Carenting: Alex Lollback on raising her children & caring for her mother

Foreign. Hello, my name is Melissa Reeder and welcome to Agehood, the podcast for women who are quietly carrying it all. Aging parents, adult kids, careers and their own next chapter. If this sounds like you, well, you're in your age hood and it's time we talked about it. Today's guest is someone who knows this really all too well. Alex Lolback is the executive producer of one of the biggest podcasts in the country. Ladies, we need to talk. She's also a mum of two young kids and until very recently, she was the sole carer for her mum, Di. When Di's health began to decline, Alex found herself travelling regularly between her home in Bowral and her mum's home in in Newcastle, juggling parenting, work and a growing sense that something wasn't right. What started as a few anxious late night texts from her mum spiralled quickly into a six month hospital stay as Di's physical and mental health rapidly deteriorated. And suddenly, Alex was in the thick of it, raising two young kids, producing a national podcast and becoming a full time carer. In this really personal conversation, Alex opens up about the realities of the sandwich generation, the quiet burnout of being everything to everyone, and the courage it took to finally accept help and move her mum into residential care. It's a story about love, guilt, resilience and the complicated, often invisible reality of being stuck in the middle. Today's episode of Agehood has been brought to you by Wellways Carer Gateway. Wellways deliver free Carer Gateway services across Queensland and also across parts of New South Wales. They're designed by carers for carers, and the services really focus on building skills, easing stress and helping you to stay strong in your caring role. Because when you look after yourself, you're in a better place to care for the people who need you. Call 1-800-422-737 or search Wellways Carer Gateway to connect with your local team. A will is vital, but it's not designed to keep up with all of the personal, the practical and the financial details of our modern lives. Things like passwords, bank accounts and bills, you know, they often go unrecorded. And while life is complicated, a legacy doesn't have to be. That's where a letter of wishes from today's sponsor, Billwill, comes in. It's a simple and secure way to reduce stress for your loved ones, to share your values and preserve your voice. And it can save hundreds of hours of admin down the line. Visit billwhill.com au to get started. Alex, welcome to Agehood. Today I am really hoping to talk to you about the reality of the Sandwich generation. Can you tell me a little bit about what this has looked like for you? You know, when did you realise you were part of this? Yeah, I think that's the first thing you realize is how quickly it happens. Look, I think I knew for a long time that it would be coming for me because I'm an only child and Mum is a single mum. So in terms of support, she had some great friends but no one family that would step in for that. And over the last 10 years she's had some health issues, but has been so fiercely independent about no, I don't need you to care for me, don't come up here. And so last year, about 12 months ago, she just started unraveling a bit and having a bit of a, what you might call a mental health breakdown or challenge or it was just spiraling, spiraling with her anxiety. And I sort of noticed it and went up there to stay with her for a while and realised that she just wasn't coping and we lived three hours apart at the time. So you're an only child and I'm an only child. So was she spiraling kind of in your direction? Were you the main source of the spiral? She really tried so hard to protect me from it all, but there are indications. There was one night in particular where she just kept sending me these really anxious text messages that were ruminating and ruminating and nothing I would say would calm her down and pretty out of character and very out of character and quite late at night. Yeah, okay, worrying. Yeah, really worrying. And it was about legal stuff, enduring guardianship papers, powers of attorney. And I was just thinking, what's behind this? And now in hindsight, I think it was an anxiety about losing her memory, about losing her executive functioning she couldn't manage at home anymore. And it was probably a thinly veiled cry for help maybe that you heard. Yeah. So I went up there and she seemed to think she was okay, but was also suddenly too scared to drive her car and was a bit challenged about what to cook for dinner. And I noticed that she probably hadn't showered in a few days. And really key looking after herself moments had just fallen away. So a lot of changes in a quite a short period of time. Yes. And to be honest, as you know, life is busy as a middle aged person with a job and two kids, that I probably hadn't seen her in her environment for a few months. She'd come down to visit, but I hadn't seen that. There was paperwork all over the house, just spread out and you know, the house wasn't as tidy as it normally was and there were just once I went into the house, I realised that I had probably missed a few things. Tell us who she was and what your relationship was like with her before all of these changes. In the before time. Yeah, in the before. So mum was a school principal, supremely confident, gregarious, loud voice, big booming laugh, quite social. We had some great friends in the neighborhood that, you know, the ladies she'd always have over for a champagne to watch the sunset on the lake. But we also also had a very challenging relationship, especially in those teenage years with a daughter and a mother being the