How To Be The Best Caregiver For Your Loved One As A Young Adult Dementia Caregiver
Are you a caregiver between 18 and 40 caring for someone with dementia? You’re not alone.
Being a caregiver for a loved one with dementia is challenging. It can be even more daunting when you’re a young adult. Today, we’ll explore the unique struggles and rewards of young adult dementia caregivers.
This journey is different from that of older caregivers. Young adults face unique obstacles that aren’t often discussed.
The Often Overlooked Young Adult Caregivers
Young adult caregivers, those aged 18 to 40, make up about 10% of all caregivers. This group often balances multiple roles, such as full-time work, education, and caregiving.
They frequently go unrecognized in society. Their contributions are immense, yet their struggles remain largely invisible.
Juggling Responsibilities
One major challenge young adult caregivers face is balancing work, education, and caregiving tasks. Many are full-time employees or students, sometimes both.
This balancing act leaves little room for personal time or rest. Unlike older caregivers, they lack life experience, making it harder to navigate complex caregiving situations.
Financial Strain and Mental Health
Financial concerns are significant for young adult caregivers. Often, only one person in a spousal caregiving situation can work full-time. This reduces household income and increases financial stress. This group also faces higher medical costs due to the need for specialized care.
Mental health is another critical issue. About 45% of young adult caregivers report experiencing depression and anxiety. This is due to the constant pressure of juggling responsibilities and the emotional toll of caregiving.
Lack of Support and Isolation
Young adult caregivers often lack adequate support. They rely heavily on social media and online communities for assistance. Traditional support systems might not be accessible or suitable for their unique needs. Their peers often cannot relate to their experiences, leading to feelings of isolation.
Building a Support Network
It’s essential for young adult caregivers to seek out and build support networks. Joining relevant online communities can be helpful, but it’s crucial to find positive, supportive groups. In-person support groups, although sometimes difficult to attend, offer valuable connections and resources.
Maintaining Physical and Emotional Health
Self-care is vital. Young adult caregivers need to focus on their physical health by maintaining a balanced diet, exercising, getting enough sleep, and managing stress. Emotional health is equally important. Seeking counseling or therapy, and taking breaks when possible, can help maintain balance and prevent burnout.
Establishing Healthy Boundaries
Setting boundaries is crucial for young adult caregivers. They need to ensure they have time for personal relationships and self-care. It’s okay to say no to certain caregiving tasks if it means preserving one’s own health and well-being.
Final Thoughts
Young adult caregivers play a crucial role in dementia care. Their journey is filled with unique challenges that deserve recognition and support. If you’re a young adult caregiver, know that you’re not alone.
Seek out support, prioritize your health, and set boundaries. Your role is vital, and taking care of yourself is just as important as taking care of your loved one.
Join Our Support Group
If you need more help and support, consider joining our monthly meetup. It’s a safe space to ask questions, share experiences, and receive guidance. You’re not alone in this journey. Let’s support each other.
Read More:
Talking About Caregiver Burnout With Michelle Gordon
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The Unique Challenges of Young Adult Caregivers
[0:02] The statistics of a young adult caregiver are extremely interesting to me. There are about 10% of caregivers are considered to be young adult caregivers, and that most young adult caregivers have significantly different challenges than somebody who is an adult child caregiver or a spouse caregiver.
[0:31] So in today’s very unique and different episode of how to be the best caregiver of somebody with dementia as a young adult caregiver, I want you to listen to the different categories of young adult caregivers because quite frankly, we see them every single day in our lives, but we don’t recognize these young adults as young adult caregivers. Now, this episode is a little bit different because we’re talking not only about young adult caregivers of people with dementia, but I bring up young adult caregivers because Because I think that they are vastly underserved and underrepresented. And I wanted to shine a light on some of the unique challenges that they experienced. Because if you listen to this episode, you will hear that my daughter and partner in this business is a young adult caregiver. So check out this episode.
