Chat with Nat: Caregiving, Money, Finances, and Support for Caregivers
Caring for aging parents or loved ones while managing your career, finances, and your own life can feel overwhelming, isolating, and financially stressful. balancing work, and feeling overwhelmed by financial decisions, Chat With Nat is your trusted resource.
Chat with Nat, a caregiving podcast focused on caregiver support, financial planning for caregivers, and navigating the real-life challenges of balancing care, money, and well-being.
Nat dives into the caregiving topics that matter most, caregiving strategies, emotional support, financial planning, budgeting tips, and real‑world solutions that help you care with confidence without sacrificing your own future.
From practical episodes on how to pay for care, plan ahead financially, avoid burnout, and navigate family caregiving challenges, to honest conversations with experts, caregivers, and advocates — this show gives you the clarity, community, and tools you need to protect your money, your time, and your wellbeing.
Whether you’re newly caring for a loved one or have been at it for years, Chat With Nat is here to help you care smarter, not harder.
Hosted by Natalie (Nat), this show brings honest conversations and practical guidance to help you manage caregiver stress, avoid burnout, and feel more confident in both your caregiving role and your financial decisions.
Each episode explores:
Caregiver support and strategies for everyday challenges
Financial planning, money management, and the cost of caregiving
Caregiver burnout, mental health, and setting boundaries
Balancing caregiving with work, family, and personal life
Supporting aging parents and navigating complex family dynamics
Whether you’re a family caregiver, supporting an aging parent, or planning for the financial and emotional impact of care, you’ll find relatable stories, expert insights, and actionable advice you can actually use.
If you’re looking for guidance on caregiving and finances, without the fluff, this podcast will help you feel supported, prepared, and less alone.
They tell you how to organize medications, advocate at doctor’s appointments, survive sleepless nights, prepare for hospice, and maybe even how to say goodbye.
But almost nobody talks about what happens after.
In this deeply honest episode of Chat with Nat, Natalie Kime talks about the other side of caregiving, the place she has been walking since losing her mom on June 29. This episode is not about the caregiving itself. It is about the healing, adjustment, grief, identity shift, guilt, nervous system recovery, and quiet that can come after hands-on, full-time caregiving ends.
Natalie shares what it has felt like to move from four years of caring for her parents, and the last 10 months of intense caregiving for her mom, into a new season where the hospital bed is gone, the medications are no longer needed, the calendar is quieter, and the responsibilities have changed.
She talks about survival mode, brain fog, emotional numbness, guilt, laughter, identity loss, and the strange silence that follows when caregiving ends. She also shares how she gave herself permission to rest, stay offline, not record fresh podcast episodes until she felt ready, and return slowly to her purpose.
This episode is for anyone who has cared for someone they love and now finds themselves asking:
Now who am I?
What You Will Hear
Why almost nobody talks about what happens after caregiving ends
What Natalie has experienced since losing her mom on June 29
Why survival mode does not have an off switch
How the nervous system responds after months or years of caregiving
Why caregivers may feel exhausted even after caregiving ends
Brain fog, numbness, overwhelm, and emotional whiplash after loss
The strange habit of still wanting to check on someone after they are gone
Why Natalie gave herself permission to rest and stay offline
The grief of losing both the person and the purpose
Why caregiving can become an identity
The silence that comes when daily caregiving responsibilities stop
Guilt after caregiving, including guilt around resting, laughing, and moving forward
Why nobody else gets to define your grief
How Natalie compares this transition to becoming an empty nester
Why grief is physical, not just emotional
How chronic caregiving stress changes the body
Why learning to live again is not betrayal
How healing does not mean forgetting
Natalie’s reflections on watching her dad grieve the love of his life
The difference between loving someone and being able to care for them at home
Why caregivers do not owe anyone an explanation
Practical ways to move through life after caregiving
How to carry love forward in a new way
Episode Summary
This episode is about the quiet after caregiving.