only two people in a house. And also we're very different people and perhaps in hindsight she's always leaned towards that anxiety and that. I don't want to say I'm going to lean towards that anxiety contained in that. Okay. I don't want to accidentally be unkind, but yeah, we did butt heads a lot. You know, we love each other dearly. We're so connected to each other. It's a single mum and a daughter are. And she did everything for me. She sacrificed so much, worked really hard to, you know, send me to a private school even though she was a single mum and I did dancing and all the things, you know, she really pushed herself so I could have the best. So of course now in the reverse situation, I want to be able to give her the best. And it's not always easy to know what that is for someone who's older. No, no, no. And I heard you talk about this and really describe the kind of the gift or the privilege of being able to like it comes with a lot of complexity and stuff we've got to figure out. But it is a real gift, isn't it, to be able to return that love, you know, in a different chapter of your mum's life. So then help us understand a little bit about where your life was at when this moment or period of unraveling started. So I'm. They might call, I like to be busy. I have three side hustles and a full time job and two kids that are very high energy still at primary school, do a lot of activities and I have, I have a husband who commutes to Sydney, so we live about an hour and a half from the city. So there's also a lot of time where I'm sort of single parenting. So I would have told you that I was at capacity before Mum got sick. So look, when I went to see Mum, I did realise that she needed to be put into some sort of care. And I thought at the time that was a short stay at like a private psychiatric hospital, somewhere nice and comfortable where she can get some medication, get a bit of help and support, we can arrange some help at home and then she can come back into her environment. And also that she has a support structure outside of you and your relationship. Cause that's so important in those situations as well. And I just, I couldn't be driving three hours every week to support her. My life just didn't have the room in it. But in hospital, unfortunately she had a fall and she broke her arm and then had a delirium. And if anybody else has been in this situation, it unravels so fast. And for someone at the age of 81, it just knocked her for six. And she spent six months in hospital. Did she? And hospitalisation can actually really impacts someone's mobility and frailty. Yeah. So common. So I had to fight hard to have her in a hospital near us and had to have her moved, which meant a lot of waiting for beds and being in emergency rooms when it wasn't the place for her. And that had a real impact on her mental health. But her state of awareness, because she'd been moved and had a delirium, she didn't know where she was for a long time. And so for me that was so upsetting, just to feel partially to blame. I put her in hospital, she needed to go. But you know, I'm the one that did that. And it's hard to separate yourself from that guilt. And that if, if perhaps I'd done something differently and left her at home with different supports, maybe all of this wouldn't happen. But then there's another track you could go down which is she could have had a fall at home and it could have been a lot worse. And there are all these what ifs that you are constantly running through your head. But yes, I was very busy. So having her in a hospital. Close. And when I say close, it's still a 50 minute drive from our house to the hospital. So at the time I would drop my kids to school. That's just close. Because you live in a regional area, by the way. Like that's the version of close that. It'S closer than three hours away where she live at the time. Yeah. So I would drop the kids at school and then I would log on to work for a bit, send some furious Emails and then drive down the freeway, spend a few hours with her and then come back for school pickup time and have my laptop at her bedside doing work emails at the time. And it got to a point where I had to say to my work, look, I need to step away for a while. And it's must have been tough. Very tough and very emotional. And it was also at a time in my work where I was launching a big project that was mine and I had ownership over it and was really proud of it and I had to just hand that to someone and say, you go for it. But I don't regret that part of it at all. In fact, I'm really grateful that I have a job that can allow me to do that. But it was also so important for me to be at the hospital because when you don't know where you are or what's happening to you and you're panicked and anxious, it's really important to have an advocate. Yeah, of course. To be able to give medical history and fill in the gaps to all. The doctors, emotional support, just to be your mum's person. But it's a lot, you know, when you're the only sibling, that's. That's a huge amount to be carrying. What happened from there when your mum eventually left hospital? Yes, it took quite a while, but she came home just before Christmas, which is an interesting time as well, because services shut down for Christmas and New Year, but. And emotions just run high, stressful time. Yes. We were hosting Christmas and suddenly we had Mum living with us. So during Mum's time in hospital, I realised that she couldn't go home. And also that if she did go home for a time, I wouldn't be able to get her out again to sell the house and to move her somewhere. So while she was in hospital, with her consent, me telling her what was going on, I packed up our family home of 35 years and