Advocating Through the Noise: Using Your Voice as a Dementia Caregiver

When you are caring for someone with dementia, caregiving quickly becomes more than medications and appointments. It becomes learning how to speak up in medical offices, ask hard questions, challenge recommendations when needed, and trust your own instincts as a caregiver.

In this deeply personal episode of Chat with Nat, Natalie Kime shares what it really means to advocate through the noise while navigating dementia caregiving, medical decisions, caregiver burnout, and emotional overwhelm. She opens up about difficult hospital experiences, medication concerns, navigating nursing home recommendations, and learning to trust her own voice while caring for her mother through vascular dementia progression.

This episode is a powerful reminder that caregivers are not “difficult” for asking questions. They are essential partners in care.

What you will hear:

• How to advocate for aging parents and loved ones with dementia
• Why caregivers must trust their lived experience and instincts
• Questions every caregiver should ask doctors and specialists
• The importance of documenting medications, symptoms, and side effects
• How Natalie navigated difficult medical recommendations for her mom
• Why second opinions matter in dementia care
• Medication side effects and dementia caregiving realities
• How caregiver burnout impacts decision making
• Why caregiver guilt keeps people silent and overwhelmed
• How to advocate for yourself while caregiving for someone else
• The emotional reality of balancing expert advice with personal intuition

If you are navigating dementia caregiving, advocating for aging parents, or feeling overwhelmed by medical decisions, this episode will help you feel more informed, empowered, and less alone.

Today's episode is brought to you by Casa De Confidence Productions, helping podcasters confidently share conversations that matter.

Thank you for listening to Chat With Nat: Caregiving, Money & Real Life Solutions. This podcast is your trusted guide for caregiving strategies, caregiver support, long-distance caregiving tips, financial planning for families, and managing caregiver burnout. Each week, we provide actionable advice, expert interviews, real caregiver stories, and practical tools to help you navigate caregiving challenges, protect your finances, and care with confidence.

Whether you’re caring for aging parents, managing adult children with special needs, or balancing caregiving with work, Chat With Nat is here to help you care smarter, avoid burnout, and feel supported every step of the way.

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Transcript

1:00:00

(Music) to try, treatments to stop, the care that's best and what quality of life means. And while medical professionals bring education and experience, you bring something equally powerful. You bring lived experience, observation, love. You bring intuition, the day-to-day reality that no chart could ever capture. Today, we're talking about what it means to advocate, not only for the person you're caring for, but for yourself as well. Welcome to Chat With Nat, Conversations That Count, where we're talking about caregiving, finances, life, resilience and the real moments that no one prepares you for. I'm your host, Natalie Kime, and today's episode is deeply personal because if you've been a caregiver for any length of time, you've probably experienced this tension. You're trying to honor that expert advice, but also honor what you know in your gut. Today's episode is brought to you by Casa De Confidence Productions. Julie and Dan Collins are the kind of team every podcaster dreams of. They're supportive, professional, and incredibly talented at helping your voice come through clearly and confidently. If you've ever thought, "Hey, maybe I should start a podcast," go connect with them at causityconfidence.website and see what that could look like for you. I wanna start today's episode off with my money tip like I do every week. Y'all advocacy without documentation becomes emotionally exhausting. Make sure that you're keeping records. Keep medication lists, symptom journals, notes from appointments. Track reactions to medications. Oh my gosh, that one is so important. Track their appetite, sleep changes, behaviors, hydration, fails, and concerns. Why? Because when you walk into appointments with data, instead of only emotion, your voice becomes harder to dismiss. And as caregivers, we already carry enough emotional weight. Documentation helps create clarity, confidence, and protection. Why is this considered a money tip? Because there is so much value, hashtag money, in your knowledge, in the documentation that you can keep from what you see every single day. And the way that that value transitions into care, into recommendations from medical professionals, from support staff and so forth is vitally important. It can make all the difference in the world, just like actually being financially prepared can do. As I jump into this episode, I wanna start by talking about professionals understanding money, but you understanding your person. One of the hardest things as a caregiver is to balance that respect for those professionals, for their expertise, for their years of schooling, and years of practice, hands-on with patients, but also still trusting