Family Caregiving Deserves to Be Seen. It’s One of the Hardest Jobs Ever.

"This Is One of the Hardest Jobs in America. Millions Are Doing It Alone.”

That is the title of a powerful new video essay published recently by The New York Times Opinion team.

In just eight minutes, dozens of family caregivers from across the United States share the emotional toll, difficult decisions, and personal sacrifices they've made to keep their loved ones safe. Their stories are deeply moving—and painfully familiar.

I’m thrilled to see family caregiving receive this kind of national attention.

For many caregivers, this work is usually unpaid, largely invisible, and often taken for granted. Seeing our experiences reflected in a major news publication helps caregivers feel seen, heard, and validated.

The need for that recognition has never been greater.

According to the AARP Public Policy Institute, unpaid family caregivers provide an estimated $1 trillion worth of care each year in the United States—often at tremendous cost to their own health, careers, finances, and futures.

And the need for caregiving is only expected to grow. By 2034, adults over age 65 are projected to outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history, increasing the demand for family caregivers even further.

Behind these numbers are real people. Today, 63 million Americans—one in four adults—are family caregivers, a nearly 50% increase over the past decade, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving.

I hope that more stories like this New York Times video—and more honest portrayals of caregiving in news media, television, and movies—will bring caregiving out of the shadows. Greater visibility can help caregivers feel less alone, while also galvanizing elected officials, private companies, philanthropists, nonprofits, and others to work together to create meaningful solutions for our nation's growing caregiving crisis.

Watching the video, I found myself deeply relating to what adult children shared about the emotional and physical exhaustion of caring for their aging parents. I remember it very well.

For several years, I helped my sister care for our elderly parents until they both passed away five years ago. My mother lived with Alzheimer's disease, and while that journey was incredibly difficult, I was grateful that I could find support groups, books, and organizations dedicated to helping families navigate dementia caregiving.

At the same time, millions of families are caring for loved ones with chronic illnesses, disabilities, rare diseases, mental illnesses, and other complex health conditions that also deserve far greater visibility and support.

Yet many chronic illness caregivers face an additional challenge: they often struggle to find healthcare providers, support groups, educational resources, or communities that truly understand what they're experiencing. Families affected by ME/CFS, Long COVID, POTS, and related infection-associated chronic conditions frequently find themselves navigating years of uncertainty with far fewer resources than caregivers of more widely recognized illnesses.

That gap is one of the reasons I founded Caregiver Wisdom.

After more than 20 years caring for my husband with ME/CFS and related illnesses, I want to share the lessons that have helped me become more resilient, connected, and joyful despite the uncertainty of chronic illness. More importantly, I want to create the kind of community I wish had existed when our caregiving journey began—a place where caregivers could support one another, learn together, and feel less alone.

Although the circumstances may differ, caregiving asks the same profound things of us: to love deeply, adapt continually, grieve repeatedly, and keep showing up for someone whose future is uncertain.

Whether we're caring for an aging parent, a spouse with a chronic illness, or a child with complex medical needs (and sometimes all of the above), many of the emotions—love, grief, uncertainty, exhaustion, and hope—are remarkably similar. That's why I believe our stories matter—not only because they help us feel less alone, but because they help others better understand the invisible work that millions of caregivers do every day.

Over the years, I've come to see that caregivers, regardless of who they're caring for, tend to struggle with three universal challenges: profound exhaustion, the ongoing grief of ambiguous loss, and navigating the many changes caregiving brings to our self identities, relationships, and hopes for the future.

Those three themes became the foundation of the work I do through Caregiver Wisdom and the group courses I've developed—Strengthening the Resilient Self, Walking the Ambiguous Loss Path, and Navigating Change—because they reflect both my own caregiving journey and the struggles I hear about most often from other caregivers.

And perhaps the greatest challenge of all is the profound isolation that caregiving can bring. That's one reason I teach my courses as group cohorts and continue to offer free monthly caregiver support group meetings. Healing doesn't happen only through information—it also happens through being seen, understood, and supported by people who truly "get it." 

If you watch the video, I'd love to hear what resonates with you.

• What parts of these caregivers' stories felt most familiar?

• How does your caregiving experience compare?

• If you've cared for both aging parents and someone with a chronic illness, what similarities and differences have you noticed?
  

I'd genuinely love to hear your thoughts. Click here to send me an email. I read every message.