The Care We Give with Alexandra Drane

Caregiving can be one of the most loving roles we ever step into, and one of the most intense, especially in retirement when you are juggling your own health, finances, time, and relationships while showing up for someone else. In this episode of Beyond 60: Unscripted, Ruth Williams-Brinkley is joined by entrepreneur and caregiver advocate Alexandra Drane, co-founder of Archangels, for an honest, practical conversation about what caregivers actually need, not just what people assume they need. Together they talk about why so many caregivers do not even identify as caregivers, how easily isolation and burnout can creep in, and why “care for the caregiver” has to be part of the plan. Alex shares concrete tools like building a “red phone” person you can call without shame, using a caregiver intensity score to name what is driving your stress, and the powerful idea of “outer circling,” which explains why caregivers need their own support system to hold them up while they hold others. They also dig into the complicated realities of spousal caregiving, the loneliness that can happen even in a full life, and how grace, community, and small supports can change everything. 

About the Guest:
Alexandra Drane is the co-founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS, a women-owned public benefit corporation working to better recognize and support the millions of unpaid caregivers across the United States. A serial entrepreneur, Alex has founded multiple mission-driven companies, including Eliza Corporation and Engage with Grace, and she is a nationally recognized voice on caregiving, community health, and public-private partnership. She serves on several influential boards and advisory councils, speaks widely on the future of health and caregiving, and has been recognized with honors including the Care100 list and Entrepreneur of the Year distinctions. Known for her energy and candor, Alex brings both strategic insight and real-world humanity to everything she does.

https://www.archangels.me/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hello, I'm Ruth Williams Brinkley, and this is Beyond 60 Unscripted. I am so just delighted that you're joining us for this segment. We're going to have a very meaningful conversation today about learning and thriving after 60. This week, we are going to dig into something that so many of us are facing: caregiving. Whether it's for an aging parent, whether it's for a spouse, a family member, any person that you are providing care for, caregiving can just be beautiful and it is also incredibly demanding. It takes a lot of your life, but it gives back a lot as well. And the important thing is you don't have to go it alone. There are resources to help you. So in order to help me unpack this topic today, I am thrilled to be joined by someone who's a great friend, who is a brilliant leader, an entrepreneur, and an advocate for caregivers everywhere. Alexandra Drain. And Ruth. So excited. I'm excited too. And Alex, I just have to tell you, I've learned so much from you. As you know, I'm a registered nurse by background and training, but I have learned more from you about caregiving, especially outside of the acute care setting, than I would have ever thought. So thank you for that. And I just believe that our audience is going to learn a lot from you too. Thank you. I hope so. Thank you. Welcome, welcome. And I'm just going to say a little bit about uh your company, Archangels. Alex is the co-founder along with other co-founders of Archangels, which is a national platform that's changing the way we talk about caregiving and putting caregivers really at the center of the healthcare conversation and really looking at their needs. One thing you need to know about Alex, and she's going to tell us a lot about herself. Alex is a serial entrepreneur, and I am in awe of that. She's a passionate believer in community-based care. And yes, Alex is a race car driver too. Oh no.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

I mean, when I can, when I am in a stage of my life where that's possible. The last couple of years it hasn't. It's my favorite thing to do because when you're race car driving, you can't think about anything else because you're like that's true. If you get distracted, you're dying.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

So that's true. I have learned that about driving. Uh, I didn't drive a lot before, but you know, you have to really focus on where you're going, especially if you're in a busy metro area. Same thing as racing around a racetrack. One of these days, we're gonna have to have a conversation about race car driving. So um, we're gonna talk about that. And but before we unpack all of this, I just want to talk a little bit about what we call our beyond 60 buzz. And I'm just gonna talk a few minutes about it, and then we're gonna launch Alex into what you are gonna tell us about caregiving. So, just to introduce this topic just a little bit more, a lot of people beyond 60, um, we call ourselves baby boomers, we call ourselves lots of things, but we're preparing for this growing need of caring for people. We're living longer, we're doing more if we can, but yet there are members of our family and people that we love who are who need care. And one of the things I'm gonna talk about with Alex is that you have to make sure you have what I'm gonna call care for the caregiver. Because if you're a caregiver, you need care as well. But just to unpack a lot of some of the statistics, a lot of older adults will eventually require assistance with daily living, whether it's from family members, whether it's in-home health care aids or in a care facility. Um, today, and I was surprised about this statistic, Alec. Nearly one in three people providing long-term care in the U.S. were born outside the country. I did not know that. And it highlights how diverse and essential this workforce is to us and many in the country as well. But we have a lot of people who are caring for people. And as the baby-born and boomer generation ages, the number of adults who are going to need care, who already need care, and who are going to need care is going to continue to increase. And one statistic, I'll just mention this one by 2030, every member of the boomer generation will be at least 65, which is phenomenal. And a large portion are soon uh going to be, uh a large portion are soon going to be reaching their 80s, the older baby boomers. So in that we know, even if you're wrong, your your health starts to decline and care needs arise. So you got you you got something you want to say about that, Alex?

