Proven Not Perfect
Proven Not Perfect
Balancing Careers and Caregiving: Navigating Generational Challenges with Sue Ryan
This episode explores the complex realities of caregiving, focusing on the sandwich generation—the caregivers juggling responsibilities for both their children and aging relatives. With insights from Sue Ryan, we discuss self-care strategies, workplace transparency, and the importance of community support in navigating this demanding journey.
• Understanding the sandwich generation and its pressures
• Importance of transparency in caregiving within the workplace
• Strategies for self-care as essential for caregivers
• The role of community support and accepting help
• Introducing the Caregiver's Journey initiative for resources and guidance
Drive, Ambition, Doing, Leading, Creating... all good until we forget about our own self-care. This Village of All-Stars pays it forward with transparency about misses and celebration in winning. We cover many topics and keep it 100. We are Proven Not Perfect™️
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Hey, proven Not Perfect. This is Chantrapal, your host. I'm so glad that you're here with me today. I believe this conversation is a really important one, and I believe it's going to be a healing one for so many and an informative one for others. I'm talking about caregiving, and I'm talking with Sue Ryan. Sue Ryan has been a caregiver for over 40 years and she's now co-founding the caregiver's journey with a partner, including a podcast, other resources, classes, courses, all the things, and I think that if you have not been touched by this, um, it's highly likely that you will when you hear the stats of how many of us are managing this turn in life. It, it. It can certainly be a beautiful season, a blessed season, but there are strategies to help you to navigate it and to emerge on the back end with nothing but beautiful, happy memories. So, hey, I uh, I have no more to say on this Enjoy this podcast. Proven Not Perfect with Sue Ryan of Sue Ryan Solutions. Let me know what you think. Proven Not Perfect, hi Sue.
Speaker 2:Hi Chantra.
Speaker 1:It's so nice to have you here. I am really looking forward to this conversation. We'll just jump right in, and the thesis that I'll just kind of put out there for us is and that's been on my mind is very much captured in this Wall Street Journal article in October where they highlight just some really interesting facts. So one more Americans shoulder a double load of caring for their children and at least one adult Literally blew my mind. There is about 11 million 11 million in the US alone who qualify as the sandwich generation, people that are caring up and down right for their kids and then for adults. They're saying that it's demographic shifts, it's cost, it's work, it's so many things that it's impacting.
Speaker 1:But, that blows my mind. Tell me what you think about this new statistic that is becoming increasingly more, you know, transparent to many of us, who perhaps did not realize the impact.
Speaker 2:Yes, the term sandwich generation actually originated in 1981 by a woman who was a social worker a social worker and it was. She was talking about the additional pressures that adults have where they're sandwiched in the middle with caring for children and then caring for their aging parents. And as medicine is keeping more of our family members alive longer, we're now creating multiple sandwich generations and I'll I'll walk through quickly what they are. I actually created one myself. So we've got the traditional sandwich generation, that's got people in the forties to sixties average, with the children, younger children and the aging adults. And then I created the panini generation, which is younger people in their twenties and thirties who are kind of pressed because they've got early career development. They're beginning families, maybe they've got a small child and they have, some of them adult siblings they're caring for, as well as aging parents and sometimes grandparents. So they have multiple generations they're caring for while also working with their career and their families. Then the next one is called the club sandwich. I love that.
Speaker 2:Someone else coined that. The club sandwich, yes, and that gets into the three or four generations where you've got the adults and they've got their parents and other loved ones, oftentimes now the grandparent because they're living longer. And then they've got often now adult children who have not left home, and they've got younger children. So we're getting into where there are four generations, and that again can be, you know, like between the 40s and 60s.
Speaker 2:And then they've got the open face sandwich, which is people who become caregivers who actually don't have family, they're not caring for their family. It started off maybe they were bringing in the newspaper for their neighbor and then, hey, I'm going to run to the store, can I get you something? And they started doing more and more things for a neighbor who didn't have anyone nearby. And so there are a variety of different generations now of caregivers. And the reason that they created this Chantra is because the needs are a little bit different. For example, if you're in your 20s and 30s, you're looking at the lens of finances differently than if you're in your 50s.