your own instincts. And let me be clear, I absolutely believe in doctors. I believe in nurses, specialists, hospice workers, therapists, and care teams. But professionals see snapshots in time. Caregivers are watching the entire movie. They may see your loved one for a 15 minute period, maybe a 30 minute period. You see them at 2 a.m. You see them fighting medication side effects. You see the confusion, the personality changes. You see the fear in their eyes, and what happens after the appointment is over. This is such an important topic for me because in my mom's decline at the end of 2025, I had to find, I thought I had my voice. I communicated well, but now everything was shifting, everything was changing, and not just a little bit, a lot, overnight. And I had to find my voice for advocating both for my mom and for myself at a whole other level. I remember first finding my voice after my parents moved here when I had to find a new doctor for my mom, new memory care provider. And so of course I went on the search and I found a doctor that from everything I could see online looked like he would be a great fit. And I took my mom to the first appointment. Now, mind you, prior to this appointment, of course there's a lot of paperwork to fill out. There are chart copies from her previous doctor in Utah that need to be transferred down here to Texas and sent to this doctor's office, CAT scan results, all of the things. And I had sent it all over. And they had asked me for it again. And I sent it a second time. And they asked me for it again. So I sent it a third time. And when we got to the doctor's office and the lady checking us in said, the information we asked you for. And I said, well, you've received it three times. I, can you go look again? And sure enough, in about 10 seconds, she's like, oh, there it is. Now, what did this tell me? Number one, if she didn't know that they had the information, there was no way the doctor looked over it. And that was proven when the doctor comes into my mom's appointment and starts saying, asking questions that he should know the answer to based on the information I had provided. And I got a little frustrated and short with him. And he said, you know what? Give me a few minutes to finish up with another patient and I'll be back. Y'all, we sat there for 45 minutes. And you know why? I have no doubt he was in his office reviewing our information and then had the gall to come in and tell me my mom didn't have vascular dementia. My mom was depressed and needed antidepressants and wrote us a prescription. I walked out of that office and the lady said, would you like to schedule your next appointment? I said, absolutely not. In a full waiting room, I said, absolutely not. I will never bring my mom back here. That doctor was so unprepared and contradicted years of doctor's records and my personal observance of where she's at. That's what I'm talking about. That's when I first used my voice. Eventually we found a great provider that we're still with and I'm so grateful for that. But again, at the end of 2025, it was a completely different shift I had to make. That was just the ongoing PCP care for my mom. Not talking about hospitalizations, recommendations for what I should be doing next and people telling me what was best for my mom. The truth is there is a difference between clinical knowledge and lived experience. Caregivers are gonna notice changes before providers will. Oftentimes we can feel intimidated in medical settings. You're sitting in front of a doctor for goodness sakes, right? Or a very experienced nurse or whatever it is. But it is so important to learn how to speak up respectfully as much as possible, but also firmly. Understanding for yourself that asking questions is not being difficult. And anybody that makes you feel like it is, in my opinion, is not a place that you should go back to. You should have providers for your loved one you're caring for that want to know all the details. That actually sit back and take it all into consideration. That will actually have conversations with you like, what do you see the next step as? And then partner with you to try and help that next step be as much of a success as possible. My mom's first hospital visit in December, I had doctors telling me she should go into a nursing home. Now that is something my brother and I discussed with my parents when my mom was first diagnosed. And my parents' wishes were to never go into a nursing home, ever. My mom's mom had had a massive stroke later in life and had been in a nursing home for I think six years until she passed. And my mom was just terrified. Now, of course, this was decades ago, but my mom still remembered what it looked like, what it smelled like. And she was terrified of that. And my brother and I promised my mom and dad that we would keep them at home, meaning their home or one of our homes and take care of them for as long as possible, but that we could not guarantee they would never have to go in a facility. What we promised is that they would never go into one unless it was a last resort. Now, of course, that conversation also includes the fact that I wanted to care give for my parents. I wanted to have them in my home in their later years for as long as possible. So if that doesn't fit you, then maybe that conversation looks a little bit different for