SPEAKER_03 5:13

Well, because I think it's so interesting because we know so many of us, so many 65-year-olds who are so vibrant and so vital and out running marathons and starting companies and caring for everybody in their life, our vision of that statistic didn't really take hold when it first started that 10,000 people a day were aging into that stage. Now that we have, to your point, folks who are in their 80s and 90s, and eventually the body does start to get cranky and more and more, even if you're the healthiest. And so I think we're just beginning to see that inevitable influx of care that is needed that we talked about but kind of couldn't visualize, and now we're slamming into it.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Yeah, and it was a statistic. It doesn't involve me. You know, I I can say it was to it was a statistic to me. Yeah, it was like that's somebody else, that's those over there. And now, you know, we're there, I'm there. You know, some of the things people need to talk about is what might your own support look like later in life? Who would you want to help provide care for you if you need care? What options are available where you live? Would you prefer seeing at home? Or would a senior community feel better for you? You know, those are all the things. And I know, Alex, you we're gonna talk about some of these things. Um, and then and then caregiving needs to become a community conversation because it impacts all of us. Whether it's your neighbor, your friend, your relative, your parent, it impacts all of us. I'm gonna just launch into that. So, Alex, I want you to launch into archangels and not just archangels, but you know, tell us what drove, I want to hear the story of what drove you to find you and your partners to uh start archangels and what did you learn?

SPEAKER_04 7:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

You you said earlier that this is we're beginning to learn, like we've got to put the caregiver at the center. And I think what I what we saw is the caregiver has always been at the center. We just didn't see it. And if you're not looking for it, you don't see it. But once you see it, you can't unsee it. And I think, Ruth, that's a transformation for you, right? In the last however many years, you are now seeing it everywhere because it is everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

And did we just open up our eyes, Alex? Is that what it was? Did circumstances just open up our eyes?

SPEAKER_03 7:32

I think the sheer demographics and the number of people who are needing care. And again, care is not just for our elders. It's not just for those with chronic illness. It is for somebody with a substance use disorder. It is for somebody with a mental health thing going on. It is for somebody who has a gambling addiction, right? There's we think so frequently of, oh, you're caring for a baby or you're caring for an elder. It's actually care happens at every age, at every stage. And the other thing that's really interesting is care, we had a vision in our head of who provided that care. And that vision is just not accurate. You know, it can be provided by middle schoolers, high schoolers, people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. We were um doing a teletown hall the other day with a woman who called in. She was in her 80s, and her man is still working 40 hours a week to care for her and her husband. And he's got to be in his 80s too. So you know these things exist. So, Archangels, to answer your question, every single human out there has a story related to caregiving. That's not actually why we started Archangels. We started Archangels because of the data. We started Archangels because our last company was a company called Eliza. Uh-huh. And while we were there, we gathered over one billion pieces of data. And by the way, I love the quote, statistics are humans with the tears wiped away. I only talk about data because it validates for people that they're not alone in this very singular thing that they're experiencing and knowing you're not alone. It's personal. That's deeply personal. So the data just helps people know there are a lot of other folks who are in there. And that in itself can be calming. But we gather data over the course of this 15 years that helped demonstrate that really the biggest conditions we called it, the biggest diseases in the US outside of those social determinants, like I have enough food, water, security, transportation. But you didn't get that and then vault to your highest order self when you think about Maslow's hierarchy. In the middle, caregiver stress, financial stress, relationship stress, and workplace stress. We put a lot of data behind showing those things will impact your health. Period. End of story. In tandem with that, my beautiful sister-in-law, Za was diagnosed with glioblastoma on the night I got hitched to her brother. And to give you a context for that time, her daughter was two and a half years old when she was diagnosed. Za, my sister-in-law died seven months later, textbook case of overtreatment. And my beautiful niece just turned 25 last night. So this is a long time ago. Over the course of the next year or two, as we came out of that terrible grief of losing a 32-year-old, we launched a movement called Engage with Grace, which is how do you have the conversation about how to live your best days until your last? Because Za, Za's family is Sicilian. And in their family culture, to talk about death is to bring it on. So although my man's dad, Antonio's dad, had died, Za's dad had died when he was when they were 16 and 18, they never talked to him about the fact he was dying. Oh, really? No. And we never, and the family, Za Antonio would not let me tell him what glioblastoma was until we were already four months into the seven months Za would have. Because in his culture, you just couldn't talk about it. So in my family, my grandmother died. She passed at home with hospice. I was in bed with her. Her man was there, my mom was there. We were all holding her. We knew that's what she wanted. Textbook case of caregiving story. Two months later, my aunt died because she had not taken care of her care while she was caring for her mother. Yeah. We knew she wanted to be in the hospital when she passed, and she was. So we knew how to handle these moments that didn't happen with Za, and it tortured me. And so we launched this movement. And in the end, when we were done with Eliza, we sort of looked at the overlap between those two things and we realized it's the unpaid caregiver. The unpaid caregiver is who helps us through our last days, as you already mentioned. And the unpaid caregiver is going to have financial stress, relationship stress, and workplace stress. So we sort of realize if we just keep peeling that onion at the core of everything, I would argue that the future of our nation, economically, from a security perspective, depends on the over 40% of adults who are in this role right now.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Wow. So is there any profile, Alex, of the person who is in this role?