Speaker 1:Yes, you are.
Speaker 2:And you've got different kinds of caregiving structures around it. So what they did is they helped it so that you could categorize where you are and get the kind of care you need, whether it's financial or resource, or partners and teams.
Speaker 1:So this is fascinating because, honestly, I am convinced most of us don't first of all realize that, if you are in a caregiving situation, that you're not alone, right? And I'm sure that most of us don't realize how many qualifications of that actually exist, right? So how did you come to know so much about this caregiving network? Sandwich generation.
Speaker 2:Sure, when I was in my early 20s, my first caregiving journey began, and until my husband celebrated his birthday into heaven last year. I've been in a variety of caregiving roles throughout my life, growing up, basically, and I had that also in parallel with my professional career. So I've been on a variety of caregiving roles Just a few of them have included my grandmother, my dad and my husband, and I learned a lot, and one of the things I learned is that when we have these statistics that we're hearing, they're all conservative because I don't know about you, but there's been no doctor's office, no legal paper, no place that I've gone where there's been a checkbox that says I'm a family caregiver.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely right. I've not seen that.
Speaker 2:Not seen that and, for example, one of the numbers that they throw out is that you know there are more about 4 million family caregivers who are actually under the age of 18. So when we talk about caregivers, we're talking about people of a variety of different ages, and I've been in all those roles and I've done that for many, many years, so I've learned a lot.
Speaker 1:So I think that more than qualifies you, but it also I'm going to say this too as a professed woman of God and faithful woman. I honestly believe that we don't even realize the journey that we're having and how that ultimately plays into the voice and the influence that we eventually will have in blessing so many others, and so, certainly, the work that you have done and the work that you are doing and going to do, I think it's going to be tremendous in its impact on so many others.
Speaker 2:All right, Well, thank you, thank you very much, and I completely agree with you, also as a person of faith, that in my professional career, much of what I did I was a passionate communicator, which I still am. I was out communicating all of the time and I was also a caregiver. And now I have said, okay, if you're going to be a communicator and you're going to have this many caregiving journeys and you care about helping other people, this is what you're meant to do. And so I feel now that I'm just living my purpose, so I just this is who I'm meant to be, and all of these experiences were meant for me to be a vessel, a channel for the messages to come out.
Speaker 1:Wow. Well, thank you for that. Okay. So here's what I'd like to maybe get your thoughts on Sure, three core areas. I think about the caregiver and their career yes. I think about the caregiver and their own health Yep. Then I think about leadership considerations, when you now have an organization that can span many and for sure this data would say that you have more than a few who are also caregivers, right, yes? And so those are sort of the three things that I would love to spend a little bit of time unpacking with you. Sure, does that sound?
Speaker 2:okay, absolutely, I can talk to you on all three of those yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where would you like to begin?
Speaker 1:So let's start with the caregiver and career. So how transparent do you believe a caregiver who's in their career experience should be with their employer, with their manager, with their teams about what they're going through?
Speaker 2:Chantra. Thank you. That's such a perfect, perfect, perfect question to ask, having had my entire professional career when I was a family caregiver, never self-identifying because I watched when other people had and they were well, we can't give you this, we're not going to give you this promotion because you've got all these other responsibilities and you need to focus your time there and not being given the opportunities. Sometimes some people were let go when they were letting having people get, uh have, layoffs. They also had people who were caregivers, who the burden was so much they had to cut back on their hours or actually leave the workforce. I really believe there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to have that very candid conversation with people, and here's part of the thing that I talk so much about with caregiving. We have already identified other groups of people who are in temporary seasons of their lives and we embrace it. One of those is, for example, maternity leave.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:So that's a great example, and so we talk about it and the teams work together with it and people navigate it. Caregiving is very much the same. It's a temporary season and we don't know how long it's going to be. It's certainly usually longer than a maternity leave, but it's something where this is a temporary season. The caregivers don't want to leave the workforce, the workforce doesn't want the caregivers to leave, but if they don't on either side, they can't really provide the support. So the precedents have already been put into place for people to be supported. They recognize temporary seasons. I think everyone should share it so the team members can work things out which they've learned how to do. Yes, Employers can learn how to navigate with the caregiver and and caregivers still want to be able to. It was brutal for me, I will say. However, I did not want to step away from my career either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you work so hard, right? I mean, in every one of those seasons that you talked about, whether it's, you know, below 20 and you're in college or college bound, or your early career, or you've put in the work and now you know you're at leadership levels, right, you've worked so hard and I would imagine that one of the things that many face is how do I make sure that I don't get counted out, right? So I think, as a leader, kind of now looking at it from the leadership viewpoint, I'd love to know your thoughts on what can a leader do, because a lot of times we got to talk about the power, right and influence and so, depending on where you are on that journey, your comfort level being transparent with your situation and your needs may vary, right?