Natalie opens by naming what many caregivers experience but few people discuss: the moment after caregiving ends, when the house feels different, the schedule disappears, the hospital bed is gone, and the person who built their days around someone else’s needs is left wondering who they are now.
She shares that after her mom passed, she caught herself turning as if she needed to check on her, order something for her, or prepare medications. For the first few weeks, she experienced numbness, brain fog, and a sense of not knowing what to do next.
Natalie explains that caregivers often live in survival mode for so long that their nervous systems do not know how to simply turn off. Even when the daily caregiving responsibilities stop, the body may still be wired for emergencies, listening for breathing, tracking needs, and waiting for the next thing to happen.
She also talks about grieving the person and the purpose. For Natalie, caregiving became part of her identity. It shaped her days, her work, her routines, her priorities, and her sense of purpose. When that role changed after her mom’s death, the silence felt loud.
This episode is also about guilt: guilt for resting, guilt for laughing, guilt for finding joy, guilt for getting frustrated, guilt for stepping away, guilt for not doing more. Natalie reminds listeners that guilt surrounds so much of caregiving, no matter what choices were made.
But she also reminds caregivers that love does not always mean keeping someone at home. Love means showing up. Every caregiver has different resources, capacity, wiring, time, and support. No one owes anyone else an explanation for how they cared for someone they loved.
Natalie encourages listeners to give themselves space, allow joy, accept help, keep traditions alive, talk about their person, journal, seek grief support when needed, and return to purpose slowly.
Her message is clear:
You are not grieving wrong.
You are not weak.
You are not broken.
You are healing from one of the most emotionally demanding roles a human being can have.
Pull Quotes
“Survival mode doesn’t have an off switch.”
“Few people understand unless they’ve walked this road that you are also grieving an identity.”
“As overwhelming and as heavy and as loud as the work of caregiving can be, the silence when it’s gone is so much louder.”
“Nobody else can define your grief for you.”
“You do not need to explain your grief to anybody.”
“Love does not mean you keep your person home. Love means you show up for them.”
“Learning to live again isn’t betrayal.”
“Healing does not equal forgetting. It just means carrying things differently.”
“Your healing on the other side of caregiving deserves the same compassion that you gave to the person you loved.”
“Caregivers don’t stop loving when caregiving ends. We simply learn a new way to carry that love forward.”
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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Hey friends, welcome back to Chat With Nat, conversations that count. Everyone talks about being a caregiver. They tell you how to organize medications, advocate, how to overcome those sleepless nights, prepare for hospice, and maybe even how to say goodbye. But almost nobody talks about what happens after. When the house gets quiet, the hospital bed is gone, the medications are disposed of, and the calendar is empty. And you're left sitting there thinking, "Now who am I?" Today I want to talk about the other side of caregiving because this is the walk I'm on since losing my mom on June 29th. And I do still support caregiving for my dad, but I want to talk about the other side of that hands-on full-time 24-7 caregiving.(Music) Not the caregiving itself, but the healing, the adjustment, and the shift that comes after. See, the thing is, survival mode doesn't have an off switch. For weeks, months, years, your brain has been wired for emergencies. You wake at every sound. You know medication times without even looking. You automatically listen for breathing. You don't sleep deeply because somebody needs you. And then one day, they don't need you in the same way anymore. They have passed and things have gotten extremely silent. Here's a thing though. Your nervous system doesn't know that. Living in fight or flight for all this time, it is why caregivers stay exhausted after caregiving ends. That brain fog, the memory issues because you are so focused on the needs of somebody else still sits there. Feeling emotionally numb one day and overwhelmed the next. Absolutely the norm that I've been walking this past few weeks. Your body is releasing those weeks, those months, those years of stress. For me, my parents have been here for years now. As a matter of fact, it was four years this last week since I moved my parents here. And to some degree, there was a significant shift. I had other people I was responsible for. Their safety, their health, doctor's appointments, medications, things like that, right? But it was really just the last 10 months of my mom's life that things intensified very quickly and very significantly. Shortly after my mom passing, the three days we were here before my dad and I went to Utah with my brother and