SPEAKER_03 12:08

Yes. There's no profile. Their profile is there's no profile. Because it literally can be anything from an eight-year-old living in a multi-generational household that's making the informed decision to have the eight-year-old stay home with the great aunt because everyone else of different ages has to go off and fulfill a job or care for someone else somewhere else, to a 95-year-old who's living alone with their partner, or I hear stories all the time, or their son-in-law, because everyone else has passed has moved in with them. And they're the one who's providing care. And maybe both of them need assistance with their ADLs, but there's no opportunity for them to go into some beautiful, fancy, assisted living. They are locked in a home together, caring for each other, and it is everything in between.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

So you mentioned, I I want to dig into that a little bit. You mentioned when we first started talking about an, I think if I got this right, you mentioned an 80-year-old who was working to care for his 80-year-old partner or spouse. Talk a little bit about that. What kind of toll does that take?

SPEAKER_04 13:10

Oh much.

SPEAKER_03 13:12

So there's a term spousal caregiving. Let's call it caregiving for your lover, right? These are relationships that maybe have been 40, 50, 60 years, or it might be a newfound love, five years, 10 years. Yeah. Caregiving is so deeply intimate. And the thing that can be so particularly intense. See, I checked myself. I wanted to use the word devastating. Yeah. But we try and always reframed positive words because it's devastating. It's also glorious, right? If you talk to a caregiver, they never want to be pitied because they'll say, This is hard. This is intense. And it is my greatest honor to be able to do this. The next second, I can't go on, then they'll come back and be like, but I must go on, right? It's sort of like this beautiful thing. So one of the challenges when you're caring for your spouse is a relationship that probably had a lot of other dynamics before. Maybe one of you was this kind of a nurturer and this kind of person did this kind of roles. The roles that you played get thrown up in the air. And one of you ends up really providing care that can be incredibly scary, deeply intimate. You know, you might end up changing the diapers of somebody who's been your lover for years. And that's a really different way to think about your relationship. And it takes an adjustment. And that's why we talk a lot. And Ruth, you know this because you and I will do this for each other. And we have a lot of strong women friends. I need to be able to call someone and say, What the heck am I doing? And how how the heck did I get here? And are you going through this? Because things like spousal caregiving are not things we are trained to do. It's not something literally from the call.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

It's part of the picket fence story. It's not part of the story. You know, you're you're not thinking you're going to have to become a caregiver for your lover, as you, as you mentioned.

SPEAKER_03 15:01

No, you're not. And you couldn't imagine what it would be like, even if you read an article that said, one day you might care for each other. So you should get long-term care support. To your point earlier, that becomes like a that's somebody else's that's somebody else's issue. Exactly. We will die together in a bed of roses with no pain and everything's great. I hope that happens. Unfortunately, often it does not.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

So, so Alex, and often it doesn't. One of the things we I don't think we talk about enough is the the impact, the strain on the caregiver as you're trying to be there, show up for the person you're taking care of. And sometimes the person is not um alert and very oriented, but oftentimes they are. So, how do you how do you take care of yourself? Could you talk a little bit about that and what you found, what you and archangels have found about are about how do you take care of yourself so that you can continue what you're doing. You if you're working, you can continue working. If you're working and caring for your loved one, how do you keep all of that balanced? How do you take care of you? Chances are you're not.

SPEAKER_03 16:18

And that's why we have to start talking about it. I will tell you 40% of individuals who are caring for someone with Alzheimer's or dementia. I know the stat for sure is Alzheimer's, they will pass before the person they're caring for because of the enormity of the impact on all aspects of their health. So it is incredible that that is the single most important question that you just asked. And we have to take it really seriously because unpaid caregivers, think about the term caregiver. It's not caregetter. Yeah. You know, think quickly in your head. Do you remember anyone in your life who you know is in a very intense caregiving situation ever raising their hand and saying, hey, everybody, I'm a caregiver. Can you help me? No. They don't even have the energy to ask for help. And in fact, if you go to them and say, Can I help you?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

They'll say, No, I got this. They'll say, No, no, I know that's what I would say. I got this. You know, you don't want to appear vulnerable or weak or whatever the word is.

