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Understanding Grief ›
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Understanding grief ›
- Truths about grief
- What grief looks and feels like
- Common challenges with grief
- Grieving before the loss
- Ideas for living with loss
- Grief triggers
- How long grief lasts
- How the loss affects families and others
- When life starts to get better
- Special dates
- Rituals, funerals, and memorials
- Do I need more help?
- Prolonged grief
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Grief, roles, and identity ›
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Grieving a Death ›
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Your relationship ›
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The situation ›
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Non-death Loss ›
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Supporting Someone ›
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Professionals & Volunteers ›
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Resources & More ›
Caregiver grief
Millions of family members and friends in Canada are providing care in the home; countless others add to the care provided in hospitals or long-term care facilities. You might be a caregiver for someone with a life-limiting illness, whose death is expected. Or you may be caring for someone living with mobility challenges or chronic health conditions. You may have a sense of deep purpose in your life as a caregiver and feel a to help and, at the same time, feel frustrated, resentful, and overwhelmed. Whatever your situation, it may involve feelings of grief and loss for yourself as well as for the person you are caring for.
Your own losses
As a caregiver, you may experience many different, sometimes conflicting thoughts and emotions as you grieve your own losses. You might be experiencing losses including the following:
- The life you had imagined for yourself and for them
- Energy
- Sleep
- “Free time” to relax, or the chance to choose how you want to spend your time
- Career or employment opportunities
- Opportunities to develop hobbies or new relationships
- Changes in your living space (for example, you may have a hospital bed in your dining room)
- Changes in your social life
- Reduced income
- Companionship
- Ability to make plans, short and long term, because of the unknown
- Someone to care for you
- Intimacy
- Changes in your role in their life (for example, as spouse, child, parent, sister, friend)
You will likely be able to add to this list. You might have a hard time recognizing that you are grieving. You might feel that you don’t have the have the right to grieve because you are not the one with chronic illness, disabilities, declining health, or impending death. It is important to know that your grief is real and valid. Your grief does not take away from their grief.
What may impact your grief as a caregiver
Your relationship to the person
Sometimes being defined as a “caregiver” can make you feel that you who you and the person are to each other (besides caregiver and care receiver) is diminished or denied. You may wish you could go back to being just a daughter, son, spouse, or friend again, not only a caregiver. Your grief will be impacted by the nature of the relationship you have with this person. If you live with the person, your day-to-day life together has likely changed a great deal and may continue to. With every change there is loss and grief.
Where you are in your life
Your experience and sense of loss will also be impacted by where you are in your life. If you are a younger person, you may feel out of sync with your peers, who may be focused on school, career development, finding a life partner, or starting a family, while you might feel your life is “on hold.” You may be part of the “sandwich generation,” pulled in many directions with multiple priorities between raising children, your career, and caring for parents. If you are older, you may have always expected to care for someone close to you, but you may not have been prepared for how much it would changed your life and what you would lose along the way.
Their health and situation
It can be hard to know when your role as a caregiver will end. Even if the person you are caring for has been diagnosed with a life-limiting illness, their situation can be unpredictable, and this can impact how you pace yourself. If the person is in a slow decline, you may also experience additional grief and loss as they lose more abilities and independence.
Grief is not the opposite of joy
Joy and sorrow, hope and despair, are often thought of as opposites, like “either/or,” but the reality is that we can experience these seemingly opposite emotions at the same time. While you experience the grief and loss that comes with caring for someone important in your life, you may also feel a sense of purpose, developing a deeper and more meaningful relationship, and knowing you are making a profound difference in someone’s life.
- It’s important to look after yourself so that you can stay well while providing care for another person. Pay attention to your physical well-being by eating healthy foods, trying to exercise, and finding ways to get adequate rest and sleep.
- Recognize that part of what is going on for you as a caregiver is grieving your own losses. Know that this is normal, natural, and valid.
- Talk to someone supportive in your life, and confide your thoughts and feelings.
- Seek help from others to help in caregiving: family, friends, and the healthcare system. You are not alone.
See also:
- CaregiversCan Module 4 - Looking after you
Understand that you can’t change the situation, but you can listen without judgement to how they are feeling and what they are thinking.
- Offer practical help, and follow through if they accept (for example, bringing a meal, doing laundry, being with the person, giving rides to appointments, picking up groceries)
- If the caregiver has a respite, suggest going for a walk or another activity you know they enjoy. Accompany them on errands or offer to do the errands for them.
- Check in with them regularly. Be there for the long term.
- Recognize that everyone grieves in their own way.
See also:
If you feel overwhelmed or “stuck” please talk to a health professional or trusted leader in your community such as a doctor, chaplain, nurse practitioner, social worker or school administrator. These trusted people may be able to connect you with appropriate programs, resources, and other forms of needed support such as grief counselling or medical care. You may be able to access counselling services if you have an Extended Health Plan, or through an employee assistance program. It will be important that they have experience in grief counselling. If you have thoughts of or plans to harm yourself or others, go to your nearest Emergency Department, call your local Crisis Line, or call or text 9-8-8 if you are in Canada. It is essential that you reach out for help.
See also:
- Do I need more help?
- MyGrief.ca Module 8 - Do I need more help and where to find it
As a caregiver to someone you care about, you will experience your own losses and your own grief response. You may feel you don’t have the same right to grieve or that you can only grieve if they have died. It is important to attend to your own well-being, including your sense of loss, and to recognize there is no one right way to grieve. While it can hard to ask for and accept help from others, it is critical to reach out for emotional and practical support from friends, family, and the healthcare system. When someone you care about has a life-limiting illness or is frail and elderly, you may experience “anticipatory loss.”
See also:
- Grieving before the loss
- MyGrief.ca Module 1 - Grieving before the loss
Video Gallery
Resources
Shares knowledge, skills, and resources on grief for bereaved caregivers, for their families, friends, and the health and social service workers who support them.
Talks about ongoing and multiple losses often experienced by caregivers, loss and grief (including anticipatory grief) and ways to cope.
Talks about ongoing and multiple losses often experienced by caregivers, loss and grief (including anticipatory grief) and ways to cope.
Shares knowledge, skills, and resources on grief for bereaved caregivers, for their families, friends, and the health and social service workers who support them.
