Barbara McVicker and Darby McVicker Puglielli
For more than 75 million people in the United States providing care for an aging parent, Barbara McVicker has released
Stuck in the Middle. In her book, McVicker provides real-life short stories by caregivers and a practical guide with tip lists.
Like many adult children, McVicker felt "stuck in the middle" of the needs of her children, her aging parents, and her career. As the responsibilities became too overwhelming, she quit her job as a development director for a non-profit agency, eventually devoting 10 years to caregiving her parents.
During those years, Barbara searched for a primer on caregiving elderly parents to help guide her through the maze of emotion and information. Because every aspect of taking care of her parents involved reacting to crisis after crisis, she longed for both a support group and information crucial to her role as a caregiver. McVicker has now written that primer.
Having interviewed hundreds of caregivers and healthcare professionals, McVicker has compiled information that is essential for all caregivers. Her work also serves as a "support group in a book", so adult children caregivers do not feel so alone and isolated. The book contains chapters on the
Rewards of Caregiving, Grief, Must Have Documents, Effective Ways to Communicate, Universal Conflicts when Caregiving, and much more.
Stuck in the Middle has been recognized by the media, the National Hospice Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, medical school researchers, and seminary professors.
For more information, please visit www.BarbaraMcVicker.com
A professional speaker, consultant and author, Barbara McVicker was a caregiver to her parents for 10 years while raising two children and struggling to maintain her career as a high-level development director. Overwhelmed and feeling isolated, she eventually quit her job to care for her parents full-time.
To help her cope, Barbara started interviewing other caregivers and was moved by their joy and pain. These were ordinary people suddenly thrown into extraordinary situations. She interviewed hundreds of caregivers and healthcare professionals, gathering their stories and compiling information and common themes essential for all caregivers. This data, including numerous poignant stories, became the basis for her keynote presentations, as well as her book.
The book is McVicker's opportunity to provide a lifeline for caregivers through highly emotional times - a lifeline Barbara wishes she would have had while she was a caregiver. "The Sandwich Generation" is
Stuck in the Middle of their children, aging parents, and careers. This group is estimated at close to 75 million individuals.
Prior to her career as a professional speaker, Barbara was a medical researcher and grant writer for an acclaimed medical school, founder of a partnership for Habitat for Humanity,and a consultant in hospital management. McVicker was employed as a development director managing million-dollar fundraising campaigns when she resigned from her job to care for her parents full-time. Her vast experience in the healthcare and non-profit arenas, combined with her own individual experiences as a caregiver, provide Barbara with a unique view from both the professional and personal perspectives.
For more information, please visit www.BarbaraMcVicker.com.
The
Great Untold Secret
I spent ten years
caring for my parents. It was a stressful and frustrating ten years.
Caring for them was a much harder job than raising my two children.
Much, much harder. But nobody ever talks about that. Nobody
prepares you for what’s ahead with your parents. You go along
believing that once your kids head off to college you are free and
your life becomes your own again. But it is not true. The great
untold secret is that the next step in life is caring for your
parents and it can be a terribly difficult and lonely journey.
Nobody talks about how combative they can become. Or how abusive. My
parents resented losing their independence and were scared by their
declining health, so they took out all their fears and concerns on
me. They yelled at me, humiliated me and never once thanked me for
all the work I did on their behalf. I am not saying that my parents
were abusive twenty-four hours a day, but they were not warm and
fuzzy people. And caring for them was not a warm and fuzzy
experience...
I remember one
Saturday night my father was arrested for drunk driving and it made
the headlines in the newspaper the next day. The article identified
everyone in my family by name and all the horrible details of his
arrest. That Sunday morning we had to walk into church as if nothing
had happened. My sister and I had to walk down the church aisle
between our parents pretending my father hadn’t been arrested the
night before. Total hypocrisy.
My parents had a
terrible relationship with each other. It was basically open
warfare. I remember lying in bed each night trying not to cry as I
listened to my parents fight downstairs. Their abusive words wafted
up through the heat registers like some kind of poisonous gas. It
went on like that for years. And when my sister and I moved out of
the house, my parents’ relationship with each other got even worse.
In 1993, I started
taking care of them. They needed help and I knew I had to do it, but
caretaking for them did not come with a lot of love; it came with a
lot of duty. Every day I dealt with two adults who were acting like
toddlers fighting over the same toy. Not only was I trying to help
them make choices and move through transitions, I had to deal with
how poorly they worked together and all of their dysfunctional past
history.
The caretaking part
started when they were still in their own home. I tried to get over
there every day to make sure certain things were happening. I was
responsible for paying their bills, maintaining their property, and
mopping up the crises they would get into. I tried to have my
cleaning lady clean their house but she did not do “a good enough
job” for my mother. I tried to hire out lawn mowing but the person
“did not do it the way we like it.” It was very difficult to
bring in anybody who was up to my parents’ standards. Like many
older people, they did not like having strangers in their house. So
guess who got to clean their house and mow their lawn each week?
Me.
My mother was a
severe diabetic and never ate properly to keep her diabetes under
control. She lived her day however she wanted and then suffered the
health consequences, which were sometimes serious. My dad was
physically and mentally fine, but he refused to help me in anyway.
That’s the way he was. Cantankerous. I would ask him to make sure
mom ate lunch and he would say, “I can’t.” Which meant, “I
won’t.” He really did not do much except watch TV all day. It
went on like that for a few years until my mother’s health and my
father’s mental abilities deteriorated to the point where I had to
take some action.
The crisis that
moved my parents from their home into a retirement center was,
unfortunately, a pretty common one. My dad’s judgment became so
impaired that he sent $68,000 in cashier’s checks to Canada after
he received a long distance telephone call telling him he had won the
Canadian lottery. “All you need to do,” the caller told him, “is
send $98,000 to cover the taxes on your prize and we’ll send you a
check for one million dollars.”...
The
Caregiver…survival, challenges, rewards
Survival
Consider your own needs: put your
oxygen mask on first
Accept help
Realize limits and set boundaries
Expect setbacks
Take time off
Stay healthy: eat and sleep
...
Challenges
Symptoms of Caregiver Burn-out
Denial: “I know Dad will get better”
Anger: due to not setting boundaries,
doing more than you can handle
Social Withdrawal: from friends and
activities, due to less time for self, feeling alone
Anxiety: about the future
...
Rewards!
A sense of purpose, meaning, and
satisfaction
Ability to value the present: being in
each moment
Fulfillment of lifelong commitment,
faithfulness to parent
Opportunity to give back to aging
parent
Religious experience<