SPEAKER_03 17:12

Don't want to appear vulnerable, don't appear weak. You know your partner's not going to like it if someone else is in the house. You're just too tired to even consider it, or you literally are so overwhelmed, you have decision fatigue. You couldn't even begin to categorize. You know, if you need think help on a hundred things, where do you start? And so that is one of the areas, one of the things that we talk about a lot. How do you care for yourself? Well, number one, surround yourself with friends. And all of you guys, and even if you only have one friend, give each other permission to inject themselves into your life and to say, I'm just gonna help you, right? Don't ask how can I help? Just help. And one of the most important things, I just want to give you some statistics because I think the data is the data.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Can I uh um Nick, I need to stop one second. Nick?

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Sure thing, go for it.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Okay, so of course I didn't know these people will come in the clean, so let me just see.

SPEAKER_03 18:12

I'm sorry. Oh, you know what? My man called in the middle of that before, and I was like, do it, do it. Yeah. Um, it's a light, a ladder, or a lifeline.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

I love that framework. That's great.

SPEAKER_03 18:29

I do too. I gotta memorize that.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

And that's not just for caregiving, that's life. Everyday life.

SPEAKER_03 18:36

That is how you show up for anybody. Your your lover, your child.

SPEAKER_04 18:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Okay, sorry about that. I cut shut that down, literally. Um so where should we start?

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Uh let's just um go back to the beginning of that thought and we can cut in.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

Of how do you care for yourself?

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Yeah, how so Alex, how does Wait, pause.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

I have to take myself off mute. Okay, count to five and then and then here we go.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

So, Alex, how does one care for how how would I care for myself if I found myself in this situation? And I always think I will know what to do, but I would be that person that would say, if you ask me how am I doing, I'm very stoic. I would say, I'm doing fine. Thank you for asking. Uh, how's the weather outside today?

SPEAKER_03 19:32

Yeah. So, number one, the single most important thing you can do is give yourself grace. You just, I'll give you an example. Often, humans who are in an intense caregiver situation, they're so focused all the time on how to care for this person, how to care for this person. And they might have thoughts in their head, they might be cranky, they might be angry sometimes, but they have to hide it because they never want to upset the person that they're caring for. I I'm speaking personally about a situation that I've been in. And I might even, you know, dig my fingernails into my thighs because I'm so cranky, but I don't want my face to change. I don't want to appear angry. Yeah. And then I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm so angry at myself. How could you ever be mad at this person you love so much? Wow, Alex, you're crazy. You cannot do that. I call that double jeopardy. Give yourself grace. It is okay that there will be moments where when you're in this that you're gonna be cranky. And do not beat yourself up later for it. So give yourself grace. The other thing I would say is you have to surround yourself with at least one person. When you're in the red, we call it being in the red, you need to have a red phone. You need to designate at least one person that you have said, there, I'm going through something and I need you to ask me about it. I need you to not let me ignore you when you ask me about it. I need you to show up for me. And sometimes I'm gonna call you and I'm just gonna say a lot of swears in a row, or I'm just going to complain terribly about my partner, my parent, my child. And the next day I'm gonna call you and I'm gonna expect you to love my parent, my child, my spouse, and you're just gonna have to go with me. And one of the things that we've seen, Ruth, is is to care for yourself, you need to think through when you're calm, what would be helpful and designate people who can help you with those things.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Okay, so Alex, if if I just admitted I'm stoic and I won't say a word. How do you help someone like me? If I break down and finally say, you know what, you're my red phone person. I like that idea of the red phone. I call you and I, because I know you understand. And I'm like, Alex, I am I have had it. I am gonna run from the building screaming. Yeah, I I don't know what to do. I'm just I don't know what to do. Can you just listen to me? What how how would you help me? Because I'm thinking of how I would typically do something like that if I were in that situation. That's exactly how I would feel. I'd be gritting my tea, probably grinding my tea. What is the best way to help someone like me who is in that situation?

SPEAKER_03 22:18

So I've a lot of thoughts. I'll give you two off the top of my head. That's a wonderful thing to have asked your person ahead of time, right? So I will say to you, Ruth, right now, when there is a moment and I can see that you are melting down, I can see that everything that could be going wrong is going wrong in this moment. Tell me now, in this moment that you're calm, how would you want me to show up for you? What is helpful for you? Do you want me? I actually found this quote. Do you want me to be a light? Do you want me to be a ladder? Do you want to be a lifeline? Do you want advice? Do I want to be quiet and just hug you? Do you want me to literally go to your house and do things? What what would you how would you answer that for you personally?