you, okay? But as my mom was declining, hospitalized, they're telling me, you need to go to her nursing home so that we can release her to a care facility. You need, and I sat with that for like 24, probably not even 24 hours, maybe 12 hours from the end of one day till getting back to the hospital the next day and the doctor coming in, I said, we're absolutely not doing that. I'm not even entertaining that. So then the next recommendation was to get caregiving support at home. And so I sat with a company that this social worker from the hospital recommended. They came and met me at the hospital. We went into a separate area and had a conversation. And they're telling me all these things that sound great. And then at the end, they tell me the cost. Now, mind you, the cost for a live-in care facility in my area would be about eight to $10,000 a month. Now, when I was on the phone with this gentleman, he was telling me it was about half the cost of that. When I sat down with him the next day for just 16 hours of support care a day, it was gonna be $20,000 a month. So when he said half of that, the 10,000, he was talking per week, $5,000 per week. And here's the thing, they're gonna be here at night when we're all sleeping. They're gonna be sitting in rooms with my mom that I'm already in doing tasks that I do very well. And I have the time, availability, and desire to do myself. So I walked out of that appointment feeling really overwhelmed and frustrated. And I had a conversation with my brother and he said to me, "Are you done? Are you done doing all the things? Are you done caregiving? And by the way, sis, it's okay if you are." And I said, "No, I'm not done." And he said, "Okay, then tell them no." And so that conversation with my brother, the frustration of feeling like, who are these people? Yes, they're experts in what they do, but who are they to tell me what's best for my mom? Who are they to tell me what I'm capable of handling? Now, I did realize there were some big shifts in what care looked like that were sitting on the table, absolutely. But I knew myself, I know myself best, and I knew my mom better than any of them, better than all of them combined. And so I got on the phone with a caregiver friend of mine, and I had this conversation and she reminded me that I know my mom best. And so with the support of what my brother had said, that reminder from a caregiving friend of mine, I stepped into all those conversations standing in my power on why I didn't need it. Not that I owed them an explanation, but why I didn't need to jump from where we were to that after my mom's first hospitalization. And I have continued to hold my voice and hold that place with respect for others, those professionals, but also in strength and power for what's best for me and for my mom. I already talked to you about that instance when my parents first moved here and were looking for a provider and felt like this doctor has no clue what he's even looking at. Like literally trying to challenge the diagnosis my mom had and had been treated for for about three years at that point. It is important for you to feel okay in pushing back. You can push back, stand your ground, speak with power and authority, and still be respectful. It's important that the people you're partnering with for your loved one's care also have a healthy respect for you and the lived experience you're bringing to the table. That they're willing to talk to you about shifts in medication and struggles you're seeing at home, managing behaviors, how best to feed your person, change your person, all of the things, depending on what stage of caregiving you're at and the abilities of your loved one. So how do you get there? Do your own research. Do your own research, but don't completely spiral into it because there is so much out there you're gonna see every opinion on the planet when you do research. I approach it that when I research, I stop after I read something and I think how does this feel? How does this fit into our situation? And what is my gut and my heart telling me about moving forward? Sometimes I would start reading something and I'm like, this doesn't even feel good at all. So I don't even waste my time finishing reading it. But I have gotten to a point where I respectfully and gratefully receive all the recommendations, all the advice, all of the everything from the specialists in any area that work with my mom. I want all the information they have to give me and they know that I'm going to receive that information. I'm going to sit with it. I'm gonna research areas I have questions on. I'm gonna come back with questions and then I'm going to decide the direction to go with expectation that they meet us there. We are blessed that those we have in place do exactly that. But it is a process to get there and you gotta give yourself permission to stand on your own two feet when something doesn't feel good. Don't just blindly accept everything without understanding it. And on the other side, Google can have you convinced chat GPT or wherever else you go for information that your loved one has 83 terminal conditions in a 30 minute period of time. So make sure you're using reputable sources, you're cross referencing information. Make sure you ask for clarification instead of pretending to understand, oh my gosh. This is so important when you're