sister-in-law and transferred mom's body there, I would catch myself turning on the couch as if I was about to stand up and walk into a room and check on her. There are still moments now, what are we, about six weeks later that it passes through my mind. Oh, I need to order this or oh, I need to get mom's medications ready. It's not as frequently as it was immediately after, but it's still there. And I would say for the first four weeks after my mom's passing, I was very much in that numb stage that not necessarily having memory issues, but it did feel like a brain fog of I don't really know what to do now. And I don't know, I kept having this thought of I did not show up online almost at all for about four weeks after my mom passed. And I kept thinking, oh, I should post something. And then I thought, no, my people know my mom passed. And I'm pretty sure if somebody noticed I haven't been present, they're going to realize I'm taking some space and I'm taking some time. And so it was little things from having taken care of my mom that was popping up in my head and realizing I no longer had those responsibilities, but also I need to do this and shift back into regular life, my new normal. Um, and thank goodness I gave my self permission to not until I felt like it. I didn't do, I didn't show back up on social media. I didn't start recording fresh episodes for the podcast because I felt like I had to. I did them because I felt like I was ready because I took time to sit in that space and just do whatever I felt like doing each day. And of course, pay attention to my dad, spend time with him, have conversations with him, check on him and his emotions. And I'm really glad that I had a stronger sense to sit still than to get moving quickly. Grieving the person and the purpose is very, very real. Most people understand that you're grieving a loved one. Few people understand unless they've walked this road, that you are also grieving an identity. I am a well strategist, a financial professional. I have my own business and it gave me the ability to do what I did for my mom and what I still do for my dad. But a caregiver is what became my identity. And I am blessed that what I do for work and caregiving are tied so closely together because of the cost of caregiving, because of the financial expenses that come up that I didn't completely walk away from my business. Obviously, I had bills to pay and clients to take care of, but they're tied very closely together. And I believe that my identity is helping me in this transition back into things. It's because I'm still talking about a lot of the same things, my lived experience. But I identified this last few months as my mom's caregiver first and foremost. Every single day had a purpose. There were appointments, meals, baths, medication, making sure she was comfortable advocating for her. And then suddenly nothing is scheduled. And the silence of it, man, as overwhelming and as heavy and as loud as the work of caregiving can be, the silence when it's gone is so much louder. It's absolutely deafening. I think people run into things like identity loss. What do I do now? Who am I now? I relate it to when I have one son, I'm a single mom. So when my son was a senior in high school, he was getting ready to go in the military. And I was facing this becoming an empty nester phase. I relate it to that in the sense of trying to figure out who you are after you don't have the everyday responsibility for your children anymore. And in this case, not only do you not have the time for your person, they're not coming home to visit when they have leave or a long weekend for college or something like that. And so it's similar and also different as many things are. There can be a guilt that comes with resting because your body is wired to go, go, go, do, do, do all the time. And even though that wears you out and you at times are wondering, how can I keep doing this? I don't know if I can keep going. On the other side, you almost feel guilty that you're sitting still, that you're not getting things done at the pace that you used to. And then there's the guilt of laughing and finding joy. I'm going to say this this way. I've been blessed in my life to go through some very difficult situations. And maybe that gives me a little bit different perspective. It was easier, it is easier to laugh and find joy in missing my mom than it is to sit and be sad. Now, could I sit and be sad? Absolutely. And I think that there's an automatic heaviness that when you lose a loved one, it's literally punching you in the face, in the gut, in the back of the head, all the time on intense replay. And I do think with time, the loudness of that softens. But when there's love, that never fully goes away. And for us, even through my mom's last couple days, we found times to laugh. And preparing for her services, we found times to laugh. We cracked jokes. And since being back home, it's the same. If you're watching this on YouTube, the room I'm sitting in exactly where I sit, and I'm talking to you right now, is where my mom was laying in her hospital bed. And I didn't know if that would be really hard for me. And at first, there was a