Caregiving
For the people doing it for someone else.
By 2030, one in five Americans will be Medicare-aged. Most of us will spend some part of our lives caring for a parent, in-law, spouse, or someone we love — while still managing our own life, work, and health. Caregiving is the second pillar of Anyway Life, written from the inside of it.
The job no one applies for.
Three years ago, my in-laws moved in with us. I went from being a patient with my own chronic illness, my own career, my own life — to also being responsible for two more adults’ medical appointments, prescriptions, Medicare paperwork, fall prevention, and the quiet daily logistics of aging in place. No one trained me for it. No one trains anyone.
Caregiving is the most common and least supported job in America. It is overwhelmingly done by women, mostly without pay, often without help, and almost always at the cost of the caregiver’s own health, career, and savings. The data on caregiver burnout, depression, and mortality is genuinely grim — and almost no one talks about it until they’re already in it.
This pillar is the practical, calm, plainspoken work of caring for someone you love without losing yourself in it. The legal stack you should have in place before you need it. The medication management you didn’t expect to learn. The appointments you go to as a second set of ears. The hard conversations. And the slow, important permission to need help too.
Eight places to start.
Caregiving covers a lot of ground. Start with the season you’re in.
The First 90 Days
What changes overnight when someone moves in, gets diagnosed, has a fall, or comes home from the hospital. The triage guide.
The Legal Stack
Power of Attorney (financial and healthcare), HIPAA authorization, advance directives, living wills, and the documents you need before you need them.
Going to Appointments Together
When to speak up, when to step back. Being the second set of ears without overriding the patient. How to prep, what to track, how to follow up.
Managing Medications
Polypharmacy, pill organizers, reconciliation at every transition of care, what to do when prescriptions don’t line up. Keeping someone else’s meds straight.
Home as a Care Setting
Accessibility modifications, fall prevention, what insurance covers and doesn’t, the small changes that buy years of safer aging in place.
The Hard Conversations
Driving. Memory. Money. Moving. Hospice. The conversations no one wants to start — and the framing that makes them possible without rupture.
Aging in Place
When it works, when it stops working, and how to recognize the shift. The signs, the options, and the costs of each path forward.
Caregiver Wellbeing
Caregiver burnout is real, common, and almost never named in time. Permission to need help. Respite care. Your own health, work, and relationships in the middle of all of this.
“You can love someone fiercely and still need rest. Both things are true.”
— Heather
Essays & guides on Caregiving.
The Legal Stack Every Caregiver Needs
A plain-English walkthrough of POA, HIPAA authorization, advance directives, and the documents you need before you need them.
The First 90 Days as a Caregiver
The triage guide for the moment everything changed — a diagnosis, a fall, a move-in. What to handle first, and what can wait.