Empowering Caregivers-Bringing Your Caregiving Experience Up To Date

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Bringing Your Caregiving Experience Up To Date

Part I

You have been writing for five weeks now. Congratulations to you on your commitment.

How are you feeling about your writing? Does it come easy? Do you have to push yourself to do it? Do you still come up with reasons why not to do it? Has it altered your life in anyway? How are you viewing your experiences in your role as caregiver as a result of your writings? In what ways do you feel your awareness has increased?

PART II

Keeping this in mind, take some nice full deep breaths. With each inhalation, breathe in love and light and loving thoughts. On the exhale, release all the worry, the doubts, the fears and concerns you have. Breathe with this awareness for a few minutes. Just let yourself feel more relaxed, breathing your loving thoughts into all different parts of your body, your forehead, your mouth, your neck, your shoulders, arms, hands, chest, abdomen, buttocks, thighs, knees, calves, into your feet and out of your body. Smile to your organs.....send these good feelings everywhere....allow yourself to drift and feel as if you are floating......when you are feeling peaceful and relaxed move on to Part III.

PART III

This part of the exercise will take several sittings and perhaps weeks to complete. It would be great if you could consider the exercise as an ongoing event to document all that has happened to you right up until this very moment in your life. When you feel you have caught up with everything that you can recall, continue with the ongoing events of importance as they occur in your life.

I would like you to reflect and go back to the point in time, when you first realized that you were going to be a caregiver for your loved one. How did you learn that you were going to be taking on this role? How did your love one respond? What feelings were you experiencing? Try looking at it from your perspective as well as the perspective of your loved ones? How did other family and relatives, friends and co-workers respond?

Begin recreating the caregiving process for yourself. Write about experiences with doctors, finances, good things, fearful things....write about anything that comes to mind. Document as much as you can in detail. (Remember this will become an ongoing process so don't panic by saying to yourself...this is too much, what is she nuts!!!!)

This is an opportunity for you to get as much out of your system as you can. It is an opportunity to increase your awareness so that you let go of emotions, feelings, thoughts etc. Which keep you bound up inside yourself. It is an opportunity to free yourself from so much of what you are holding onto inside yourself. This is the safest place for you to express yourself, so that you may come into your own authenticity through awareness, compassion, forgiveness and love. Write as much as you can....and continue writing whenever you can until you are current with the present moment which is when you feel you have completed the exercise. Never doubt or criticize your writings...just let them be...Sometimes you may not know where the writing came from...it just came out...It is normal and okay.

You may even decide not to read any of the writings. This is fine as well. Within time, perhaps a few months, you might choose to go back and read what you have written. This will be the time that you can go back as an observer and see your accomplishments. See when you were stuck and how difficult things were. You may observe your victim, your growth, the shifts you made and the choices you made. You may observe old family patterns that come up again for you, your loved one or your entire family. This is an incredible "letting go" exercise for cleansing and healing experience. This is a gift for you...

You are not alone....

May your journey be peaceful.....

Blessings to you.

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© Copyright Gail R. Mitchell
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