it was not hard. And it did not make me sad. It was just different. And after a couple weeks being back into work, I love knowing that I sit every day to make a difference in other people's lives in the same place I was standing next to my mom laying as she was beginning to leave hers behind. And I think it drives home for me every single day, the importance and the purpose I have in the work that I do. But you're gonna feel guilt. You feel guilt when you're caregiving, you feel guilt on the other side of it. The reality is it's okay to laugh again. It's okay to joke, to find joy. It's okay to get back to activities when you're ready to. And it is also okay to sit still, to take the time that you need. Nobody else can define your grief for you. Even though I am walking in grief right now, I cannot define somebody else's version of their grief that they may be going through right now. As a matter of fact, I talked to a good friend of mine the other day about this. She lost her husband just I think it was two days after we lost mom. I lost my mom. Now I am watching my dad who lost the love of his life, his partner of 60 years. And so can I understand some of the things my friend is sharing with me? Absolutely. But I didn't lose my partner like she did. I lost my mom. And I know I've told her many times and I'm telling all of you, your grief is your grief. So while other people will tell you to just stay busy, or other people will tell you to get out, or other people will say whatever it is that they're saying, if that doesn't feel right to you, you don't have to do it. You do not need to explain your grief to anybody. You don't owe them that. What I can also say is that people telling you that are likely doing it because they love you. And seeing you sad and not knowing what else to say or do, they're doing the best that they can. But it's okay to sit in that grief. Not forever, but until you can find strength to take that next step, whatever that might be. Maybe it's days, maybe it's weeks, maybe it's months before you feel like I've got a full-fledged routine. I have a true new normal going. And yet your loved one is still going to be carrying with you everywhere you go when you get there. There is no design for grief. And whatever that looks like for you is absolutely okay. See, for me, what I've learned and realized is I am not just grieving my mom. I'm grieving the version of me that existed before she needed me. I'm grieving the version of me I was for her because now things shift. I'll never be those exact same two people again. Never because of the experience of caregiving. And I am so grateful for it. I believe that there are tools, there are experiences, there are hardships that I faced as a caregiver that have made me better and stronger than I've ever been before. And I'm going to carry that into continuing to support caregiving to my dad until he needs the 24-7 caregiving. And I'm going to carry those things into the messages I share with my clients, in the communities I'm in, in the importance of being prepared. I watched a reel this morning where this may be a little bit off topic, but I think important to say I watched a reel just before recording today of a woman saying she went to visit her mom at a memory care, at her assisted living, sorry, assisted living center. And one of the other residents in the background said, you know, if I was younger and healthier and my parents needed care, I would have to be led by love and take care of them at home or something to that extent. And I am watching this video and I just see this woman and she says, I know why this is so triggering for me is because as caregivers, you feel like you have to explain so many things all the time. You have to justify if you care for them at home. You have to justify if you don't. And just like grief, no, you don't, you don't owe anybody an explanation. But I think maybe that understanding and that opinion that I have in that comes from being the caregiver, from making the choice. Love does not mean you keep your person home. Love means you show up for them. And maybe your capacity doesn't allow for you to keep them at home and maybe your capacity is not rooted in being wired to be a caregiver. And that does not mean that you don't love your person. You are doing the best you can and you are the only one that needs to know that. But I do know people I've talked to on this side of caregiving who feel guilty, they didn't do more, who feel guilty that they didn't keep their person at home. And my only question is, did you do the best you could with what you knew, the resources you had available and the capacity or time that you could give? I'll say it again, guilt surrounds every aspect of caregiving. I look back and I did care for my mom at home, but I feel bad for the times that I got frustrated. I feel bad for the times that I walked away. I wished I would have sat in this room with her on the bed with her even more than I did. And I remember saying to my friend yesterday, you know, there's a part of me that thinks that and another part of me that I think I'm beyond mom passing enough to start to realize that this room was work for me. And