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think it's the leadership responsibility in that.
Speaker 2:Love this question and Chantra. One of the things about caregiving is caregiving doesn't discriminate. Yeah, caregiving doesn't care if you're the CEO chairman of the board, doesn't care if you are an entry-level working employee. Doesn't care where you are. So one of the things that encourages leaders to be transparent encourages leaders to share, and some of them have done a fabulous job of talking about the impacts of it Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo, talking about the phenomenal burdens on her while she was working and caring for her aging parents. So leaders have the opportunity to model the inclusivity of family caregivers and often in doing that, they're sharing their own experience. And when you look dollars and cents, wise people talk so much about well, you've got this different group, but they're going to be singled out, and then why isn't the company going to be dealing with me as well? Caregiving covers every kind of a demographic. It covers it doesn't care how old or young you are. It doesn't care what your race is. It doesn't care what color your hair is. It doesn't care about anything.
Speaker 1:It doesn't care about any of those things.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of like the great equalizer, and so in an organization it's very easy for people to step into recognizing the inclusion of it as a priority for having us be able to work effectively together so?
Speaker 1:so it sounds like a couple of things. One, a leader must model the behavior that they expect to see by their team. Yes, including the inclusiveness of the needs of the team is what I'm hearing you say.
Speaker 2:It is because it's not just about the caregiver, it's the caregiver and the team and everyone else. And yet all of them can work together. Yeah, if the team, if the team knows that there is someone who has caregiving responsibilities, you're like okay, how do we work together? And the teams work together to do that, and that's what some companies are really modeling well. So if the leadership team has embraced the fact that we're going to have open, you know, self-identification is going to be very open in our company and that is key. And it does start at the CEO level, at the very highest level of leadership, to open those doors to everyone. And then, when that happens, a lot of it is organic, because people have already figured out how to work together in a lot of situations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wonder if, being the controversial devil's advocate on this one, you know, we live in such an environment of business where it is month in, it is quarter end, it is, you know, annual performance, and certainly if you are a public company or otherwise, right, I wonder if some of that deters the willingness to be so open about it. Many companies, but even in that instance, though, I would imagine that the best companies, the ones that have that loyal employee, that engaged employee, sees this also as another opportunity for inclusiveness. What do you think of that?
Speaker 2:it's absolutely the examples of some of the major organizations that are out there and and what they've done and how they're embracing it is really huge.
Speaker 1:Google the practices they have and and, uh, price waterhouse, other major, major organizations, any examples that hit you um that you could kind of share with us that, uh, folks might think about. One of the ones that I'll give you is one of share with us that folks might think about.
Speaker 2:One of the ones that I'll give you is one of the ones that Google has. They're very, very open about that and what they've got is they've got technologies in place and procedures in place so that it's very transparent about where anyone is working. And then, if you're going to have responsibilities and that are going to hold you back, they have multiple sets of backup plans. So they've got different contingency plans so people all have access to it. Several other things they've done and other companies have done which are brilliant.
