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There’s an ugly truth about chronic illness. It hides from the rest of the world behind closed doors. Only caregivers and those suffering truly understand.  It’s the suffering that happens when people are forced to mourn the life that was stolen from them. And it’s the…

Sometimes life deals a hand that tests us. We then look for ways to overcome those challenges. But what do we do when the bad news keeps coming? How do we keep moving forward when we feel like more weights than we can carry have been placed upon our shoulders?…

Being a caregiver can be a huge balancing act. Some caregivers do this for a living, while others help family or friends who might need extra help each day. My family believes it takes a village to raise a child. This, however, applies to more than children. A village takes…

As my mother’s caregiver, I had to learn how to be there for her without allowing my ego to take over. Sure, logically it seems easy enough to avoid being egotistical while taking care of another human being. But for my mother’s most recent surgery, I had to learn…

I used to save my empty pill bottles, thinking a Pinterest craft would catch my eye and I would have a good use for my vast collection of rusty-colored medicine containers. Instead, my stockpile grew so rapidly I had no choice but to give in and trash them. Unless I…

The phone rang on a Friday night. I answered it thinking the call probably was from another annoying solicitor. Instead, it was the voice of the person who would introduce me to my disorder. The nurse told that me my tests had come in, and I had scleroderma. Finding answers…

In my mom’s life, I am more than a caregiver. I became one at a time when she needed me the most. It was a role I willingly stepped into but never understood fully. Being her eldest daughter can be tough, and what mother-daughter relationship isn’t? By nature, it was…

Coming home from the hospital should be a time of smiles and celebration — especially after surviving multiple strokes and spending nearly a week in the ICU, as I recently did. But isn’t life always more complicated than we expect? The fact that I’m alive is remarkable. And having…

Who am I? On some days, I don’t know how to answer that question. But I can tell you with certainty that I am not defined by my autoimmune disease. Scleroderma, my systemic enemy, is trying to destroy me. Every day it does its best to damage my…

It’s challenging to inherit the mother’s role. Some moms fade in involvement as parents while others see their children well into their adulthood and continue to act as mothers till they go to glory. Across that spectrum are mothers failing, struggling, hurting on their own. My mother is an interesting…