so I did sit with her. I did read to her, I held her hand, but there was a part of me as a daughter who wishes I had done more. Does she know how much I loved her? Does she know everything I did, including getting frustrated and angry and whatever else along the way was all because I loved her. But I couldn't relax in this room the same way I can when I could when I stepped out of this room because this room contained the caregiving responsibility that I had. And again, I did all those things, but I also stepped away and it's important to do that. So that guilt, it's there no matter what. I also know I did an amazing job with my mom. I did. I did. And I know that. And I still wish I'd done some things different. Now, when it comes that time for dad, I don't know if it will look the same. If it looked different, it probably will be both similar and different at the same time. But it's important to just recognize where you are. Give yourself space. Allow yourself to feel joy. Allow yourself to laugh. Allow yourself to do whatever it feels like in that moment or that day you have the capacity to do and the desire to do. The next thing I want to talk about is how our body keeps score. Grief is not just emotional. It's physical. Some of the changes that caregivers will experience is fatigue, weight changes, hormonal shifts, brain fog, forgetfulness, anxiety, emotionally flat. Yes, to every single one of those, every single one of those was part of my caregiving reality, which means my body is now shifting on the other side of that. You see, chronic stress changes the body while healing takes time. So I encourage you not to judge yourself. Your body is recovering for weeks, months, maybe even years of survival. The transition that your body went through getting into caregiving now needs to move the other direction. Chemically and physically, your body changed to meet the requirements of caregiving. And now that that is gone, your body has got to adjust back the other way. Give yourself grace. Give yourself time. Learning to live again. Oh, this one. I think it kind of leans back into the it's okay to laugh. It's okay to find joy, but learning to live again isn't betrayal. Learning to live again doesn't mean you love them any less. That first vacation without them, first holiday, the first time you laugh until you cry, the first day you didn't cry at all. Sometimes on the other side of caregiving, we feel guilty for healing, but healing does not equal forgetting. It just means carrying things differently. Our loved ones, our person spent years teaching us how to live, how to love, how to be a partner, how to parent, depending on the role that your loved one is. Is it a child, a spouse, an aging parent? Right? So they spent years teaching us how to be in those roles, how to love them, how to live alongside them, how to live independently, all of the things they wouldn't want us to stop living now. I told my dad a couple weeks ago, you know, my dad's really sweet. He goes out on the back patio some evenings and he'll just sit there quietly because we're in Texas. You don't sit comfortably on a patio during the day. And it's sometimes a little rough even to do it in the evenings. It's still pretty warm. We do not get those cool down nights that some of the northern areas of the country get. However, he will sit out there sometimes just in the quiet, quiet, just with his eyes closed. And I know what he's doing now. And I give him his space, but I peek out at him. And sometimes if he's been out there for 20, 30 minutes, I'll go out and I'll sit down and I'll ask him if he's okay. And I'll ask him if he wants to talk about her because he's sitting there remembering the love of his life, missing her. And that doesn't mean he has tears down his face. Sometimes he does, but he's just sitting there remembering how beautiful is that. And also there are some things that, you know, for about a week and a half, my dad really didn't get up and do his exercises like he normally does. And I asked him about it. He's like, I just haven't been motivated. And I said, you know, dad, mom sees everything we're doing now. Now that of course is according to my belief, but I said, mom can see us. Do you think she would want to see you not taking care of yourself, not staying healthy so the life you have left is the best that it can be? And he said, you know what, you're right. And he got up right then and he did his exercises and then he's done them every day since. Sometimes we just need that nudge. And that's why I think it's important to share what you're feeling. If you're struggling in this stage, there are amazing grief counselors that you, you can reach out to and get support from. I don't know what your grief journey looks like, but whatever it is, if you're struggling to the point that you need support, please go find it. And if you need to help finding it, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram at Natalie McPhee Kine or in the show notes, you can send a message into the show and I would love to see how I can help you in your, in your community, in your city, your state, whatever, find resources that can help you walk through your grief