Who takes care of the caregiver?

Project 9to5 supports the people doing the caring: exhausted, stretched thin, grieving, missing work to keep someone else going. For once, the focus is on them.

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Everyone asks how the patient is doing.

Far fewer ask about the person doing the caring.

Missed work.
Lost income.
Sleepless nights.
Hospital drives.
Bills piling up.
Their own health, put off.
Grief.

A kitchen counter at night with medications and unopened mail

Not a pamphlet.
A full tank of gas.

It starts with one question: what do you need right now?

Right now

Groceries.
Gas.
Emergency bills.
A ride.
A hotel near the hospital.

While you're caring

Meals.
Cleaning.
Help around the house.
A night off.
A paid caregiver for a shift.

After caregiving

Getting back to work.
Rebuilding financially.
Support through grief.
A few days of real rest, paid for.

We're just getting started. These are the things we're raising money to fund. When the help starts going out, we'll show you exactly where it goes.

It started with Dolly.

I heard her talk about what happened while she was caring for her husband, Carl. While she was focused on taking care of him, she stopped taking care of herself.

And something clicked.

That was my mother.

My mother spent years caring for my father. She gave a huge amount of herself to keeping everything going around him. Then she got sick, and died before he did.

Then I thought about my best friend's mother.

Same pattern.

And once I started talking about it, I heard versions of the same story everywhere. Friends. Clients. People I barely knew. Almost everyone knew somebody caring for a parent, a spouse, a child, someone they loved.

We spend so much time asking how the person who is sick is doing. Who is asking about the person doing the caring?