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Okay. Okay. I would, I think for me, I mean, and everybody's different. For me, I would say, I just need you to listen. I just need you to listen and to really understand that I am melting down right now and I'm at the end of my rope. And I I will probably be okay in about 10 minutes, but right now I am not okay.

SPEAKER_03 23:23

Just listen.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 23:25

Love me with your listening and do not give me a list of things to do. Don't come in.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

And don't give me advice because you're not in my shoes unless I ask you for advice. Yes. Yes. But I just need you to love me in this moment. So what we can do for And accept me. And accept me. And accept that I may say ugly things. Like you said, if somebody calls and says a few curse words or or I hate this, I hate that. Recognize that's not who I am all the time. That doesn't define me. That's who I am in this moment. And it doesn't define how I feel about the person I just said it about. That's right. That's really important. Because then skill comes as soon as you get a hold of yourself, skill comes.

SPEAKER_03 24:06

Yes. And that's what we can give each other. That's the grace we all give ourselves and each other. And then, you know, the core of what Archangels does is something called the Caregiver Intensity Index. And we literally developed it after 20 years of circling this space by recognizing that most people who are in this role don't know they're in this role. And they don't know what they need because they're so overwhelmed. You know how they use the term nowadays, flood the zone. Yep. You your zone has been flooded. And so what the caregiver intensity index does is it takes two and a half minutes. And I know you're going to make it possible for people to get their own intensity score, put them in the clear.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Yeah, because I I that was that's a really helpful tool. So we're gonna put in the in the chat in on the website later how how you get that.

SPEAKER_03 24:55

How you get that score. Yeah when you get the score, it tells you you're in the clear, yellow, or red. And by the way, if you're in the red, and Ruth, I know you've had times when you're you're probably in the purple, literally, right? 90% of us will have at least one mental health impact. It's a very, very serious thing. I can go through the suicidal ideation data is really hard to hear. So then the next thing it does is it tells you what are the key things driving your intensity. So I know for me in the caregiving situation that I'm in right now, the two biggest things for me, it's impact on work and it's navigating the system. Because I'm in a one of my caregiving roles includes a dual eligible. And I am not well experienced with dual eligibles. And so I need help with navigation. So it gets you your score and then it tells you what are the things that you need to pour with. It also tells you here are two things we call these the buffer. Here are your top buffers. These are things that are going well for you. So at any moment, it might be you want to really focus on how do I reduce my intensity by knowing the big drivers, or I just want to get more of the things that make me feel better. So it gives you both of those pieces of information. And what that then creates is also a common language. So the reason I would say what I would do with you is I would first listen and love on you. The next day I might call you and say, Ruth, I want you to get your score. Maybe do it with me because I want to know what your drivers are because I'm gonna figure out what I can do to help there. And I'm gonna look at the resources that I know are available for free for anyone in the US on these things. And it might be that something that your health plan has or your provider has has additional tools. They might have access to respite care, they might have access to navigators, they might have access to financial advisors, legal advisors. These are all the kind of skill sets that we need to tap into. We think about home care aids, absolutely. But there's also all these other things that we don't understand. And I'll tell you one other funny story. We prepared so much for my dad during COVID. You know, what we would do if my dad got COVID. And I was sitting at this very desk, and he was in Texas at the time. We've since moved him back. He lives here very close to us. And I got a phone call, I picked it up. It was my dad's paid caregiver. And she said, We're outside the intensive care um unit. And I'm thinking in my head, okay, we're kicking to COVID protocol. And she said, I think your dad, I was having a heart attack. And I had not prepared for heart attack. I literally, I'm gonna shoot. I stood up. That's what it came out of left feel, I'm sure. Yeah. I stood up and I started walking around in a tight little circle. Because even though I work in caregiving, and if you called me and said that, I would know what to do for you. When it was me, everything left my body. And do you know what I did? What did you do? I called Lisa Soonan. Now, for those of you who don't know Lisa Soonan, she's a get it done very different with both of ours. She is. I don't even know how I knew. I had not said to Lisa you're gonna be my red phone, but there was something about the enormity of that moment. I was like, she's gonna maybe because she was at the American Heart Association. I don't know. I knew she would be able to help me. And all I could do was pick up the phone, call her sobbing, and say, I don't know what to do. And so what's key is that we know who these lifelines are, we know who our red phones are, we know that it might change by different situations. We give ourselves grace where we ask people, tell people ahead of time how to show up for us. We ask other people how we can show up for them, and then wherever possible, help somebody get their score so you can have that language with each other. I'm in the red for them.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

So they know they know immediately what you're talking about. What I'm talking about. Yes. So, Alex, you we you talked before before we came uh in into the show. We you talked about outer circling.

unknown 28:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Can you talk a little bit about that? Yes, it's such a pretty concept.