A Three-Part Series on Dementia Caregiving
[1:43] Well, hello, Christian caregivers. Thank you for being back here with me today. Welcome to Christian Dementia Caregiving, the podcast where I teach Bible-believing Christians that we can ease the burden of a dementia caregiving journey, because even though dementia caregiving isn’t always easy. It actually can be quite simple. We are continuing in our three-part series, which came about because I was getting ready to put together a presentation for therapists, which you guys know I’m an occupational therapist by background, and part of my give back is I teach. I teach other therapists what I have been learning and since my specialty is dementia and dementia caregiving, I frequently end up speaking on a dementia or dementia-related topic. So in August, I will be going to Florida and teaching at a national summit for PASI rehab and one of my topics is on caregiver burden.
[2:56] And I, in my researching for that, really noticed or recognized, and it was kind of a aha moment, which it really shouldn’t have been, but it was. But it was an aha moment that we as healthcare providers, or at least I did, I shouldn’t throw everybody under the bus, but I believe that a lot of healthcare providers just see all caregivers as that, a caregiver, and that we’re not sensitive to the different types of caregivers that we actually have as our family caregivers. And that prompted me to do this mini-series over the last week or so, or this week. Monday, we talked about how to be the best dementia caregiver as a spouse.
[3:46] Wednesday, we talked about how to be the best dementia caregiver as the adult child. So if you’re a spouse or an adult child and you haven’t listened to those episodes, please go back and listen to them because it is vastly different. Each person at their different station or relation does have unique challenges due to being either the adult child or the spouse. In today’s episode, we are going to talk about how to be the best caregiver of someone living with dementia as a young adult caregiver. But before we do that, we’re just going to recap briefly that what the basis of particular episodes, this series is, is that.
[4:35] We each, based on the Ten Commandments, where the Fifth Commandment talks about honoring your father and your mother, that actually has an application for us all and not just related to, quote unquote, our parents, right? The Westminster Shorter Catechism talks about what is the fifth commandment, and that the fifth commandment is to honor thy father and mother, that your days may be long upon the land in which the Lord gives you. But we are going to look at this under the next question which is question and answer 64 what is required of us in the fifth commandment and the fifth commandment requires the preserving of the honor and the performing of the duties belonging to everyone in their several places and relations as superiors, inferiors, or equals.
[5:37] And that is vastly, vastly, vastly important for us from a caregiving perspective. Because if you’re the adult child and somebody says to you, honor your father and your mother because you are not maybe, quote, being the caregiver you should be or they think you should be, but you’re a married woman or a married husband, your requirement according to the law of God is different. It is still honor your mother and your father. I’m not saying throw them under the bus, right? But I am saying that we have to look at each one of these caregiving stations, each one of these caregiving places in a little bit of a different way specifically related to where the Lord has placed us in our specific journey.
[6:34] And that also then applies to a young adult caregiver. And in each of these episodes, we have looked at the category of each caregiver under the statistics that we need to understand, the unique challenges of each different type of caregiver, how to manage the emotional and physical well-being as that particular type of caregiver, and then how to manage the caregiving journey. So in all of three of these episodes, I’ve kept the same framework to make it simple for us. But I really never knew that there was a category called a young adult caregiver. And it’s a little surprising because we do know this, we just don’t call them young adult caregivers. And I’m going to use a couple of examples of young adult caregivers that are not in the dementia caregiving space, but it kind of makes it applicable. And then I will bring it into dementia caregiving. But a couple of different categories of young adult caregivers, or think about a husband and a wife who have gotten married and they have their first baby. And say, you know, under normal circumstances, I would say a young adult caregiver mother is a young adult caregiver, but I’m not specifically talking about that.
