Excellence In Caregiving

I've wondered for years, how do we know excellence in caregiving when we see it? After supporting both men and women caregivers for nearly 10 years the only thing I know for sure is that excellence in caregiving has absolutely nothing to do with your gender. I've seen men and women alike with an astonishing level of confidence and clarity in their caregiving role. I've also seen both men and women with zero caregiving confidence or clarity. Most of us are somewhere in the messy middle.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece titled "Is Self-Care Selfish?" , my attempt at convincing you that far from being the same, self care and selfishness are actually opposites.

After writing that piece it occurred to me:

"Maybe excellence in caregiving is simply striving for a balance of care. A balance between the care we give and the care we get."

Before I became a caregiver I lacked balance because I was over focused on my own needs. When my wife was diagnosed with cancer I swung way too far in the other direction. She needed so much care that nearly all of the care she was giving me was redirected towards herself. I became so laser focused on meeting her needs that I completely lost my sense of self. Eventually I burned out in spectacular fashion. Unfortunately the burn out didn't teach me to pursue better balance. It was one of my boys who looked up at me after his mom had passed away and said, "what happens to me if something happens to you dad?"

As I've aged and inched closer to better balance what's true for me is that advocating for my own care is the harder part. Getting care includes giving it myself. It includes advocating for it and accepting it from others. Maybe it's because there's just one of me, and the number of people I care about is long and keeps getting longer the older I get. And the better I get to know people the more I care about them. So as the weight of rocks I'm piling onto the give side of the equation grows, so too must the weight of the big rock on the get side. I suspect I will always be biased towards caring more for others because the hard truth is I love other people more than I love myself.

Balance Is A Unicorn

I've come to believe that much like perfection, any kind of sustained or perfect balance is a myth. If we ever achieve a state of perfect balance it's so brief that we often fail to notice it. We're always leaning one way or the other. Lacking perfect balance doesn't mean we aren't achieving excellence in caregiving. Because to me striving for that balance is what matters. Noticing when we're leaning too far in one direction or the other is what gives us the opportunity to do something about it.

I'm curious what you think excellence in caregiving looks like? How do you know it when you see it?