SPEAKER_03 28:40

I love that you love it too, because it's so intimidative. I actually learned it from Susanna Fox, and Susanna Fox learned it from somebody. It's actually a very well documented. Probably by the time we go live with this, you'll be, we can look for it and put a link in to someone who wants to read more about it too. It's a fascinating concept. It works in all aspects of life. But as it relates to caregiving, um, let's use my dad as the example. Let's use my dad in that particular moment when I stood up. So over the next week, a lot of stuff unfolded. He ended up fine. He ended up getting a quick heart procedure. But in that moment, all of my dad was the center of my circle. And all of my love and energy was poured into my dad. Everything, if I could have torn out my entrails and given them to him to make him better, I would have done that. That takes a lot. That's intense. That's why we use the word intense. Not a burden. I wouldn't not want to do it, but it's intense. When you go through something intense because you're outer circling, I'm outer circling my dad, pouring everything I have into him, you can get depleted. And so you need to dump some crap out. So during that period of time, I would often call my man and be like, I'm so exhausted, or I'm cranky, or his paid caregiver didn't show up, or the doctor's in super dork. And that's hard, right? I'd be pouring out the hard stuff on my man. Now, my man's only job is to outer circle me, outer circle my dad. So he would have to just, you got this, babe. I know this is hard. You're a great daughter. This is the most important thing to do. Whatever it is he had to say in that moment to help me calm down. But now I just put a lot of crap on him.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

And so he now needs to call his best friend and be like, Alex called me 10 times a day, freaking out. Will you go get a beer with me? I can't take this anymore. I have a full-time job. We have other kids.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

So that's okay, Alex. I mean, I I want to answer you. It is okay. So, like if some is that okay? I mean, it's not only okay, it's genius, it's brilliant. Let me give you some more data.

SPEAKER_03 30:40

I'll just use alcohol because that is how I self-medicate. Unpaid caregivers are increasing their use of legal drugs and alcohol at five times the rate of everybody else. By the way, when you're an unpaid caregiver, you're having you're, you know, your your intimacy with your partner, not great, right? Because all of this other stuff is going on. And so if there's one thing people take away, it's you are not alone. There is so much data supporting this. And if the way that you are getting through a day is having preseyko, that's my drug of choice, at the end of the night, or whatever it is that you do, binge watching, whatever it is that you do, eating, right? 50% of us cope with food. You are not allowed to beat yourself up. I do them together. Yes. And the more I do one, the more I do the other. It's awesome. I'm like a rock star at Preseco and anything fat, sugar, salt. I can find it anywhere. Yeah, that's right. That's right. The other thing we do, so just know that you're not alone. And when someone says to you, Oh gosh, Ruth, I know you're going through so much. I suggest you try yoga and meditation. Do not give them the double finger, as we call it in my house. Give them grace and say, Thank you so much for your advice. I can't wait to be able to do yoga and meditation right now between two and 4 a.m. Between two and four a.m. where I'm drinking my Forseko and eating my food. Yeah. I like this is I don't have that in me right now. Thank you. I look forward to doing that later. And then just give yourself grace. As you people will say to me, I gained 70 pounds. I went on an anti-anxiety medication, and I thought it was because I was weak. And you're helping me realize I'm not weak. I'm doing something beautiful and strong. I'm an archangel, right? Like, and I look forward to making healthy choices at some point in my life. I am going to be okay with the fact that my job right now is to show up however I can in this way that I have to. And I think that's that's something that's really, really, really key for us all to remember.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Now, you know what? I should have asked you this earlier, but I'm going to ask you now, what is an archangel? You just mentioned it again.

unknown 32:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Define for our listeners what is an archangel? Yeah. How are you defining an archangel in this context?

SPEAKER_03 32:50

I I, in my mind, this is why I love when we named the company Archangel, it was such a defining moment because most people, when they talk about caregiving, they have a picture of two hands holding, yeah, and there's a heart, and it's a little old lady sitting on a chair, and it's a lady like me looking down at her, and she's looking up at me. And that's sort of the pictures of caregiving. And I had seen so much in real life and in the data that that's not the only people who are caregiving at all. Right. And so, and when people want to do things that make them feel strong, people like to do things that feel aspirational. And we thought, wait a minute, what if we flip the script and we said, you are an archangel, you are this badass warrior angel spreading your wings out over these people that you care for. We're like, we want to make this look so cool that a dude, because by the way, 40 to 50 percent of caregivers are men. We can come back to that. I did not know that. Yeah, a man could walk into a biker bar with a biker jacket on the back that had the archangel's logo. So another dude could come up and be like, You're an archangel, me too. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_03 33:58