[8:02] I’m going to talk about a young adult caregiver, a husband and a wife couple who have had a child who has a severe disability at birth, a congenital birth defect or something going on. And that young adult, even though they’re a mother and a father, they now have stepped into a different role as a young adult caregiver of somebody who has a specific need for being taken care of. That is one category of young adult caregivers. My daughter is or was, she is coming through this journey. She and her husband are coming through this journey. But in essence, my daughter, and I honestly can say that sometimes I’m a little bit dense, but I never actually thought of my daughter as being a young adult caregiver. Ever, but she is, or she was, or she was in the process of being one. The backstory is she and her husband got married almost exactly four and a half years ago. And when they got married, they were young and things were going to be pretty tight.
[9:14] She had a degree and he has an associate’s degree and she does have a degree. And they were going to both need to work to make it easy for them to meet and meet, starting off young, significantly in love. I love my son-in-law. But within six weeks, six weeks of getting married, her husband, my son-in-law, got extremely ill. And we are now almost four and a half years into this journey, and he is finally getting better. But for that entire period of time, my daughter at 20, she was 20, she’s 27 now, she was 23 when they got married. Just turned 23, and Caleb is 22 at that time.
[10:03] She was thrown into a young adult caregiving role. And so a young adult caregiver can be somebody who is spouse. It can be a parent, like I said. It can be a child, like a grandchild or a niece or a nephew. So young adult caregivers come in a a lot of different flavors and stations, but frequently we do not think about a young adult caregiver as being a separate category of caregiving. So let me give you guys some statistics and these statistics are related to just in general, somebody who is a young adult caregiver. Young adult caregivers are between the ages of 18 and 40 years old and they make up about 10% of caregivers. And I honestly did not recognize that that is 10% doesn’t sound like a lot, but 10% is a lot of caregivers. If you think about the category of people being between 18 and 40 years old of those 56% of them are female, they’re women.
[11:15] And the research shows that they are balancing a lot of different responsibilities.
[11:23] They balance caregiving with full-time work, education, or both. So they’re juggling working, going to school, or doing both at the same time. And about 25% of the young adult caregivers that are working, about 50% of them are in school and then about 25% of them are doing both. And so that’s a lot. I mean, I remember going to school and granted that was 31 years ago, but I don’t think I could have been married and taking care of a spouse and going to school. But that was my daughter. My daughter and her husband recognized that they weren’t sure how his health was going to improve. So they actually made a decision for her to go back to school. So she worked full-time and she took care of Caleb full-time and she was in school full-time. She did all three. So juggling a lot of responsibilities as a young adult. And I can tell you that that definitely changes a person. They have major financial concerns because typically what happens is only one, like if it’s a spousal situation, only one of the two of them can work. They are a caregiver and they’re juggling working and caregiving. They may not be working full time.
[12:51] And 45% of young adult caregivers report depression and anxiety. So depression and anxiety is something that a lot of caregivers face, and there are multiple reasons for that, right? We’re not going to go into that. I think I might do a separate episode just on caregiver anxiety and depression. I think that might be a good topic for us to look at. And then young adult caregivers lack support significantly. They’re not identified by the healthcare sector, and mostly they are relying on social media and online communities to find support.
[13:33] That may be partially because that’s how they’ve grown up. That may be partially because they’re are super busy and can’t drive places and get help or other support systems like that, or they don’t recognize the benefits of a support group, or there are no support groups for young adult caregivers, caregiving may be so vastly spread out that we don’t actually have specific support systems in place for young adult caregivers. But I think these statistics are something that all of us can consider and pay attention to when we’re at church. And if we identify that there is a young adult in our congregation who is a caregiver, they may not identify as a caregiver themselves, but we can certainly see that they are a caregiver and maybe we can put our arms around them and help support them in a different way. I can tell you that my daughter’s church, her and her husband’s church, they really have supported them over the four and and a half years that they have been on this journey, and I will say that they have done a phenomenal job of supporting both my daughter and her husband because each of them had unique needs related to where they were at that particular time in their journey. So that is, these are just some statistics to understand the role of a young adult caregiver.
