Episode 7: Making Ammends in the Middle of Caregiver with Cecilee

Episode #7: Making Amends in the Middle of Caregiving with Cecilee

Caregiving doesn’t just reveal who our parents are.

It reveals who we are, too.

In this episode of Parental Advisory in Reverse, Allison sits down with her friend Cecilee for an honest conversation about one of the quieter parts of caregiving: regret.

Cecilee shares openly about moments during her mother’s care that she’s not proud of — the stress, the exhaustion, the old family dynamics that sometimes surface when adult children step into the role of caregiver. This conversation is her opportunity to reflect, make amends, and talk honestly about what many caregivers experience but rarely say out loud.

Because caregiving is rarely neat or perfect.

It’s human.

And sometimes growth begins with simply telling the truth about the moments we wish we had handled differently.

Allison also shares a personal update on her own family’s journey. Around the time this episode was recorded, her mother received encouraging news that the cancer was not spreading. But even with that good news, the side effects of treatment have been significant — leading Allison and her sister to make the decision to move their mom to Indianapolis so she can be closer to them.

The move will end the regular two-hour weekend drives across the Midwest, but it also begins a new chapter: helping their mom leave the community she has lived in for fifty years.

Along the way, there have also been some unexpected moments of humor — including her mom’s recent belief that the house she has lived in for decades has secretly been turned into a care facility… with business potential.

Future episodes will share some of the lighter moments that can happen even in the middle of difficult seasons.

If you're caring for aging parents, navigating complicated family relationships, or simply trying to do your best in a hard season of life, this episode is for you.

Topics in this episode

• Caregiving and adult children
• Making amends with aging parents
• Navigating regret in caregiving
• Supporting parents with cancer
• Family caregiving realities
• Finding humor during difficult seasons

Take care everyone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to Parental Advisory in Reverse, a new podcast from a Gen X daughter caring for both her aging parents, finding her way, and sharing unique and inspiring stories with new and old friends. Because you just can't make this stuff up. It's been a little while since our last episode. I'm Alison, your host of Parental Advisory in Reverse. The last time you heard from me was right before the end of the year. And at that point, my dad was already in a hospital bed full time. And every weekend, I was driving a few hours to their house to give the paid caregivers a day off. And during the week, I was managing the whole situation from a distance. Schedules, medications, updates, all the things that come with caring for a parent who can no longer care for themselves. The hospice first told Miss to expect about two weeks. And my dad lived 21 days longer than that estimate, which in hospice time feels both very short and strangely long at the same time. Those weeks were heavy, sacred, exhausting, and oddly meaningful in ways I'm still trying to process. More about that later. Because around that time, I recorded this episode with my friend Cecily, who is also caring for her mom, and she joined this episode with a lot of courage because this conversation includes something many caregivers carry quietly regret. Not the kind that comes from not loving someone, but the kind that comes from being human, moments where old family dynamics show up and I can sure relate. Because caregiving doesn't just reveal who our parents are, it reveals who we are too. Here's Cecily. Thank you, thank you, Cecily, for agreeing to do this. When I talk with you about my parents, we were talking about your mom and the things that you're doing for her. So maybe just start by telling me like, what is it that you do for her and how long has it been going on?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