It was about strength, you're awesome, and we see you, and we're gonna have each other's backs. That's true for every age, every gender, every income situation, geographical situation. If we opened our eyes to how many of us there are and how beautiful it is and how intense it is, we could change the world. And that's the notion behind archangel. An archangel is anyone who's doing it all for everyone else. You are a classic case of an archangel, Bruce.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

I love that. Thank you. I think thank you. We have a few minutes left, but I and I don't I want to. We've talked about the intensity and I and I'm intentionally using the word intensity. Can you spend a few minutes talking about the joys? What are some of the joys and and uh two things the joys of being a caregiver, and then some of the lessons learned. And you can just mix them in if you want, but I feel like to have I I can remember from some of my former clinical experiences that uh if you're caring for someone you've spent your life with, you have conversations probably. One thing is you have conversations you never had the chance to have conversations about before.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

About things that were left unsaid, because once everything's over, there's nothing left to be said.

SPEAKER_03 35:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

So could you talk a little bit about the joys? If they and I may be presumptuous to think they're joys, there's always joy.

SPEAKER_03 35:22

There's always joy. We joke about sometimes the joy. So I had brain surgery, very major brain surgery eight years ago. And there were moments as I was relearning how to brush my teeth or walking into doors because I couldn't see anything, that my honey and I would just crack up that we would be in this situation together. When Antonio's mom was going through her last days, we last we lost her, Nona, about four years ago now. There were some moments that were so hard, so, so, so hard. And there was so much joy at the same time. All of us piled up in bed next to her, us dancing around the kitchen to old Sicilian songs with her. So I think the thing about finding joy is you have to find joy. And the first thing you can do in finding joy is just be grateful you have this moment, which sounds Pollyanna sometimes, people, but the best advice I got from someone is they say, said, Alex, I promise you, even in these most brutal moments that you are going through right now, you will look back later and miss them. You will look back later and want to have had them. And I was lucky enough to get that advice. So, in the moments that I really feel melting down, instead I flip it. I'm like, how lucky am I to be here in this moment? How lucky am I? And with the other thing you just said so beautifully reminded me about those conversations, you end up, you're so stripped away. And the beautiful thing about being stripped away is it's your core, and it's the core of the person that you're left with. And you end up going through this together in a way that is so pure, yeah, and and has the essence of what it is to be human. There's no more foundational element of humanity than to care for others and be cared for ourselves. And I have to add one other thing because you you said something in the beginning that made me think of this, and I wrote it down after my brain surgery situation, and I was pretty serious, and it took me two months to even be able to really cope again, and lots of other things. We came up with this notion of why had I not been intentional in saying to Antonio, will you be my archangel? Like we say to our friends, will you be godparents to my child? We say to our partner, will you marry me? Yeah, nobody says, and you said it earlier, nobody says, Will you be the one to care for me when I'm old? And so that's a joy. It's a joy to ask somebody, will you be my archangel? to do it early to ask, and it's a joy to be an archangel, it's a joy to name this role that you're in. It's an honor and a privilege that someone will trust you to do that. Yeah. And then you also can start asking questions way ahead of time. How do you want me to care for you? What are the things you envision for yourself? And one other piece of advice I'd say for all of us, please never ever tell your partner or the person that you're caring for, whoever it is, I'll always care for you at home. You'll never have to go someplace else because the reality is situations change.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

And so you don't know.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

You don't know. You don't know. And so one of the things that can help bring joy is to have been as prepared as possible and then give yourself grace when you're not prepared. Try and find the joy. And if you can't find the joy, call that red phone person and have joy in just speaking your unvarnished raw truth, and you'll feel better afterwards. There can be joy in just being radically transparent because you know what you're doing is an act of love.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

In our last few minutes, Alex, anything you want to share with our audience that you haven't already shared?

SPEAKER_03 38:59

You know, one of the things that we've studied a lot is, you know, the different types of intensity with different types of care. And something the country has begun to take notice of is this concept of loneliness and how lonely many of us are. We can be in a room with 100 people and we feel lonely. And one of the things that's really clear to anyone who's been in unpaid care giver is how lonely you can feel at two o'clock in the morning when you lie there thinking I'm terrible at everything. No, you're not. You're beautiful. Give yourself grace. You're, you know, in the meeting and you're you're in a uh dinner with friends, and it's the 15th call you get from the person you're caring for, and give yourself grace in that as well. But the what was I just saying?