Seeking Help and Support in the Caregiving Journey
[15:02] Do you feel alone and isolated and need a little bit more help and support in this journey? Sign up for our next Ask the Dementor monthly meetup where we will come together. Less than 10 people are allowed to sign up at a time so we can have fellowship where where we can answer questions, where you can get some Christian guidance and just an awareness that you are not alone on this journey. I really want you to be able to connect with me. I want to be able to answer your specific questions. So if you’re struggling, if you’re tired, if you’re overwhelmed, if you’re stressed, if you just need a little bit of help, sign up for the next Ask the Dementor Monthly Meetup. The link is in the show notes below.
Balancing Work, Education, and Caregiving Tasks
[16:06] Now, what are the unique challenges? The unique challenges of a young adult caregiver. Now, we touched on some of these already. They are balancing, juggling is probably a better word. They are juggling work, education, and caregiving tasks. They may also, because they’re young, I don’t know if any of you guys remember being young and dumb, but I certainly remember being young and dumb. And I’m not talking about intelligence, right? I’m talking about life experience. I said this to somebody the other day. I said, yes, I was young and dumb. And they’re like, well, I don’t think you were ever dumb. I’m like, no, I was young and dumb. Let me tell you a story about me when my daughter was born. She is 27 years old now, and I have a healthcare background, but I did not grow up around a lot of children. My parents were diplomats and a lot of their friends didn’t have multiple kids and we weren’t in church. Literally one of the first The first babies that I ever had to take care of was my now 27-year-old daughter, and I had no idea what I was doing. And not only that…
[17:14] My daughter had jaundice and 27 years later, I still haven’t noticed that the poor baby was jaundiced and we ended up back in the hospital. So yes, limited life experience can impact our caregiving. And so, yes, young adult caregivers are young and dumb, and it’s not because they’re not intellectually smart, it’s because they don’t have the experience necessarily that a person who has been through multiple different types of situations in their life is a little more seasoned, correct? A lot of times when you are a young adult caregiver, you have more social isolation than likely somebody who is an older, and we know older adults who are caregivers are isolated. But young adult caregivers have a specific type of isolation because their peers.
[18:10] The people around them, their age group have absolutely no concept of what they’re going through because they’re not walking that type of a walk. Now, I will tell you that my daughter was extremely blessed to have a significant, good, strong support system and friends who did understand and came around them and helped them. And despite the fact that he has been sick for four and a half years, they really have worked very hard on developing and maintaining and growing their peers, their friends. And so for that, I am truly, truly grateful and will be forever and ever. So if any of my daughter’s friends who sometimes some of my daughter’s friends actually listen to me, if you are listening, shout out to Faith. Thank you so much for being a good and godly friend to my daughter.
[19:08] And then another unique challenge of a young adult caregiver is significant uncertainty for the future for a variety of different reasons. Because they’re managing working and caregiving and all of these different things, they may not have enough money. They may not be making enough money. They may, if they’re a spousal caregiver, they may not have the spouse be able to work. So there are all of these different types of challenges that are related directly to financial implications. If they’re a parent caregiver, one of the parents may need to stay home and take care of the child, whom we don’t talk about very often. But there are children who have dementia. So that’s a category of dementia that’s not spoken about frequently, but there are children who have dementia. And so they may be a young adult caregiver of a child with dementia and they will not be able to work. So one spouse has to stay home. That might not have been their choice. That might have resulted in increased financial constraints. They may have more medical costs than somebody their age, because if you think about it, young adults are typically the healthiest. But now if you have a child that you’re supporting that has a challenging diagnosis.
[20:34] Your medical costs have gone up. So they are definitely.
