The person who feeds everyone else

The collision between nourishment and caregiving

You know her. Maybe you are her.

She’s the one who shows up at her father’s nephrology appointment with a list of questions and a folder of lab results. She spends her lunch hour on hold with the insurance company, making sure her son’s prior authorization goes through. She is the family medical historian, the medical translator, and the one who remembers when the last physical therapy appointment was.
She’s also the one that ate stale crackers over the sink for lunch.

I keep meeting this woman. Heck, I’ve even been this woman. She’s carrying a caregiving load that would flatten most people. Her attention to the details of her loved one’s health is extraordinary. It’s her own that keeps sliding off the list.

What makes this collision so brutal is the timing. The menopause transition is when your body starts asking for more: more protein, more calcium, more consistent meals, and more recovery time. Caregiving during this stage means you have less to give. That’s not a motivation problem: it’s a structural one.

Here’s what I’ve noticed about the women carrying these loads: they are extraordinarily good at building systems of care for other people. What almost never occurs to them is to build that kind of system for themselves.

Part of what I try to do is be that person for the caregiver. Someone who thinks about her nutrition so she doesn’t have to be the person strategizing about, well, everything. Someone who looks at her actual life and helps her figure out what’s realistic. (Not ideal. Realistic.) Someone who can research meal delivery services, adapt simple recipes, and build systems that work for her when she’s running on fumes.

You don’t have to earn the right to be fed well by finishing your caregiving duties first. The question is whether you can include yourself in the care that you are already so good at giving.

Want someone to build a care system for you?

Let’s start with a free, 20-minute conversation.