sold it on her behalf. Small task. Alex, you just said that in a. Single sentence like it was a weekend's work. But that's a big job too. Emotionally, it's very emotional going through all the family photos and also having to make those executive decisions, do I keep this or do I throw this out? And mums of that generation, they kept everything. Everything. You know, I'm a thrower. I'm a. I'm a declutterer from way back. But Mum really loves to have her things around her and I think it gives her comfort. So I'm still fielding questions like, did you throw out that dinner set. And what about my hot rollers? And so what about your hot roll? Yeah, and I do have a rehearse line of I make some big decisions and I'm sorry if they weren't the right ones but you know, we can try to remedy that. But the local charity shop loved me at the time. So we'd sold mom's house and the plan was for her to move in with us. We have a granny flat at the back of our property which again, I totally acknowledge my privilege in living in a country town where we have a bit more space and can do that. But coming out of hospital required so much rehabilitation. The hospitalization made her so much more unwell than she was before. Physically or mentally or. A bit of both. A bit of both, but mostly physically. Her mobility was such that I had to carry, basically carry her from bed to bathroom and back. Couldn't stand to shower. I had, you know, I was toileting her for the first two weeks. Luckily my husband was in the States for work and so she slept in my bed with me. Um, and so I was just a 24 hour nurse basically. And I guess you're thinking like, where does this go from here? With that level of care? I really psyched myself up for it. I knew how unwell she was and I wasn't working. And this was an intensive period for me to rehabilitate her. I just took it on like a project, like we're going to get you back if not to where you were, but to somewhere near there, you know, to some level of independence. And I did achieve a level of that with so much help from programs when you come out of hospital. The transitional aged care program was excellent. We had physios and OTs and just beautiful allied health people coming to see mum, mental health people from the community. So we'd have someone every day. And while that's so much support, it's also another big job for the carer because it's your phone they call, it's your calendar that it all goes into. They're coming into your house, you've got to manage all of that side of it. Yeah. And you know, I've got two rowdy dogs and just managing two kids on school holidays. Two dogs, mum, the people coming in and out, it's a lot. But by the end of, I guess the three month period, they have a 12 week transitional aged care period. She was so much better physically but not mentally. She was still really depressed and I think that was a big turning point for me to Be like, I've, I've done all I can in terms of helping her physically, but I can't. There's nothing I can do about her mental state. What did the depression look like for your mum in that period? She just couldn't enjoy anything. I mean, every meal we would prepare her, she wouldn't like. And when you're the carer and you are, you know, just worn thin, your resilience is disappeared. Something as small as someone saying it's too salty or it's too spicy or it's not how I would have cooked. It or just flips you over the edge. It does just tip you over the edge. Yeah. And I think meal times, you know, in a house that's kind of stretched pretty thin, there's maybe this idea that meal times are a kind of. There's some relief in all coming together. Maybe we'll actually have a beautiful conversation and we'll enjoy. So yeah, there's a, probably a hope attached to every one of those meals. That got poo pooed as well. You know, they don't love eating the food. I prepare them sometimes as well. So it does feel a bit like no one likes the food I'm preparing. I have to convince everybody in this household to shower and to. Because mum wouldn't really get out of bed unless I really urged her. I was trying to keep her active so I would drive her to the local park to, to walk around slowly most days and just the, the time and the effort to get her out of bed was like over an hour. And then to shower, she just developed this phobia of the shower. I don't know if she was afraid of slipping or she just didn't like being cold or the feeling of the water or the vulnerability of being naked, I don't know. But she just wouldn't shower. And so it just got to the point where I was so frazzled and upset I was just crying every day and just realized I couldn't manage her care needs like that. I can't force you to shower. And I would have to get very stern and then I would feel awful. About it and what that does to your relationship and your sense of self and. Yeah, and so we weren't having any positive interactions. It was just me barking orders at her that were things that were good for her, you know, but she couldn't see that. So I sort of realized that her with us is, was probably not a long term thing as much as I still, you know, wish that could have happened. So we did Some tours of local residential aged care facilities just to get her used to the idea, like, this is what's on offer. You know, we can just look at them all. We're just looking. And we went through one which was quite lovely and quite small comparatively. And they. The lady called the next day and said, just out of interest, and she must have seen something in me that needed it. She said, we've got some respite. We've got a respite bed available. Have you ever considered that? What a gem of a woman. Yeah. She might have just seen the tear welling at the corner of my