What do I do for my mom? I am kind of like the errand runner. So my mom doesn't drive. She quit driving several years ago. It's probably been at least like five or six years since she quit driving. She's 76. She just turned 76. So for for you know, several years now, I've been like kind of because she lives alone. I'm the one that like goes and I do her grocery shopping for her. I pick stuff up for her that she needs. Um, you know, just the other day I went to pick up her prescriptions and did her grocery shopping. I take her to her appointments, that kind of a thing. Um, I do try to do a little bit around her house for her. I also pick up her laundry and bring it back to my house and launder it there. That's where we are currently, because she's still able to perform, you know, her daily, what do they call it, ADLs and in the healthcare field? It's uh activity of daily living. So she can she can still cook and clean sometimes. Uh, you know, take care of her own personal hygiene. She just mobility-wise doesn't get around very well and and obviously without driving, like it really prohibits you.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Does she have health challenges that keep her from driving? Because like my mother wants to drive and actually isn't that bad at it, but she has a brain tumor, so shouldn't be driving. I was curious if she made the decision on her own or if there's like a health challenge keeping her from driving.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Well, surprisingly, she because my mom is is she's pretty independent and very stubborn, strong-willed. She actually was the one that decided, like, I'm not driving anymore. So that was not even like an argument. So that's a relief because I know my mom, I helped my mom, or my mom took care of her mom when she was elderly. And my grandmother should have had her keys taken off, you know, taken away a long time before they were, and was getting into accidents and things, you know, and had a health situation that happened during while she was driving and wrecked her car, and she ended up with a pacemaker. She had like a stroke, heart attack kind of situation on the road. So my mom took her keys away. And I remember my grandma always saying, like, they will let me drive, they will let me drive, and I'm a good driver. But anyway, that's that was my grandmother. So that was my mom's mom. And I just that was very imprinted on me when I was like 15. My mom was taking care of her, and you know, she just kind of like was like, I I'm proclaiming that I'm no longer driving. She pretty much retired at 70 and was like, I'm done. That's been good, but also kind of like, okay, how are we gonna get you around? Did she just expect that it would be you? Does anybody else help? I I don't know what she expected, truly. I mean, I guess. I, you know, I'm one of three. I have two of two siblings, two older siblings. So I'm the youngest and I'm the only girl. So I'm the, you know, the designated daughter and like designated driver mostly. Uh, and I I'm probably the closest to my mom between me and my siblings. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm sure that that probably crossed her mind that, you know, Cecily will probably kind of take me around or do stuff for me and and I have, and that's that's been fine. For the most part, she she likes to hole up in her house, so she doesn't really go anywhere, but you know, she still needs to go at least to appointments and some stuff, you know, and have her shopping and things done for her. What do you think is the biggest challenge for you with that? Well, she I mean, she doesn't really live that far away from me. It's about 25 minutes south of where I am. So it's I can't really say that the distancing is a factor. However, I mean, as she's progressively getting older and needing more, it would be nice to be, you know, a little bit closer. The the most challenging part of it for me, oh, I would say, so my mom, she she's got very high anxiety. Uh, we have kind of a sorted history. We've had a challenged relationship. We've been really, really close during times, you know, when I was younger, but there's there's been some issues. She's a she's um, she talks a lot, she's got high anxiety, and she also is what I I would describe as like a hoarder. So her home is kind of it's in like really bad disrepair, and it's overwhelming to be there. So whether I'm in her physical presence at her home, that's anxiety-inducing for me. Or, you know, being on the phone with her, she just gets fixated on a lot of like just native things that are happening. So that honestly, and maybe it's a personality thing, I don't know. There's some other stuff there and some mental health, you know. And I have I suffer from mental health issues myself, and I I do the best that I can to try to work on some of that stuff. My mom, however, is she's never been open to like to getting therapy or anything like that. So every time I'm at her house, it's just like a constant reminder of how I grew up with like the hoarding and the anxiety and and I would I would even say you know, agoraphobia to a degree. So it's it's hard to be around.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

You are in the healthcare field. Do you feel prepared, like if you lived together, or do you feel prepared to take care of her long term?

SPEAKER_00 7:37

No, if I'm totally honest, no, but it's definitely something that I've been thinking about more recently and knowing that you know, at some point something's gonna give. And and I don't want it to have to be a situation like her falling or something catastrophic that will progress it to that next level. It's just it's very difficult to make any to to make those decisions or to help my mom kind of like take the initiative. She'd rather just kind of like stay in her situation as long as she can, which I can respect. At the same time, there are things that are becoming more difficult for her to be able to do. So I don't know. I don't know that I would be fully prepared, no, to like be living with her around the clock, really sure what the next steps should be. We have had some discussions, and that's kind of like where that is currently. I've tried to put the ball in her court because she has stated that, you know, she wants to have a sit-down meeting with me and my older brothers, kind of get us all on the same page and talk about whatever, like the plan for her. And I, you know, asked her if she wanted me to set that up and or if she wanted to set it up. She said that she would set it up. And to my knowledge, she has not reached out to my brothers. So she and I both are kind of like hardcore procrastinators. So it'll likely be me, I have a feeling, that's going to try to get this, you know, this whole thing going. I don't want it to be like that though, because I don't want something bad to happen and then it's like, you know, we have to do something now. I don't want to get to a to a point where she feels like she's being forced to do something and it's just, you know, happening so rapidly. But, you know, my hands are kind of tied there. Yeah, it's a fine line. I, you know, at times I need to come in and be like, this is what is we're gonna do. So it's kind of this really weird juxtaposition.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yes, you want to respect their independence, right? And you want to let them make the decisions, but then at some point, somebody has to take the lead. I've noticed that when I talk with my parents about things, I have a kind of bigger sense of urgency than they do. I think the relationship and communication between siblings is really important. So when it breaks down, you know, it can either be all put on you as a good thing or it can be a really hard conversation. It's not something I'm looking forward to. I fortunately I am very blessed that my sister and I agree 110% on everything so far and kind of have made an agreement that we will keep it that way. And, you know, who knows? We both have different relationships with our parents, and we each have different relationships with each one of them. So it's definitely a dynamic. Is there anything funny that's happened? Anything funny that your mom has done or said, or the two of you were able to kind of laugh about?

