You know that feeling when you’re scrolling through Instagram, daydreaming about a life like you see in the pictures? Just imagine: Tropical vacations, your own Martha Stewart-esq kitchen, partying with friends downtown every weekend- What a dream! I think we’re all pretty familiar with the experience at this point.
Comparing ourselves to others is, to an extent, a useful tool to measure our own progress but we can all take that comparison too far, especially as caregivers. I sometimes find myself scrolling endlessly, asking “Why can’t my life look like that?” and it feels pretty awful because that was my life up until last year. I had it all- A cushy job that paid well, a very cute apartment in a great area, a blossoming social life, and a brand new fiancé. I felt like the sky was the limit…until it came crumbling down around me and I left most of it behind to care for my mom.
The transition was a complete 180° from the 5, 10, and 15 year plans ingrained into my mind since elementary school, making the comparison game that much tougher. How can I compare my experience as a caregiver to the dreamy influencer life I see on Instagram? The answer is simple: I can’t.
I can, however, compare myself to the person I used to be before this experience, and I think most other caregivers can as well. To become a caregiver chances are you’ve had to leave your comfort zone behind to learn new skills, information, and technology. You’ve likely needed to maintain a higher level of emotional maturity and self control while managing extreme grief, stress, or hardship while simultaneously mastering organization of someone else’s appointments, medication, therapies, and bills. For some of us, becoming a caregiver also means finding an (or multiple) attorneys and taking legal action for the first time in our lives (This was a big learning experience for me!). All this to say that to become a caregiver means we’ve become much stronger and more highly skilled version of ourselves, even if it’s not necessarily the skillset we originally set out to master.
The truth is, caregiving is never going to be the dreamy Instagram aesthetic and it’s not the corporate success stories you read on LinkedIn, it’s something entirely it’s own; Selflessness and compassion, two things most career paths don’t require at all but caregiving is built solely upon. Trying to compare the life of a caregiver to a CFO of a corporation is silly and it’s important to log off of social media and remind ourselves of that every once in a while.
In the United States alone, over 16% of the population identifies as full-time caregivers for a loved one with the average age of caregivers being 50 years old. Most of us will become a caregiver in some capacity at least once in our lifetime, whether that’s for a parent, grandparent, spouse, or otherwise. The way I see it, being a young caregiver means mastering lessons in selflessness and compassion ahead of schedule and maybe it’s the competitor in me, but I like to think that gives us an edge that other people our age simply can’t compete with.
The Millennial Caregiver 