Speaker 2:You can, you can donate some of your paid time off hours for a pool for caregivers if they need extra time off, and the other thing that they're incorporating is fabulous. The other thing they're incorporating is hey, so let's say, for example, you've got a couple hours a week you can volunteer to provide respite care for another employee's family. So they're doing things that are helping people, because people want to help. So they're saying you know, this is something that we could benefit from. Now they're not limiting it to caregiving. It's, you know, does somebody need some help? But it's a pool, but they acknowledge it in the caregiving space. So companies are embracing ways to engage each other have candid and open conversations about it so that it just becomes a way of life, just as other things that preceded it in the years before have already done.
Speaker 1:That's excellent, all right. So now, with those things in mind and thinking about the caregiver personally speaking, and really tapping into the experiences that you've had multiple times, how does the caregiver take care of themselves?
Speaker 2:Thank you for asking that question. I talk a lot about. Self-care is not selfish. Self-care is self-love and the speaking from personal experience, from someone who learned the hard way. I now really, really, really encourage people not to shave off self-care, which is so easy for us to do. And then there was a period of time where people said, oh yeah, women are first to do this. I will tell you, I know enough men who've done it as well. So this is this is not a man or woman kind of a thing.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you said that because you know being being privileged to to be a leader of people. I'll tell you, you nailed it when you said there is no discriminating fact, right? You nailed it when you said there is no discriminating fact, right? And men are managing this as much as women are, quite frankly.
Speaker 2:They really are. They're managing it as well. And I hear story after story after story. And what happens on the self-care side is it's easy for any of us to shave off a little bit. We've got more responsibilities. Well, you know, I'll shave this off.
Speaker 2:Mine was, you know, I'm a gym person six days a week and I was like, well, I don't have to go every day and I can go every other day. So I shaved that off a little bit. And then, as more responsibilities came, well, I'll wait until after my husband goes to bed and then I'll do the finances, because he wants to do them but he doesn't really do them, right. So I'm shaving off a little sleep, I'm shaving off a little all of those things. And then one day and I'll tell you this very, very quickly, but one day I had fixed his lunch sandwich and potato chips and they're sitting there and he starts to eat them and he dropped a potato chip on the floor. Now, who cares about a potato chip on the floor? He dropped a potato chip on the floor and and I inside, I have what I call the grace of space, which is that small gap of time between what goes on inside and what comes out outside has a chance to pause and determine if they really want to say that. So in my head I'm going.
Speaker 2:I can't believe that you dropped a potato chip. I worked all this time. I've been up since the crack of dawn doing all these things for you and blah, blah, blah, blah, which is not a part of anything I would ever think and feel. So I had no idea where that even came from. But fortunately, what came out of my mouth, because of grace of space, is, I said honey, here's some more chips. I'm going to go in the next room for a minute and I'll be right back. Enjoy your sandwich.
Speaker 2:I went, I sat down, I said what just happened. And so we, we don't know what it is, we don't know, and it's so important for us to practice self-care and for those of us who don't feel like we're equipped to do that, we get an accountability partner and you say hold me accountable to practicing self-care, make sure I am telling you what I'm doing and make sure I'm doing it, because when we're only accountable to ourselves, I don't know about you. Yeah, but you know it's pretty easy for me to justify something, especially if it was really good chocolate, but for me for a lot of times it was self-care, and we can't do that Because nobody else can practice self-care for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, my God. Honestly, like one of the things you said, the things you begin to shave off are the things that you probably need the most right Sleep exercise. I know some wonderful caregivers who are so focused on making sure that who they're caring for gets well fed and well nourished. And then you say, what did you eat? And you know, while it might've been healthy, was it as much as you should? Because there's that element of anxiety that maybe takes away the appetite. Right?
Speaker 2:Well, there are a couple sides of that. One, you're fixing the meal for them, so you're fixing something that they're going to eat, not as much as what you'd want to eat. What are they going to eat? Well, then you're getting everything ready for them. Yes, and for part of the journey, you're going to be feeding them. Yes, so you're preparing the food, maybe you them. Yes, so you're preparing the food, maybe you're sampling it.