eye or the wobble in my voice, which is also happening now. But she offered some respite and I. But I had to decide within a day, so I had to sort of convince Mum to go in to respite the next day, which was a challenge. And she was quite upset and quite uncertain and understandable. You know, it must have just felt like, oh, I'm just being put away. But for me it was. Now I look back and think it was a lifeline because I was sort of falling apart. Yeah. And your mum's in residential care now, following respite. Yes. So the respite. There's a limited number of days per year, 63 or something like that. And I'm not the expert on this, but I'm learning as I go along. But beautifully. They kept calling towards the end of each period and would say, would you like another week? We have another week. And I would say, yes, just a little bit more time. Did your mum slowly start and she. Warmed up and it was a. It was a combination of. So the. The older person's mental health unit has a community team that visits her. And so they were coming to the house, but then went into see her, she. Age camping. So she has continuity of people and faces. And I think they tweaked her medication around almost exactly the same time that she went in. So it was probably a combination of new medication and the right combination of medications and constant company. Like, even at home with us, we're a busy young family, we're at work all day, the kids are at school and even when they're home, they don't have the time to gently engage with an older person. They're doing their own thing, their homework, they're on screens, they're running around. There's like an inevitable loneliness, isn't there? I think we underplay that. Yeah. And so disconnected. Yeah. And like, who am I now that everything is changing and it's changing for inevitable reasons, but it's still very real change for that person. Oh, okay. So I'm really pleased to hear that she's slowly settled into that year. And so she started talking about people that she'd met and I think just having nurses around all day to be to say, good morning, how are you? How are you feeling today? Even if she could complain to them endlessly about the quality of the food there, which, you know, she does, but she wasn't complaining to you. And that's a good thing. Someone to talk to every day. Yeah, it's feeling seen and heard, isn't it? So in the first month, she wouldn't have left her room for a meal or an activity, but now she has every meal in the dining room and she goes to most of the activities they put on, like bingo or quiz nights or a bus trip or. Yeah, I bet there's lots of listeners that will have seen that transition. It's really, really common. Like, it's such an emotional ocean when you're making that transition into permanent residential care. It takes everybody a lot of time to settle into that new circumstance because people's roles change. You can go back to being the daughter, you know, in that situation. I have. And we have briefer times together, but better times together. So I only actually, we signed the paperwork together last week and it was still very emotional. And that was because of weights on Acat for the final assessment and things like that. And I thought I was okay with it, but I was still struck down by an immense sense of guilt, you know. But that's just something I can rationalise away because I know that she's probably in the best place for her. After the break, Alex gets incredibly vulnerable about the sadness that comes with watching someone's world shrink and the grief that comes with missing the person you once knew. As a carer, it is not always easy to access support. And that's why Wellways Carer Gateway meets you with where you are with Walk in Hubs online registration and Wander the mobile support service. Call 1-800-422-737 or search Wellways Carer Gateway to find the support that's right for you. I've been reading a lot lately around this concept of carenting. So you're kind of parenting your parent with all of the mix of love and duty and a little bit of obligation thrown into that recipe. And I'm really interested in the dynamics of parenting. You, your parent is not the person they once were. You know, we spend all of our lives well, not all of us. Some of us looking up to our parents, seeking their approval, looking for their guidance, suddenly all those roles reverse. And it sounds like that may have played out in your experience too. Definitely. But I wouldn't say those roles disappear. So in having to make the decisions for Mum and tell her what to do and know what's best for her, I was still looking for her approval and wanting her to be proud of me and all those things. So I think it's really hard to ever let go of those things. And the same for her, hard to let go for her of trying to parent me. So I think she also felt an immense sense of guilt for being an imposition on me or taking my time or away from the kids or from my work, whatever. But it is an immense role reversal. And unlike parenting your children, there's often a lot of reluctance, in my experience, to. For someone to want to be parented by their child. You know, it's so, you know, you're pushing shit uphill for. For want of a better phrase, and. For everything that you're taking on, often they're having to give so much up, you know, so it's a really complex seesaw. There's also a lot of anticipatory grief in that experience. It's not really a term that, again, is talked about enough, but in the work that we do, you know, grief can start with a diagnosis or just a change in someone's mobility or personality or whatever those set of events are, but it starts quite early. Right. Did you feel that? Oh, deeply. And I think I'm still really feeling