SPEAKER_01 39:42

What anything, the last thing you want to share, or anything you want to share with with others. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 39:48

So when we think about this loneliness, which can show up at all these times, expected and unexpected, one of the areas that I don't think is just it was surprising to me. We were not surprised to see the data point out that if you're in a caregiver situation where it's you alone and there's no one you're sharing it with, that can be very, very lonely, very even more isolating than just being a caregiver. It's if you're a caregiver and you're you're working, you're gonna have more loneliness. We started to look at the relationship between caregiving and having a sibling. And anyone out there who has a sibling knows that sibling relationships are complicated. Yes. And if you get along with yourself on any given day, on any given day. Gosh, I wonder why this just came up for me right now.

unknown 40:37

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 40:39

So, speaking from personal experience, I enjoyed getting the data to show that if you're caring with a sibling, let's say for a parent, which by the way, increasingly people in the 70s are doing, right? Yeah, thank goodness because people are living longer and longer and longer, then the single loneliest data we've ever seen is if you are caring with a sibling and you yourself are in the red. Because if you're in the red, it's a marker that things are not going well.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 41:10

If you are in the red and you're caring with a sibling, 94% of us are lonely. It's basically you're lonely. If you are caring for a caring with a sibling and you are in the clear, meaning your situation is good, nobody is lonely. So if you have a sibling with whom you are doing this, do everything you can to have open communication. We just even know what to think about this.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

But it's so vital. Now, throw a sibling away. Just talk about it to the extent that you can. And if you don't feel comfortable talking about your own situation, ask somebody about theirs, and maybe you'll start to feel comfortable if you open that conversation by talking about what's going on with you. Hey, I just found out my mom has blood cancer, and we already knew she had Alzheimer's, and I'm really incredibly, it's just hard.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:03

What's going on with you? So just talk about it. And when you do, you're going to realize that you're not alone. You're going to realize you're beautiful in what you're doing. And you might end up with a bestie who's going through the same thing and you didn't even know it.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

Alex, it has I could go on and on with this conversation. Thank you. Thank you for being with us today. Uh, you have just opened my eyes, and I hope uh to so many things, and I hope the same is true for our audience. We'll have to have you come back at some point to talk more about this.

SPEAKER_03 42:32

It's it because it is such a ginormous thing, and because it's also it has so many things that are so unique and different, so many things that are so the same across, it's a never-ending source for us to support each other just by acknowledging and doing what we can to be in that space with each other. And Ruth, thank you for talking about it, right? Just by talking about it, we begin to help people realize they're not alone. This is a thing that they're doing. They're not just failing at everything, they're a rock star at everything, and that's intense. Give yourself grace.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

Give yourself grace and give yourself some credit. And give yourself some credit.

SPEAKER_03 43:09

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

Yes. So thank you, Alex. And I just want to tell our audience don't forget to take the index. What did you put? The caregiver. Yeah, your intensity score. Air care. Intensity score. Okay, thank you. And and know where you are if you read, yellow, green, or clear. So uh I think that's it's really self-awareness, it's really, really important. Even if you if you don't think you're in the red, you may be in the red or in the yellow and can keep your people are surprised all the time.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

And by the way, it has nothing to do with how many hours you're doing caregiving, what you're doing caregiving for. It is about those mental health impacts that you're not tapping into because you don't focus on yourself. Thank you, Alex. You I love you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you to the audience for being with us on this. Thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

And now it's time for this week's silver lining, which is we try to give a little tidbit at the end of every episode for you to take away something. So this week's silver lining is a reminder that we all need, we all need to take care of ourselves. And the saying here the thought I want to leave you with is that you cannot pour from an empty cup. We've been talking about caregiving and unpaid caregiving and caring for people who are close to you. That the intensity of that will empty your cup. So you got to fill it up, whether it's five minutes of breathing exercises, a walk around the block, calling a friend, just calling your red phone, we have to take care of ourselves. It's not selfish, it's essential and it gives us self-preservation. All right. So I want to thank you for being with us today and for the hard humor and honesty we bring to these topics. And to our listeners, if you are a caregiver or you have a loved one, we see you, you matter. You are not alone. Next week, I'll be joined by a new guest co-host of my good friend Fon Lopez. And we are going to talk about finding your next season. So we all go through seasons in our lives. So we we have the very youthful season of our childhoods, and then we have these, say young adult ages or teenagers and young adult, then uh uh middle age and so forth. The next season for those of us who are beyond 60 is something we're going to explore. What do you do beyond 60? Um, some people retire, some people rewire, some people just look at expressing themselves and defining what we call self-actualization. So until then, please keep thriving, keep laughing. Uh, make sure that you find us wherever you get your podcast. We're on YouTube, we're on Spotify, and we're on Apple Podcasts. We would love to have you join us. And until then, just remember that the best years are the ones still ahead. Thank you.