Speaker 2:While they're doing, then you're sitting and supporting them being able to eat, and then you're cleaning up and you're also caring for them, because you've got to have the what happens after dinner, before they go to bed. So you've got the dishes to do, you've got those things to do. So for me, a lot of times, my meal was as I'm scraping the pan, eating a little something, or as I'm fixing it. So it's not that you're sitting down there having that relaxing meal with a conversation. So that's a really, really good point. You know, it's all of those things and then things you know, like you know trimming your own nails. You know you're trimming your loved one's nails. You're not doing all of these other kinds of things and it, but it's also doing things that are healthy for you mentally reading a book or just having some quiet time, or with professional development? I'm shaving off professional development things because I don't have time to study something.
Speaker 1:You know what comes to mind as you speak to, and I don't know if this falls in the career category or the health category, maybe blend of the two. But I know that it also can be easy, because you have this one lane that's pulling so much, to be a bit um, uh, uh cautious about what else you add to the plate that could be helping you for your own personal advancement. Right, and I think that probably falls in the career lane for some, the health lane for others. But what do you think about that? Because it really is.
Speaker 1:You said something earlier that it's a scenario where it's not time bound, like the nine month, you know, pregnancy and maybe three month maternity leave. Right, it's not time bound. It could be, you know, a couple of years, it could be 12 years. Right, it could be all things in between, certainly not at the same density level, which is the grace of the whole thing. But I wonder what your thoughts are for someone that's listening, who is absolutely, you know, thinking through how they're navigating and their own healthy factors, and they're saying but Sue, how do I navigate the things that I'm drawn to and want to do, but I still have this extra thing, right? Do you pause on your life or do you live your life in tandem and come up with support and solutions to allow that?
Speaker 2:It's a both and Chantra it's a both, and Every diagnosis is different and the seasons of the diagnosis are going to be different for every person, and I'm going to answer part of the question in a moment. The thing I want to make sure I really kick it off with is, as you would do, as I would do, if you saw someone and you felt they needed support. You would say hey, can I help you? Is there anything I could do to? If you saw someone and you felt they needed support, you would say, hey, can I help you? Is there anything I could do to help you? When you know someone is navigating, okay, well, there's a season in our lives where we're offering that. There is also a season in our lives where we could be the recipient of that. So the first place that I'm going to start with your answer is, if somebody offers help, say yes, thank you. Now, what I did is I made a list of things that if somebody had five minutes, what could they do? If somebody had 10 minutes, what could they do If they had a half an hour, if they had an hour, if they had half a day. So I had different kinds of things that people offered to help and I kind of knew people around me who might be offering to help, so I've had specific things. So if they said, may I help you, I could say yes. So when people offer help, be in this season of receiving and don't go oh I feel so guilty, don't. Or oh I feel so bad, I don't want to burden anybody else. They wouldn't offer. If it was a burden, they would they ought. So the first answer to your question is when somebody offers, the second one is it's going to help. It's going to impact different areas of your life in different amounts during the caregiving journey, depending on what season of the caregiving journey you are in, and so there will be times.
Speaker 2:I intentionally chose to put something I'm passionate about up on the shelf during my caregiving season, and that's travel. I'm a very passionate traveler and what I realized is the world was still going to be around when I didn't have my caregiving journey anymore. So I chose to put so there's no emotion around it. It's like okay, I didn't resent it, I didn't wish I could. It was like no, and I heard stories from other people and it's like great, and we used to share caregiving or our trip information with each other. We'd look at TV shows or things like that to show that. So there's that part of it that you intentionally put pieces of that.
Speaker 2:You also evaluate where you can have support from other people. So is there a professional who could come in so that you have capacity to if you're still a business professional that and you've got to work that you have capacity to be doing that. So you evaluate whether it's in your personal life that you want to make sure you are getting to the gym and that means you bring someone in for an hour or for half a day so you can get certain things done and you evaluate what those pieces are. And the other thing is you don't evaluate them in a vacuum. There are support groups that are local support groups. There are people who've been on the journey. A lot of people want to help, and so you don't have to navigate it around all. You don't have to navigate it alone and you don't have to have all the answers there. Help us all around.