at doctor's appointments or working with specialists for your loved one. Like for us, we have home healthcare coming in. I'm not gonna just not and pretend I understand. If I don't, I'm gonna ask for clarification. I'm gonna ask for more information. Why? Because when they leave, I have to step into whatever the thing there is that it is that they're talking to me about. If I don't understand how to do something, why to do something or when to do something, my mom's care is not gonna be what she deserves to have. It's important that you understand the why behind recommendations they're making. Understand risks versus benefits and get second opinions when it's appropriate. There's nothing wrong with getting a second opinion. I don't know why you wouldn't. Just to feel more confident about the direction you're moving and there's so much guilt in the process of caregiving. There's so much overwhelm. Getting a second opinion so you have clarification or more information can lift some of that guilt, frustration or overwhelm. Standard protocol does not always fit every person, even with the same diagnosis. Your research should empower you, not terrify you. If what you're researching scares you, that's the point you need to start asking more questions of the professionals, the doctors, the nurses, the care teams, whoever it is you're working with to help you feel calmer, help you understand better rather than keep you stuck in a state of fear, not knowing what to do at all. Some of the examples of that can be medication side effects. With my mom's decline, she started having delusions, hallucinations. She was aggressive, she was combative. And that was the decline in her disease. In her first hospitalization, I'm on a video call from the emergency room. I am emotional, I am overwhelmed, I am exhausted and tired, and I have this psychologist say to me, well, I think we should put her on ex-medication and I'm not gonna say it here on the podcast, but if you have questions, feel free to reach out. What do you think of that? Okay, whatever you think is best was my answer. And then for the next three weeks, I saw my mom get worse. When we got out of, we were in the hospital, I think four or five days, came home, she was getting worse. It was harder to deal with. I was on month three of no sleep, trying to keep my patients, trying to keep my mom safe, trying to pray my way through this and hope that this was a situation where we're in a stage and it will pass quickly. And one day at my wits end, I thought, the only thing that's changed consistently is the medication that they put her on. And I started researching that medication and I didn't like what I saw. And so I reached out and initiated a conversation with my mom's primary care physician. And I said, I don't want my mom on this medication anymore. So I need you to help me understand the safest way to get her off of it. And please provide me with alternatives and information so I can understand what those alternatives look like. We had multiple conversations about it. I did research and then we started dosing my mom down. The third day into dosing my mom down, she ended up back in the hospital. This time we were there for, I think four days, maybe five again. And my mom had fallen, which is the reason for the second hospitalization. Because when she fell, she hit her head, she had a black eye, she had a goose egg, they'd done CAT scans. And this time it wasn't behavior related, it was injury related. And so neurology came in. And when I was talking to the neurologist, this was the first time we met with them. He was wonderful. He was asking for all the background information. I told him we were dosing her off this certain medication. And he said, who put her on that? And I said, the psychology department. And he said, where? And I said, here. He said, at this hospital. And I said, yeah. And he said that a memory care patient should absolutely never be on that medication. I would have never, ever prescribed that for your mom. And I said, well, we're weaning her off. And he said, she's in a controlled environment. She's done with it. And this is the replacement I'm putting in place. And because I'd done all the research and understood all the things, when he said the medication, first of all, it was the same one. My doctor said we were gonna put her on once we dosed her off of the other one. So I felt like, okay, doctors are in line here. I already knew all of the things and understood the things he was explaining to me about the new medication. And we instantly made that change. We also put her on an antidepressant that helps regulate mood. So we don't have those significant swings back and forth. And then she was already on a medication, a different antidepressant that helped her to sleep at night and helped improve her appetite because eating was something that we were having issues with. At the end of the day, I was better prepared for that conversation with a neurologist because of the steps I had taken when five weeks earlier, I didn't know what to say. When they recommended something, I just said, okay, let's do it. I didn't ask any questions. I was not in the frame of mind to even think about any of that at the time. And so that's very important as well. When somebody's coming at you with information and you're not in a place where you feel like you