Understanding the Role of Young Adult Caregivers
[20:43] Differently challenged than, say, a spouse or an adult child. So who are the young adult caregivers of people specifically with dementia? Well, I mentioned it. There are parents. There are parents who are young adult caregivers of a child with dementia. There are children who get dementia. It is not a large percentage, but it does happen. And we don’t hear about them very often. And we don’t think about them very often. And that will be another topic for another episode for another day. Who are some more young adult caregivers of people with dementia? They may be a grandchild. I have a grandchild of a woman with dementia in my group, and his challenges are vastly different than the spousal caregivers or the adult children caregivers.
[21:34] They may be the nieces and nephews of somebody who is, say, a young onset, a younger onset person with dementia. So, for example, say, and this is just totally making stuff up, right? But I have a 27-year-old daughter and a 25-year-old daughter, and I have a 53-year-old sister. And say my 53-year-old sister developed dementia and didn’t have the support.
[22:02] She and her husband have no children. Maybe my children would be their support system, her support system. So it can be nieces and nephews of somebody living with dementia. That is not our situation. I am just making up a scenario as an analogy for you to use, but it could be a couple who don’t have children of their own and they have nieces and nephews who step up and help them, they can be the young adult caregiver and also be, like I said, the parent of the other one is the child of somebody with young onset, early onset dementia. So you could be, it could be a 27, my 27 year old daughter who is helping me and my husband because my husband contracted early onset frontotemporal dementia or something like that. They could, could my own children could be young adult caregivers in that specific scenario. So young adult caregivers are around us all the time, and we just don’t recognize them for being young adult caregivers. So shout out if you are a young adult caregiver and you’re listening to this.
[23:13] Drop me a message on Facebook or look me up on Instagram or even LinkedIn if you’re on LinkedIn in and have a dialogue with me and let me know, because I definitely want to be able to serve you better as well. So the young adult caregivers in the community, if you have friends, if you are listening and you recognize somebody as a young adult caregiver, specifically of somebody living with dementia, send them a link to this specific episode so that they can hear a little bit more about how to find help, because that’s certainly something that we definitely need to make sure that we’re taking care of this group of people too. So the third point that we looked at is managing, in all of these episodes, is managing our emotional and physical well-being. And this is important for us anyway. Just as a human, we are mandated to take care of our bodies, not to the you know extremes but we are we are to be good stewards of our body and the first thing that we’re going to look at related to this is our physical health and taking care of ourself.
[24:29] And I always joke when I teach this, but I hate that they, you know, they are right, that there are only, that there are very, there are four things that we all, as all caregivers, have to really, really look at that can help us in our journey as a caregiver. And that is our diet, our exercise, our sleep, and our stress levels. And so I talk about stress all the time in my, in this podcast. And if you are a caregiver and you’re listening to this and you haven’t yet taken my caregiver burnout quiz or the caregiver stress assessment, you can message me on Instagram or message me on Facebook, the word quiz and only the word quiz. And you will get a link to actually take the caregiver burnout quiz. And if you don’t find it there, it is in the show notes. Make sure that you go take this quiz. It is super helpful because not all stress is the same. So when we are managing our emotional and our physical well-being, we do need to ensure that we are eating correctly, that we are still exercising, that you are getting enough sleep, and that you are managing your stress levels. And for each caregiver, that maybe looks a little bit different.
[25:57] Each of us have different unique strengths as a caregiver. My daughter, one of her unique abilities or her strengths is that she is extremely, extremely good. At organizing and making lists and keeping her on track in that way. If you were to ask me to do that, that would actually overwhelm me and I would put my head in the sand and cry. I don’t do well with lists. I do better with certain other strategies. One of my strengths is problem solving verbally. So I could maybe come up with lots of ideas, but then I need to work on creating habits for myself in order to follow through with diet, exercise, sleep, and stress. So managing your self-care, your physical health, one of the things that research has actually shown is that one of the biggest perceived burdens that caregivers have is the inability to do things for themselves.