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Well, I don't know if it was her laughing so much as me, I guess. Cause um, my mom is a character. She's a character. She loves to talk, which, you know, there's a lot in her that I, you know, I'm I'm a lot like my mom, but I have to make an effort to like keep her on track when I take her to doctor's appointments, for instance. And typically I'll go and I'll sit in the doctor in like the, you know, in the room when she has her appointment to help kind of keep things on track so that she's actually answering the questions the doctor's asking. Cause my mom will tend to talk about, you know, when she grew up and being on the swim team and playing the French horn. And she goes into all these stories about the past that have absolutely nothing to do with what she's there for or her symptoms that she may be having or her medications that she needs to have refilled. Um, so recently I took her like a couple weeks ago, a few weeks ago, I took her to a doctor's appointment, just a follow-up. It was supposed to just be a 20-minute appointment, just like six-month follow-up with her primary care. And normally I would go and sit with her during the appointment, but that day it was really early. And I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna go with the flow and I'm gonna live and let live, and I'm just gonna let my I'm just gonna let this unfold however it may, because I I also don't want to be this like hovering daughter. So I sat there in the waiting room and essentially an hour goes by after, you know, she had been back there. And I'm like, okay, so you know, they're probably talking. Her doctor's a talker too. So she finally comes out, and but during that time, though, as I'm in the waiting room, the receptionists are at the desk and they're calling that that doctor's next appointments, telling them, hi, just calling to let you know that Dr. Smith is running behind. And I'm like, it's making me feel some kind of way, but again, I'm just kind of like, just let it go, you know? It's kind of this like picking my battles is kind of what I'm navigating with my mom. Um, and it's not really a battle, but anyway, she gets she gets out of the appointment. You know, we're at checking out and they're scheduling her next appointments. And my mom, you know, she'll just go on and on and she'll talk to anyone because she never leaves the house, I think. I think that's why. It's kind of sad that I don't think she's doing a lot of or enough social socializing. So she will talk to anyone if she's at the store or, you know, just she will go on. So she's talking to the receptionist and she'll immediately be like, This is my daughter, and she'll tell them how old I am and what I do and all this. And she goes, This is my daughter, Cecily. She goes, She works at a wellness clinic. And it just made me chuckle because I I don't work at a wellness clinic. I actually work in a detox center, a treatment facility for like drugs and alcohol detox. And my mom keeps forgetting. She continues to say that I work at a wellness clinic. And so I found myself in that moment. I had the need to like correct her and be like, no, it's it's not a wellness clinic, mom. It's it's a detox center. And she just turns and she's like, Well, a wellness clinic sounds better. So, you know, it's it's it's it can be challenging being around my mom. She's she can be highly cynical and critical and um fixates on on certain things. That's just kind of one example, but it it was comical though.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