can digest it all, ask them to send you more information about it so that you can sit down, you can relax, you can take a nap if you need to, whatever. And then you can look at the information and ask questions about it to be sure that if you say yes to something, it's something you understand, especially side effects. Those can be so significant. If they wanna sedate your loved one, that's a big deal. For my mom, the issues we were seeing in her, the doctor said, is likely the effects of her dementia on the frontal lobe. That's the part of the brain that as it deteriorates, that aggressiveness, combativeness, hallucinations, delusions. And he said, now, I can confirm that by doing a procedure to take a good look at her frontal lobe. However, to do that, we would have to sedate your mom. And sedation with your mom's condition, vascular dementia, could actually make things worse. And I said, nah, we're good then. So what's the next point? Go someplace that you feel like the providers are providing you the information before you have to ask for it, which was the case here. And I said, number one, why would we do a procedure? Granted, her insurance is gonna cover it, but why? Why would we do probably tens of thousands of dollar procedure to get a look when we already know from what's happening that that's what's going on. I don't need you to do that to confirm it. I don't need my mom to be sedated, okay? Hydration and nutrition decisions. I do a lot of things and adjust a lot of things from what I've learned from people, from the speech therapist at home health actually does all of that food coaching and things. And I had employed a lot of things she had recommended for my mom's first hospitalization. Well, a couple of weeks ago, my mom was really struggling with eating again. Yes, I presume she had a UTI. We got her on an antibiotic and pretty sure. I was right because her, everything about her shifted within a couple of days. But also I asked to have the speech therapist come back so we could go over some of the adjustments I'd been making, some of the areas we'd been struggling with so that if we continue to struggle or start to struggle again, if we're able to put things to bed with the infection and treating that, but we start to have the issue as she continues to decline again, I know the things to do. And I took a few notes after she left. I ordered three things she recommended to start utilizing with my mom to make it easier. Mobility equipment. Y'all don't wait. If you're noticing mobility issues with your person, ask questions about that right away. The best thing I did was I was quick to act when it came to mobility support, which made my life easier and made things more comfortable for my mom. Hospice decisions, long-term care options, all of it, y'all. All of those conversations are game changers for you and your person. So if you don't understand them, ask people to slow down and help you get where you need to be so that you can make a decision you truly feel is best. All right, next. Are you allowed to ask questions? Absolutely, you're allowed to ask questions. I think a lot of caregivers fear being labeled emotional, difficult, or non-compliant. You can call me whatever you want. I am as respectful as I can be and if I push back or don't answer my questions, then I'm going to be a little more direct, and if necessary. But asking questions is not being disrespectful. It's responsible. And I think they expect, those professionals, the doctors, the nurses, the hospitals, the whatever, they expect you to ask questions. And even if you get pushback when you ask a question again, maybe make sure that you're going someplace you feel like you have the support you need as a caregiver because that is vital. But also, why in the world would I just take what somebody tells me to do for my mom with no understanding whatsoever? You're a human being battling along someone that you love against a diagnosis that you don't have a medical degree for. So of course you should be asking questions. Of course you should be. And I don't care if they think I'm difficult. I care that my mom's well taken care of. I care that I understand how something works, what possibly could happen, so that if it does, I can act immediately. And the impact on my mom is as minimal as possible. So what are some of the questions you should feel comfortable asking? What are the benefits of this recommendation? What are the risks? What happens if we don't do this? Is there another option? What side effects should we be watching for? Is this going to improve quality of life or just extending procedures? How will this impact daily function? And have you seen this medication combination or this process actually create excessive sedation? See, my mom is on meds that do make her sleep more. But not being on those meds, has my mom in a state of panic, combativeness, not eating well, not sleeping well. Those are the things that are quality of life for my mom. So what I've done is worked with her doctor to keep her on the meds that she needs to be on to have a better quality of life, a more peaceful quality of life, but at the minimum dosage so that we're not just completely knocking her out. And that came from asking questions. That came from trying things. My mom's doctor will tell me, "Hey, if you want to dose down on this, here's how