Speaker 1:I love it. No, that's right on, so. So tell us a little bit about the resource group that you are now co-founding in in the influencer caregiving space, in the influencer caregiving space.
Speaker 2:Yes, what my co-founder, nancy Treister, and I did is. We founded the Caregiver's Journey, and I had originally started the Caregiver's Journey because I really felt strongly about helping people navigate their entire journey, from when they saw it on the horizon or when it first began, all the way through moving forward after our care receiver has passed away. And I got started with that.
Speaker 2:Nancy and I worked together many years ago. She and her husband and I all worked together and we were neighbors for a period of time. He developed a type of dementia as well, and she would call me with caregiving questions. She was struggling to find answers online and she had her husband at home and so it wasn't as convenient to go physically to a support group. So she was trying to find things online and I said, well, I've always wanted to start a podcast, I have an award-winning course for navigating the caregiving journey, I do the blogs and all, and so we decided to partner together and to create all of these programs for the caregiver's journey to help people navigate all the phases of their caregiving journey, and my one of my big passions is helping businesses and family caregivers thrive together.
Speaker 2:What does it look like to help a family caregiver continue to work and make sure the business is thriving too. Well, this is not all about the business and it's not all about the caregiver. How do we make that work? And so we're doing that. We're in the process of getting ready to write another book.
Speaker 1:Excellent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the podcast is something that we're enjoying doing, and blogs and things like that. What's?
Speaker 1:the name of the podcast and what's the blog. You got to give us all the deets.
Speaker 2:All right, the deets. The podcast is called the Caregiver's Journey Practical Tips and Candid Conversations, and I promise you because the two of us are very direct people yes, we are very direct when we talk about it. She had questions about incontinence. We are very direct when we talk about it. She had questions about incontinence, her husband's incontinence. She was having struggles with things we could. She couldn't find anything online.
Speaker 2:We did a podcast episode on it and I was, I was the uh, I was the model, but it's how do you change and depend when you, when you're, and so we talk about different parts of the experience. We just finished one on travel. You know, when do you know to quit, stop, to quit stop, to quit traveling, quit, stop. And part of what? Because part of what we both had is we had the trip after the last, what should have been the last trip. So that last trip that was so brutal. We both had that and we want to prevent people from having that. And so it's eating, it's wandering, it's taking the car keys away. It's practical tips and we just get right down in and very direct about them.
Speaker 1:This is so needed. This is so good. I think that this is going to be such a handy podcast and tool and resource that you guys are doing. Thank you for doing it. Thank you so, so much for the generous sharing that you've done here with us today as well. I can't imagine that there's not a little applause that are going on around the world from listeners who are grappling with this and trying to figure it out. But there are a couple of themes that seem to resonate. One is that we have to remember who we are and how to stay healthy and strong in this journey in time. You also talk a little bit about the opportunity to show up and let people know what your situation is and be bold in doing so, and also to receive and ask for help. Those are just a few of the nuggets, but there's so many more. Wow. What else would you tell us, just kind of as a parting gift? What would you say is important for us to keep top of mind?
Speaker 2:I practice something I call massive acceptance and radical presence. Massive acceptance is you accept exactly what is the way that it is. You don't have to like it, you don't have to agree with it, you don't have to understand it, you just accept it without judgment of yourself or others, the way that it is, which allows you to stay. The other side of it is radical presence is you're able to stay fully, absolutely present in the moment. One of the things that many caregivers lose sight of is that, yes, there are challenges in our experience, and yet, when we accept it for exactly what it is and we stay fully present, there are moments of absolute joy and absolute beauty in there. And so, if we are staying fully present and we accept our journey, we can make the wisest choices in the most challenging situations, and yet we can fill our hearts with joy in even the tiniest moments. And they're there. And the other part of it is we're all on this journey together. You do not need to journey alone.
Speaker 1:Oh girl, the connectedness. So you are beautiful inside and out and I think this work is going to be beautiful work and I thank you so much for being generous and sharing with Proven Not Perfect community. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for all you do and for bringing these messages to people. I am so grateful for you in my life. I feel truly blessed.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:Bye.