That reminds me in other episodes you can see them, but I have a sleeve of tattoos, and I can remember the first time I got one, my mom said, couldn't you just put that on a t-shirt? And I was like, the design actually came from a t-shirt, and I put it on my arm. So then about a month ago, we were at the hospital cafeteria in her little small town that like serves lunch, and she knows the receptionist and she knows the gift shop volunteer and she knows the people that work in the cafeteria. So we went and got lunch, and she says to the girl serving the food behind the thing, she goes, You and my daughter should compare tattoos. And she was so excited. This girl had a sleeve too. You know, I've had these for years, but it was just hilarious to see her kind of the same thing. This is my daughter. She went to France, she was casting. I guess at least they're paying attention to our lives, but then there will be something snarky like that in there that you're like, no, it doesn't sound better.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Well, and there's another uh funny story, actually. This was, it probably would have been around when she turned 70. So I am in recovery and I don't drink. Uh, it's been several years since I've drank, but I took her for her colonoscopy because she had to be put under. And you know, they're rolling her out in the recovery afterwards. The nurse comes to get me to like see my mom, and she is like high as a kite. And she's she's going on, and it's just even more extra than her normal personality. And she's talking to the nurse and she's like, That's my daughter. She's like, Oh my god, I feel drunk. She's like, I've never been drunk in my life, which is true. My mom has never, she's not, you know, never been a drinker. And she's like, My daughter drinks, she drinks a lot. She's she drinks all the time, she's always drunk. And she just kind of went on, and I'm like, Okay, okay. But yeah, and I mean it was kind of funny, you know, but it's just like gosh. I love those videos on the internet of people coming out of anesthesia. They're good. If I could have recorded it, it would have been cool. It would have. But I was just like, okay, she never disappoints, that's for sure. There's always something, you know, she doesn't she doesn't leave the house with me anymore when I do her grocery shopping, and that's sad to me. No matter how much I try to encourage her to get out of the house, especially if it's a nice day, she's typically not feeling well because she has a lot of health issues and fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis and just just a whole gamut of things, and her body is achy. And so she doesn't like to get up and go out of the house. And it's probably been over a year since I was able to actually bring her with me to do her grocery shopping. And that was always a fun time because she would she would ride the scooter, which she was emphatic prior to the scooter of like pushing the cart. And that was something that she gave me a kind of a hard time about. But every time she would walk a little bit, she'd be like, Oh, I I, you know, my chest is hurting and I gotta sit down. I'm getting dizzy, whatever. And she couldn't make she couldn't walk very far in a store. After so many visits at the store like that, I was like, we need to get you like into sea cardiology. So after all that, she did she did go to the store with me several times and she would use the scooter, and it was it was a trip because she could not drive that thing, and she was running into uh like display situations and knocking stuff all over the place. And I'm like thinking to myself, like, I wish I was videoing this, but also low-key, like I have some guilt over that, like the fact that I want to video this because this is just it's an event being in my mom, being with my mom in her presence.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Yeah, the my mom wants to go everywhere still because she can't drive, and they took away her driving privileges, right? And it was like all of a sudden within a week. And so they, well, she says I took away her driving privileges, but last time we went to the doctor's uh the oncology appointment, she said, Am I allowed to drive? The doctor usually looks like toward the computer and talks while she's typing and is like taking the notes and doesn't make a lot of eye contact. She paused what she was doing and turned around and looked at my mother and was like, Oh no, you should not be driving. She definitely still wants to drive. And so she goes with me everywhere. And you can't even go through the drive-thru to get food for them without her wanting to ride along. Or one day, I think I took something to their lawyer and she's like, Well, I'm just gonna go and wait in a car. So just being out of the house, she she fortunately still wants to do that right now. It does make everything take longer, right? But she pushes the cart so that she doesn't have to take her walker inside. So it had not occurred to me that one day she might need the scooter.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Yeah, my mom just can't really walk for extended extended periods of time. She's got something called orthostatic blood pressure. So if she goes from like sitting to standing, like her blood pressure will, you know, vary, like dramatic, like kind of a swing. But and then she's got a little bit of like arrhythmia, like an irregularity with her heartbeat. I have taken my mom all the appointments though for her cardiac workup and all the things, and everything has been okay so far. She's trying some new medicines.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

What do you do to make sure you're taking care of yourself while you're taking care of her?