it. I think I said to my husband the other day, in a bit of an emotional awake moment, I just said something like, my mum will never go on a bushwalk again or drive to a beach, you know, and I can do those things with her. She can't bushwalk, obviously, but they're just. There are things that she won't do again. Probably have an overseas holiday and it makes me sad. And he said, yes, but is she upset about it? And I. We haven't spoken about that, but I don't know. So they're the kinds of things that, you know, when I'm feeling low, I might think about, but also I think I grieved when Mum was disconnected and mentally unwell, the relationship with her and the kids. She used to be the most doting grandmother and since being unwell, has been quite disconnected from the kids and unable to kind of just get to them on their level or, you know, really be Interested and ask questions and be engaged in the same way that she used to. And that makes me quite sad. I imagine there's a lot of grieving in that for the, for the kind of grandmothering role that you wanted your kids to have for longer. Do they sense that, do you think? Have they noticed that change? Yes, but I don't think any of the kids, it doesn't really bother them in a way that it does me watching from the outside. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, you know, so I think thinking of all these things does bring all the emotion back. But it's okay. I mean, it's real, you know, it's, it's in some ways such an ordinary thing for a person to reach the end of a well lived life. It's such an ordinary thing, it's just part of our human condition. But when you're going through it, it is so extraordinary and there's a pretty big delta between those two things. I'm wondering, you know, throughout your life and your relationship with your mum, did you ever talk about this stage of life with her? No, not really. Maybe when mum's done the same thing. Mum had to be the person who made the decision to put her parents into residential aged care. And not a particularly long time before she went in. Oh really? So I think, I can't remember the years, but probably maybe a decade or so earlier she'd put her parents into care and it really knocked her around then. And we had some conversations then where she'd said, I'm going to make decisions early, I'm going to move out of my house, I'm going to put myself in care. But I think those best laid plans just most of the time for a lot of people probably unravel out of your control because things happen, you know, life happens. Life happens. And they are, you know, they're often tender conversations. They can be slightly confronting conversations to have. So it's pretty easy for us as people to say, oh, I'll leave that till after Christmas or I'll leave that till, you know, next year or when my brother's back in town or whatever that rationale is. It's pretty easy to put those things off. And what I see a lot is that it ends up in this kind of perpetual cycle of too little, too late. We kind of all know in the back of our minds that we do need to think about and talk about and plan for these life chapters. Like you do if you're having a child, but there's no Joyce baby at the end of this Life stage. And it is just a lot easier to try and put it to the side. Absolutely. The only way this thing ends is one way, and that's the reality of it. But it would have been nice to have more conversations with her about it. I'm a pretty open book. I think I tried more than she was willing to have that. Willing to have that conversation. But I'll probably be the same when it's my own mortality and aging we're talking about. But it has made me think, you know, I've had these conversations with my husband about as soon as the kids leave home, we move out of this family home. Having the home that suits you for the time, you know, making decisions early, being ahead rather than being behind you. Do you learn so much from living through this? I think a lot and I talk a lot about what we're seeing with mental health. So if you and I were sitting here 15 years ago talking about mental health, we would not have had a language for it as a community. It would have been still quite stigmatised and taboo and we certainly wouldn't have a real service ecosystem. You know, where would we get support? Like, look where we've come. And I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's a lot further forward than where we were 10 or 15 years ago. And that's exactly what I think we need to start to do as a community around this life stage. Because when you look at the reality of our population, you know, 12,000 people reach 85 each year today, but in five years that's going to be 60,000 people. And that's going to continue for quite a few years. That's a five fold increase. So it's going to affect so many families and communities. The impact will be huge. We're feeling it now and we're at the very, very tip of that aging wave. So really, like, as a community, I think we've got to dig deep and have the courage to have those conversations and start to push the progress that we've seen with other areas. I mean, miscarriage, menopause, they're in the zeitgeist. Like they weren't just a couple of years ago. So I hope we can do better with this. Oh, I agree. I told my story on a podcast I make. That's how I came to be here called Ladies, we need to Talk, which. Is brilliant, by the way. Don't listen. You should from that. I've had so many people approach me and I've been working on this podcast for six or Seven years. Never have I had the amount of people come to me and say, I've shared that with so many women in my life. And it's generally women. I mean, I don't want to stereotype. But largely the data tells us that