you could do that and let's see what it does." Because she agrees having the least amount of medications in my mom is best, but also having the right ones in place to keep my mom comfortable. You are not here in this role as a caregiver to blindly obey. You are there to partner in care. Now I want to shift to really advocating for yourself as a caregiver. I've touched on a few things in this area, things that I've done or things that you should expect. But listen, somewhere along the way, many caregivers stop advocating for themselves entirely. We get lost in caregiving. We're so focused on getting everything right for our person that we start to ignore what's important for us, so that we who are with our person most are showing up as our best selves. We start to ignore the fact that we're exhausted. We feel guilty if we rest. We push through the burnout that we're feeling. We completely lose our identities. Caring emotional pressure from family's opinions. That can be a big one. I am blessed to not have to face that one. But I hear stories almost daily of people who do. And the emotional pressure from a post they put in a caregiving group carries through. I can feel the weight of what they're facing. And then feeling judged no matter what decision you make. Everybody in my circle knows, look, I want all the recommendations. If you've been a caregiver before and you're a friend of mine or acquaintance, mine or some somehow come along, my podcast or my social media, and you want to make a recommendation of something you did when facing a similar situation, thank you. I will take it into consideration. And I'll usually say, thank you for that information. We actually have been tackling this and making some adjustments. But I'm grateful for all the information people give me. But I don't give a hill of beans. I think that's the saying. I don't give a hill of beans what somebody thinks about what I'm doing. You can judge me all you want. The only thing I care about is does my mom look safe, comfortable, well fed? Does she seem as as happy and content as she can possibly be in the stage that she's in? That's it for me, so I don't care what anybody else thinks of me. My job is to take care of that woman to the best of my ability. And I will do so with or without people's agreement or support, if need be. The truth is you can deeply love someone and still admit that this is hard. In one of my groups today, somebody put a post and. She was saying that her loved one had recently had just been put in a hospital and she came home. They're going to keep her for three or four days. She came home feeling such a sense of relief. Because the house was quiet and she could just sit for a little while. And she's like, I feel guilty for feeling like that. And I'm so glad that she felt like she could say it and communicate like that, because when I looked at the comments, when I made a comment of my own, it was all support of, oh, my gosh, that is the one when my loved one was in the hospital or when my loved one was in rehab or something for a few days, it was the most rest I've had in months or even years. Don't feel guilty about that. Your loved one is being taken care of the way they need to, but very capable people. And it's OK for you to sit back and think, I don't know the last time that my shoulders relaxed or I was able to take that deep of a breath. Or look forward to being able to lay down and take a nap without a bell ringing or your name being yelled or whatever process you use with your person to get your attention, right? It's important, y'all, to set boundaries. It is important to ask for help. Don't assume people know what you need. But also, if somebody offers to help, give them an idea of what that really looks like. Because you know the areas you need help and say, which of those areas do you think you can help me with? It can keep from misunderstandings happening. But by all means, ask for help and accept that outside support. Therapy, counseling, support groups. It is so important that you keep your mental health on point through this process because you are carrying a lot. You have got to protect that. And you know what? Let go of the need to justify what you're doing to anybody else. You don't owe them an explanation. They are in your shoes. You don't have to explain anything or justify anything to anybody. Sometimes the hardest advocacy is advocating for your own peace. But it's very, very important that you do. The reality of caregiver guilt. Whoo! This is a big one, y'all. No matter what decision you make, somebody's going to disagree. Or you might even disagree within yourself and just question like crazy. Did I make the right choice? Are we moving in the right direction? One doctor, they might recommend something. Another recommend something else. Family members are going to have opinions while they might not be showing up to help or not be in a position to. Social media tells you all the things you need to do. All the things you shouldn't do. And meanwhile, you're standing there trying to make the best decision possible with with incomplete information and an exhausted brain. Number one, there is rarely a perfect answer. Most caregiving decisions live somewhere amongst the gray. Now, for me, I had to really learn this because my whole life, I have been in the financial world in corporate America