That's all I got. I love y'all. The snuggle up. Okay, self-care. It's a hot topic. You can Google it, you can chat GPT, you can ask the doctor, the social worker, maybe caregivers that have assisted you with your care eyes, what should I be doing to relieve my stress? How can I relax? How can I have more meat time? And they're gonna give you some suggestions. But nobody knows your body more than that. What is your biggest struggle with being healthy? Healthy is defined as your blood pressure, your cholesterol, your, I don't know all them numbers, but anyway, your eyes, your, your weight is within a range where you don't have to take 12 new medications. What's your vitamin D? Your vitamin D12, what are those levels? What does your body need to function as effectively and efficiently as possible? Because remember, we are machines. We are for but listen, I want to be a Ferrari, right? I don't want to be a fucking scooter that has been in 17 accidents that don't even have no damn rear view mirrors no more. I want to be a leamy fat ass. Precision. Instrument. That's what your body is. It is a machine and it is up to you to care for it. I told you about how I care for mine. But I gotta, I gotta tell you, this is no lie. I don't really follow those lists. I follow the list when I want to go have fun. Like, you know what? What can I do to let off steam? But my self-care is caregiver self-care specific to keeping my body. In the damn game. Alright, love y'all. Thank you for tuning in. I mean, really, really, really thank you so very much for tuning in. Whether you're watching this on YouTube or if you're listening on your favorite podcast audio platform. Either way, wherever you are, subscribe. Come back. That's the way you're gonna know when we do something next. Y'all know how it is. I'm Jay Smiles. I might just drop something hot in the middle of the night.