two thirds of people in this caregiver role, they are women, usually the eldest daughter, and they're caring for a parent. Or a partner or both parents in some case. I had in laws, a woman email me to say thank you, that she's a single mum with three kids that are neurodiverse, a mum with early onset dementia, and as of a month ago, a dad with early onset dementia. And she's caring for all of them on her own and, you know, might not be as set up financially, you know, to make decisions. So, you know, things like mum had planned really well financially so she could afford to go to an aged care facility when she needed to. But not everyone's in that position and it's really tricky, it really is. But also you had the tenacity to not only be her advocate, but to navigate the system that she needed for her care. And I think that's really hard for people as well. They can, you know, it's a really complicated system to figure out. There were times when I felt so bleak and hopeless with her in the wrong hospital ward in a big, big southwestern Sydney hospital, and no one seemed to know when the next step would come or when she might be moved. And I just remember, I just want to tell this story because it just gave me so much hope at the time. This lovely nurse called Bernadette, a more senior nurse, she just clocked me and could say that I was struggling. And she just came up to me and put her hand on my arm and said, how can I help you? And I unraveled the whole story of Mum and she said, give me two hours and I'll solve this problem for you. And she was an angel. She was incredible. She found the right people, the right doctors to come and see mum. And within a couple of days, Mum had been moved from this ward that wasn't appropriate for her into the right place. And it was all because of one woman just taking it upon herself to, you know, change things. It was just incredible. And it is a sister shout out. To that wonderful woman. Yeah, thank you, Bernadette. Hospital. And also the woman who noticed your need for respite. Like, they sound like two quite pivotal moments. There's quite a few people in those moments, in that bigger time that really had a big impact and you don't see them again or you don't, you know, get the opportunity to sometimes thank them, but they make such a difference. And you never forget it, right that moment. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about how you looked after yourself during all of this. Now I appreciate that in many ways your mum's now in residential care and you can take a bit of a breath and kind of assess things in a new way and maybe you don't have so many daily demands on you, which I'm really pleased to hear about. How did you, how did you manage, how did you think about self care? Did you in that period, like, tell us a little bit about that. I think self care was a bit of an amorphous idea in that period. Randomly, as I was putting mum into hospital, my husband had a work trip overseas that he could take me on and we had planned to go on. And so weirdly, in this most emotional time, I suddenly got to go to Europe for a week on a business trip and I had to give myself some very stern talking tos, but had said, you will enjoy this week. She's been cared for, you know, try. And I managed to sort of squeeze it out of my head in often enough to actually relax and have a good time. So I think that's important. Trying to let go of the guilt, have a little break and go. Even when, you know it was all a hot mess back at home and I knew I was going to hit the ground and it was just going to be awful, but that the world wouldn't fall apart for the five days that I was away. And you gotta take those breaks that. I had a sweet way in those circumstances. Right. Because too often they just don't. But I don't actually know. There's not a whole lot of time for self care in that period. My friends were amazing. Like women friends were just incredible. My husband was great. I still think that sometimes it can be challenging for them to really understand how hard it is. But leaning on your friends in those moments is really important. And also leaning on the friends who'd had parents that had been unwell or been in that situation because the level of empathy is really high. I was just going to go to. I think the people that have walk this path that have kind of been in the shoes you're in and understand all of the mess of emotions and all those very varied forms of grief that we talked about, you kind of, you get it. Right? You can just get that they understand through a particular kind of nod and smile. And I think lived experience is such a big part of helping us figure this out. Absolutely. And I just so regularly hear people that have gone through this experience of caring for someone, they want to give that back, you know, they want to kind of help others navigate that better and differently. Because it can be so lonely and so overwhelming. It is overwhelming. I think one other thing I noticed is when you are really in it, when it's, you know, at the peak of the worst part, I guess being in hospital all day for me was hard with Mum and the treatments, you don't have time to fall apart. But maybe when I think Mum had gone into respite, life slowed down a little. I found myself having a period of just collapsing a little. I think I got sick. I was more emotional. Yeah, right. All the adrenaline, kind of the adrenaline washed away. So everything else stepped in. Absolutely. And when you have time to feel it, then sometimes you might fall apart afterwards. So, you know, that's probably what I would say to someone who's in it right now, that it might feel worse for a while before it gets better, but it does, it does. How did you manage going