SPEAKER_00 19:17

A lot of times I, you know, have to kind of like prepare myself before I go over to her house, do things like prayer or meditation. I'll do them before I leave to go and interact with her or go to her house. Or I'll do it in the car, you know, and just kind of talk to talk to God about it. And I don't know that I'm like super great though at a lot of the self-care type stuff. I think I'm I'm able to have more patience with her if I do find some like grounding of some sort prior to going and and spending time with her on any level. And it makes me kind of sad to say that, but it is the truth.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

I think it's both of us, right? It's how much patience we have in general. And then you already mentioned that you guys are a lot of like people who I need extra patience with, are definitely the people who are more like me sometimes, but for sure with my parents. I told my sister that I think any more than two nights there, because they live two hours away, so I go and stay the night. And any more than two nights there, I get a little squirrely.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Yeah. It's been a long time since I've spent like a full day or like an overnight at my mom's. And I just don't know that I could really do it in that in that space, like just with how the house is. It's just it's a it's a lot to be in there. But I know that's like her comfort zone.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Is there any advice you would give to anybody, maybe who is not at this stage yet? We were talking about your parents, your mom and my mom are the same age, but maybe people who they think they're a few years away from this. What kind of advice would you give to people who are gonna find themselves helping their parents?

SPEAKER_00 21:01

It helps if you can kind of just like I was saying earlier, pick your battles. You might have to get to that point where it takes some time and some situations for you to realize, like, okay, like, is this that deep? I don't need to come in and try to control everything. Because I do want her to still have like autonomy and be able to make decisions. Well, in my mom's case, she's always been a hoarder, and that's always been a really difficult thing for her. I tried it when I was like a teenager, you know, trying to like I cleaned out her house for her when she went on a vacation when I was in like summer school PE. So she let me stay home in high school and I like cleared a bunch of stuff out and hit a bunch of stuff and whatever. And she came back and she was like, What happened to my house? And I thought, you know, here I was doing this really nice thing and she was freaking out. I'm saying all that to say this like, if your parents have a lot of things and they're okay with like downsizing, that's maybe not a bad idea because every time I'm there, I'm like, Oh my gosh, the cause you know, just generally it's just there's so much stuff. And then I I start selfishly thinking about like, wow, okay, yeah, I'm gonna have to deal with all this. I'm thinking about dumpsters on dumpsters and just how taxing that's gonna be. So I would advise people to see if their families are willing to downsize like over time. And also it's never a bad idea to have like an advanced directive on file or have your like power of attorney just set up, that kind of a thing, which are things that I have been trying to get set up with my mom, but she just is she just won't do it. Yeah. And that's kind of frustrating. But if you have parents that are willing and and able to do that kind of thing, or like, you know, have a will or create a will, I think those are, you know, would be beneficial for people.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

I've been researching this whole concept of probate court and what kind of things have to go through that, right? And just property, but also my parents had a health and property power of attorney, and they were each other's. After them, it is me and my sister. But I had to get them to resign as power of attorney for each other because they are both potentially incapacitated at the same time. And I said, since you are both sick, like can we go ahead and do that? So then you're not sick and they want to talk to you, and you're not sick and they want to talk to you. Can they just come to me? So fortunately, you know, they trust us, me and my sister, and are willing to do that. And that's helped in a few situations. I would definitely recommend that people get a power of attorney set up now. I like having those conversations while they are like still of sound mind, right? And we can talk about it and I can ask them questions until, like you said, it's just your hand is forced. Like nobody's comfortable in that situation. My parents are fortunately pretty organized. We have been taking every time I'm there, we take at least one tub of stuff to either like donate to the local like clothing and furniture pantry that they have, or a friend of hers like sells, has kind of a thrift store kind of thing that then she donates money to these kids clothes, hats, socks, gloves, things. And then she had a few things that we thought about selling on eBay and like trying to sell on marketplace. Fortunately, we've gone around the house and said, like, this belonged to your great-grandmother, don't give that away. Or this belonged to so-and-so, or this is, you know, I don't care about this. It's kind of nice to know like what they what they care about. Not so much because of the hoarding, but I get the anxiousness of just being in that space and being in that childhood space. The teenager in me does not want to be there.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

It's an accumulation of a lot of things. And I guess just for myself too, and I and I struggle with like, you know, I'm not a minimalist in terms of like decor and stuff, and I'm like, oh gosh, I'm going down like the same path. I've got to like purge. It's just interesting as you get older, and like, even though I do have probably too much stuff, if I'm like in a good like spiritual state, I'm more inclined to just go through and get rid of things, you know? Because I do think it's like that lesson there is like about attachment and how people we have just like not just we have attachment to other people, but just things, you know. And I just like all the time, I'll be at my mom's house. I'm like, what the hell is this? Like, what is this? Like, why what? Like all the stuff and the things that she says and whatever. And I'm like, this makes no sense to me, but okay. But it's like her place and it's her space, and I have to like respect that, but I I will eventually have to go in, yeah, do something with all of it.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

So what else that we haven't talked about yet?

