As caregivers or care-providers, the challenge is quite difficult. With the pandemic and the restrictions, the challenge is even greater. How are you taking care of yourself?I consider myself fortunate. On the plus side, my husband, who has dementia, lives at home, we are physically healthy, and I have a great support system.  On the downside, we live in an apartment, he is childlike and I live his life for him basically, I do 3/4s of the work and must monitor everything he does, we can’t go anywhere, his support system can’t visit, and he has nothing to do. He doesn’t understand about the virus or the shelter in place concept; so, he asks the same questions over and over again. My question is how do I, how do we help ourselves during this time?  Ideas that I thought of are:

• pray or contact my higher power, whatever that means to each of us.
• practice mindfulness, as best I can to not dwell on the past or worry about the future but just focus on the minute.
• find the beauty in the day – the trees, the spring flowers, the laughter of a small child, or a funny picture on Facebook.
• be compassionate with myself, knowing that I do the best I can during this overwhelming situation.
• choose to believe that this will pass rather than dwell on the obvious strains.
• ask what is the one thing I can do for myself right now, however small that may be, and do it.
• connect with family and friends, send pictures, do FaceTime, or call, as much as possible.
• write down my worries and frustrations on a piece of paper and throw the paper away. Somehow that gets them out of my mind and then I am able to think of more common sense possibilities.

What ideas do you have?