and in my own business. I have financial, it's numbers. It's black and white. And I had to learn to comfortably live in the gray. There's not necessarily going to be a perfect answer. Some things you're going to learn by trial and error. Some things are going to work out the first time. And some things aren't going to work out till the 10th time. At the end of the day, the question you should be asking is, am I making this decision from love? Or from a place of trying to be perfect? Because perfect doesn't exist. Perfect people don't exist. Perfect processes don't exist. So are you moving in the direction you're drawn based on love and wanting to care well for your person? Or are you trying to achieve a standard that you can never achieve? Quality of life matters as much for us as caregivers as it does for the loved ones we're caring for. And a caregiver's perspective matters. It is okay to change if something isn't working. Even if you're like, this is the direction I'm going to go and people are like, I don't know about that, whatever. And it doesn't work out. And the next step is doing what everybody told you to do before. And that one does work out. Okay. Trial and error. Nothing about this process is black or white. And at the end of the day, sometimes advocacy as caregivers for ourselves means saying yes. And sometimes it means saying no. Also, it can mean saying, I tried that. It's just not right for us. As a caregiver, it is so important that you trust yourself again. Because caregiving can make you doubt even the simplest of things. When you're overwhelmed, exhausted, when professionals speak with confidence and you're barely holding it together emotionally. But caregivers develop something powerful over time. It's called awareness. And you need to trust that. You need to trust the patterns you're noticing, the small changes you're seeing, the energy shifts with your person and yourself. The responses that you're getting from them. Pain cues, emotional reactions. That awareness matters. It can give you more confidence. But if you've got to trust yourself to move in a direction and give yourself permission to shift at that direction, isn't quite doing what you thought it would do. Doesn't mean you failed. It mean that that one didn't work. Move on to the next. Trust your informed intuition, combined passion with education. Use your voice and remember, you know, your loved one deeply. After my mom's significant decline last year, I did talk about being a caregiver on my podcast. If you go back to last year's episodes and especially the year before that when I first started my podcast, it actually was named something different. It was not just my business, it was my business. I had a business that was focused on nickels and dimes because it was solely focused on financial finance. Oh my goodness. It was solely focused on personal finance because that's my business. I'm a wealth strategist. I educate people about money. I show them what's possible. I cheer them on for what they're already doing. I helped them reset and refocus where they need to. But now I'm a caregiver at a different level. And the people I followed who use their voice to share bravely their stories, because I have seen comments on social media where people are like, why would you post that picture of your loved one? You're humiliating them. You're embarrassing them. How could you do that? I don't show pictures of my mom and what's going on with her I show them because I know there's a caregiver out there just like me. Just like me, who's trying to get through the moment in front of them. And the people I followed and their willingness to share their story unafraid. Uncurated. Helped me navigate some of the most difficult times that I've been through as a caregiver. And I realized. That not everybody follows those people. And if I don't share my story and if I don't show that video or that picture or talk about the difficulty or the win or whatever it is that's going on, somebody out there begging for support might not get it. And that's a lot of where that I don't care what you think of me. Go ahead and judge me. It does. It doesn't phase me comes from. Is because I had a realization that the people I followed who are willing. To open the blinds. Give me a peek at their caregiving life. Saved me in some situations. And if one story I tell one podcast I record does that for somebody else, it's worth it. And I believe my mom would want that. Advocacy is not fighting for everyone in the room. Sometimes it's just simply refusing to abandon your own discernment. My hot take for this week is this. Caregivers are some of the strongest advocates in the world, but also some of the most dismissed. People love to tell caregivers what they would do. Until they're the ones sitting beside the hospital bed, making impossible decisions. And here's what I want you to hear today. You do not have to surrender your voice just because someone has credentials. Respect that expertise. Ask those questions. Learn, research, listen. But also remember, you are the expert on your person's daily life. And your voice matters too. If no one has told you this today, you're doing an incredible job. Not a perfect job, not an easy job, but a deeply loving job. And every time you ask another question, seek another answer, speak up one more time or trust your