I was interviewed about my caregiving journey by Kenneth E. Rupert who received Board Certification from the International Board of Christian Coaches as a Master Christian Life Coach in 2012 and founded The Vita-Copia Group to offer life coaching services with a concentrated focus on caregivers.
When managing my family, life, and my parent’s needs grew overwhelming for me, I engaged with an executive coach who happened to also be a Christian. She taught me how to better manage all the aspects of my life from family, faith, community, and career. A huge factor was to embrace my faith and to be more mindful to the things going on around me. The process and the woman was invaluable so that I could manage as the caregiver for my parents. Lynda Alicudo is one of two women who I credit with helping me launch MemoryBanc.
The complete article Ken shares can be found here, but I wanted to share a brief snippet of his life stage classification system which is an insightful way to look at the skill set you bring to the job as a caregiver. In his article, he lists the four stages as:
· Discovering [childhood] (0-19 years)
· Establishing [young adulthood] (20-35 years)
· Accumulating [middle adulthood] (36-60 years)
· Distributing [late adulthood] (61-the rest of your life)
He goes on to speak about how these varied stages intersect with caregiving. I realize that hiring a coach as I began the difficult work of becoming a caregiver was one way to help build a strong and adaptable foundation so that I could manage this journey.
To learn more and get some tools to help you manage on your journey, here is a link to Ken’s author page on Amazon. Recommended.