journey. And that's what I want to talk a little bit more about now. As we get ready to close out this episode, some of the practical things that have helped me is giving myself that permission to rest and not moving sooner than I felt like moving just because somewhere in my brain I thought I needed to. It's okay to continue routines that bring you comfort. It's okay to look through pictures and it's okay not to if it's too hard. You'll get back to it. It's okay to talk about them. Oh my gosh, so many, I have walked into so many communities and walked into is, is, I don't know the word for it. I'm not physically walking into them through social media. I have entered so many communities where you hear people talking about people keep saying, I don't know what to say. You know, I said earlier in this episode, sometimes people are encouraging you to move forward, get back to doing things because they want to see you happy again and they don't understand your, your grief journey. And even if they've walked through grief, it's not the same and you don't owe them an explanation for sure. But maybe also say, you know, when it's heavy and hard for me, I'd love it if you asked me about them. I'd love it if we could talk about them, not what I'm going through, but about them and have time for me to share with somebody else the memories and the stories that I loved living with my person. Writing letters. I'm not a, I'm not a letter writer. I mean, I would write a letter. I still love getting tangible mail. But what I mean by for me, writing letters is journaling. I journaled, as a matter of fact, I did not journal for probably about three weeks after my mom passed and I kept thinking there that I needed to as well. And maybe it would have helped. I don't know. But the way I did it is I took a break and when I sat back down, I journaled six or eight pages straight of what the previous three or four weeks had looked like the four moms passing three moms passing and after moms passing. And it, it was exactly what I needed to just be able to put it all down on paper, having now walked through every step and, and then release it all by writing it in my journal. Keep certain traditions alive. Don't not celebrate the holidays. They'll likely be heavy and hard. But if, if holiday traditions or just everyday traditions were a part of your life, as soon as you can get back to them. Because I believe over time that will just solidify your person and the love you shared with them walking every step of the journey you still have earth side. My goodness, y'all, accept help. If people offer meals, let them bring them. If you're not really eating much, put it in a Tupperware and freeze it for another day. If you need somebody to sit with you. My girlfriend asked me, please keep checking on me. And I said, I will. Check on them. But accept help. Let people show up for you. And if it's hard, and if there's limitations and boundaries you need to set around that, that's okay too. But take your time returning to purpose slowly. It's not a race. It's not about who gets back to normal faster. Your normal will never be the same. And so therefore, if you're trying to run a race to get there, you're going to epically because you're running towards something that no longer exists. You've got to recreate it. And you need the energy to shift and recreate and create beauty on the other side of loss. And so return to that slowly. Don't try to do it all at once. And let that grief come. Let the tears fall. Let your heart feel heavy. Don't fight it. Don't fight it. It's a process that you've got to work through. And I think the longer you try to run from or hide from or fight the grief, the longer it sticks around or the harder it hits when you finally sit still. Walk through it. Sit in it. Let it be whatever it is. And let that be okay. If you're on the other side of caregiving, I want you to hear this. You're not grieving wrong. You're not weak. You're not broken. You're healing from emotionally demanding roles a human being can have. And the loss of somebody you love dearly. You spent months, maybe years, putting somebody else first. And now you've got to learn how to let go of that great love you had for them and heal yourself. Return to you in some form or fashion. Your healing, your growth on the other side of caregiving deserves the same compassion that you gave to the person you loved in caring for them. And your story didn't end when theirs did. It simply started another chapter. And maybe, just maybe, the love you poured into one person is now preparing you to pour hope into many. Because caregivers don't stop loving when caregiving ends, we simply learn a new way to carry that love forward. And I hope that you find your path to that on the other side of caregiving for you. Because that is what I'm working towards, is how can I take what I did, what I learned, and how much love I carried through caregiving and share it with others and pour it into more people in the hopes of making a difference. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Chat with Matt. And until next time, take care of yourself the way that you take care of the person that you love.