SPEAKER_00 25:52

I feel like this is gonna be a slow progressive thing because my mom is still pretty much like cognitively intact, but like her body is failing her. So who knows how long it will take before we we figure out the next steps for like housing and stuff. When I was younger, it was not anything that was really on my radar, even though I did watch her take care of her mother, but that was pretty a pretty rapid decline with my grandmother. She'd had a stroke and you know, it fell and broke her hip and things kind of escalated quickly. My mom, though, I I think I spent the better part of my 20s and 30s and just completely immersed in my own stuff that that wasn't on my radar. So, you know, I I used to drink really heavily and it's um not really funny, but you know, I used to pick her up or like I'd drive her to places and stuff when I was I probably I shouldn't have been driving. My mom just has net was never really a big fan of driving. She was an anxious driver. Um, and it wasn't until I got sober and I stopped drinking that she started telling me about how scared she was to like ride in the car with me. I former self and the way I was living my life under the influence a lot and had a really challenged relationship at that time with my mom. We would fight a lot, scream on the phone and whatever. Um, you know, and then getting sober and being in recovery, that dynamic has definitely improved. And I've I've worked on and learned more about boundaries. But I think just the sheer fact of being sober and being able to be there for her and not be impaired, you know? And she she certainly isn't shy about, you know, making comments about the former me, but it's it's good. It's it's it's a good thing. So I'm grateful about that.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

So yeah, it sounds like now you are able to maybe make up for some of that, or like that's your amends to her, right? That you can drive for her and take care of her and show up and be present.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Yeah. She's actually told me because I I've tried to make an amends to her about my former behaviors and how that's impacted her. And I know she doesn't understand. I work a 12-step program. I don't expect her to understand what that's about or what making an amends looks like. You know, each time I've tried to schedule it with her, she will cancel. And she has said a couple of times, she was like, you don't need to do any of that. You do so much for me, you know. And I appreciate that. I appreciate her saying that.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Cecily, thank you so much for your honesty today. We don't usually step into caregiving for the thank yous, but when someone does stop and acknowledge what you're carrying, it really does feel good because as we talked about today, it's a lot. Sometimes when folks would stop and focus on me to check on me and make sure I'm doing okay, that is when I would cry. Around the time we recorded this conversation, my sister and I actually got some encouraging news from my mom's doctor. The scans showed that the cancer is not spreading, which was a huge relief for all of us, of course. But as many families know, even when the news is good, the reality of treatment is still very real. My mom is on oral chemotherapy that she takes at home, and the side effects are no joke. Fatigue, confusion, the general toll it takes on the body, it's all part of the picture. So my sister and I made a decision. We're moving my mom to Indianapolis so she can be closer to us, which means the two-hour drives across the Midwest every weekend are coming to an end. And I have to admit, I am very happy about that. But the real deciding factor wasn't the driving, it was seeing the impact that cancer and treatment have had on my mom in ways we didn't quite expect. For reasons we still don't fully understand, she's become convinced that the house she lived in for 50 years is no longer her house. She believes I've turned it into a care facility of all things. She wonders how I got the furniture there, how I move it there and then move it back to her other house. But she's lived there for 50 years. And at one point, she even started offering suggestions for how I could make it profitable. That one still makes me laugh out loud. Because if you can't laugh sometimes in this season of life, I'm not sure how you all get through it. So, in the coming episodes, we'll share a few of the funnier things that my mom has said lately, along with a story of what it's like to help a parent leave the community they've lived in for their entire life. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time on Parental Advisory in Reverse. You've been listening to Parental Advisory in Reverse. Real stories about Gen X adults taking care of the people who raised us. If you're in the thick of caregiving or just curious about what it looks like, you are in good company here. Follow the show wherever you listen and pass it along with someone who can use a little community right now. Because caring for them starts with caring for yourself.