back into work? Like, what was what I'm imagining from what you've told, that there was kind of an upside to going back to work, but maybe a difficult part of it as well. Tell me a bit about that. So going back to work was great from a sense of you sort of switch your brain off eight hours a day from the home stuff as much as you can. I was working and having mum's physios and OTs and whatnot come over. But you do get to put your brain onto something else, which is really nice distraction, but it is another load to take on, another worry. And, you know, in my job, I manage people, so you're looking after your parents, your children, your home life and your team. You know, it just becomes another caring role. But I also have an amazing team at work who are really supportive, really close, so they knew everything that was going on for me and if I needed to drop something, they would just absorb it. Like, I owe them a lot. So I went back part time to start three days a week and then built back up to full time. Imagine there's just going to be so many workplaces where we're going to see our colleagues and our friends. Absolutely. All leaning into the same experience. And I did use all of my sick leave, all of my personal leave, all of my annual leave and then was working without pay. And it was, you know, it was a Tricky time because we have a mortgage and the interest rates are high and cost of living is high. So we really had to kind of. It was a challenging period, but also, I'm also, I'm lucky that I have a partner that could support us through that time. Not everybody has that, and not everybody has a workplace that will allow you to take three to four months off with no pay and, you know, an end date that's a bit amorphous. I think I'll be back by then, but I don't know what's gonna happen. So I'm really grateful and I think there's probably a lot of workplaces that need to create some sort of policy around caring and caring leave, because now if my kids are sick, I can't take a day off work. So, as I guess everything you've been through, Alex, what would be your one message out there to the women of the sandwich generation who are either living this reality with you right now or will be in the years ahead? Watch me do about five messages, not one message. Fire away. Look, I think if it hasn't happened yet, and you might be thinking, oh, maybe my parents are getting a bit older, encouraging them to downsize, encouraging them to sign paperwork, like decide which sibling might be the power of attorney or the injuring guardian, and spread that out a bit within the members of the family. If you have siblings, you know, give the boy siblings some. Give everyone a job. A job. Yes. And also if you have siblings, change them without your parents there. What do we think should happen when our parents get old? And how will we share this load in a fair way that is supportive to each other? If you're in the middle of it, try to look after yourself. Try to take those brief moments going to a dark movie cinema and watch a film alone and cry for an hour and a half. Reach out to your friends, even if you think they don't get it or they don't understand. Just call someone for a cry. And I guess just try to enjoy some of the nicer moments with your parent, you know, rather than the doing and the caring and the, you know, just a touch or a hug or a lunch or just sitting in the sun together, those tiny moments can be really lovely. Time becomes the most precious thing. Yes. Yeah, it does. It's a beautiful place to land our chat. Thank you for bringing in all that honesty and a few of those tears. I think everyone listening will be sending you a big hug. Thank you. And I just want to reiterate. I'm fine. It's Just when you talk about your mum, the tears come. Yeah, it happens. Thanks for having me. It was a real pleasure. Thank you. If Alex's conversation has made you realise that you're living in a similar situation to what she was in, Violet is here to help. At Violet, we believe that the last stages of life deserve the same care, planning and attention as every other life milestone. That's why we offer free support, guidance and tools for families, so no one has to face this stage of life feeling unprepared or unsupported. If you'd like help making a plan, starting a conversation or simply feeling a little less overwhelmed, head to violet.org au to learn more. And if this episode helped you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. We'd love you to follow agehood, leave a review and join us again next week when we sit down with Dr. Hannah Gould to talk about how we as a society can get better at death. This episode of Age Hood was brought to you by Wellways Carer Gateway. As a carer, prioritising yourself and your own wellbeing can be hard. That's why Wellways Carer Gateway is making it easier. With Walk in Carer Hubs, simple online registration and Wander, a mobile service bringing support to carers in their own communities, help is now more accessible than ever. Whether you're looking for practical advice, emotional support or some help navigating other support systems, Wellways Carer Gateway can help. Call 1-800-422737 or search Wellways Carer Gateway. Wellways Carer Gateway is providing support for everyone who supports someone else. Today's episode of Agehood was brought to you by Bilwill. Wills aren't designed to cover the full picture, especially when it comes to personal, practical and financial details. A letter of wishes from Bill Will really helps to fill that gap. From passwords and accounts to everyday instructions, it can save hundreds of hours of admin for the people that you care about most, reduce stress, share your values and preserve your voice@billwill.com au.