[27:01] To have time to do things that they enjoy. So if you are a young adult caregiver, you have to make sure that you are doing hobbies, that you have some hobbies. Going back to the previous point, that you maintain or actively work on your friendships with other people. And this is the hardest part for a young adult caregiver, is building in respite for yourself, which means asking somebody else to take care of the person that you’re helping so that you can take a break, whether that be going to the gym, whether that be maintaining your hobbies or your leisure activities, whether that be going away and booking yourself into a hotel and sleeping for three days straight, whatever it might need to be. So look after your physical health and your self-care activities have to be important.
Establishing Healthy Boundaries for Self-Care
[28:00] And something that we don’t say enough, specifically for a young adult caregiver, you have to have healthy boundaries. You have to put up healthy boundaries as a young adult caregiver, specifically related to whichever one of these young adult caregivers you are. If you are a grandchild and you’re unmarried, but then you have a desire to get married, That means you have to put up a boundary around your caregiving availability or your caregiving journey so that you can still pursue or date somebody so that you can be married if that is a desire that you have. If you are a niece or a nephew and you are married, then your primary responsibility will still be your husband or your wife and not your aunt or your uncle that you’re taking care of. So you have to have good boundaries. We all have to have good boundaries related to caregiving. And this is something that I, interestingly enough, I look on a lot of Facebook groups, large Facebook groups. I don’t spend a lot of time there because I don’t find them to be edifying. But every now and then I’ll kind of go look and see what people are saying. And yet again, this morning, somebody had a long post related to why don’t my siblings help, etc., etc.
[29:22] And my answer back to them was, I know this isn’t going to be popular, but caregiving is a choice and they have decided that they are not going to be a caregiver. You have decided to be a caregiver. And so boundaries are a very important part of a caregiving journey. If you are not going to be the caregiver, it is okay not to be the caregiver. But if you are the caregiver, that means that related to certain other things, you do need to put up boundaries. And we can have a whole episode on healthy boundaries, and maybe that’s a good idea. See, I gave myself a good idea. And so healthy boundaries as a young adult caregiver is vastly important. And then the second part related to managing your physical and emotional well-being as a young adult caregiver is finding emotional support, looking for communities of other caregivers. And to be honest, and to be fair, I did not research to see if there are young adult caregiver Facebook groups, but if there are, you need to be discerning in the groups that you join as a young adult caregiver, because not all Facebook groups, they have value, but they’re not all created equal. We are…
[30:47] Mandated by God to think God’s thoughts after him. And I did another episode earlier talking about our thoughts driving our feelings. Our feelings drive our actions. Our actions drive our results. So if we go into a negative Facebook group where all we hear is the doom and gloom and woe is me, that will drive our feelings of depression and anxiety, which will fuel our actions of not exercising, not eating right, not watching our stress levels and not sleeping enough, which is going to give us the result of not being able to cope and increasing our stress levels. So I strongly encourage you to find emotional support, but find the right emotional support. Only go into Facebook groups. And if you notice that there are these negative, toxic environments, leave them. Don’t stay in them. Don’t wallow in that. Find another community.
[31:54] If you are able, go to physical in-person support groups. They absolutely have value for you as a young adult caregiver, specifically related to dementia, because there are a lot of very specific dementia-related support groups. Even though you might be the only young adult caregiver there, go, because you can learn at least about dementia, and then we can talk about how we can better support you on your journey. And make sure that you, if you’re in church, which hopefully if you’re listening to a Christian dementia caregiving podcast, you are in church.
[32:34] That if you’re not able to go to church, that you talk to your pastor, your deacons, your elder, and see what they can do to help you so that you can be a part of your church community. Can they give you somebody who can come stay with the person that you’re helping so that you can go do your worship services on Sunday? But be sure that you tell your church because you are the invisible caregiver in your church community. So that was a lot about emotional and physical well-being specifically to young adult caregivers. I think they are uniquely different in their challenges. And so these strategies are valuable for adult spouses and for adult children
Navigating the Caregiving Journey as a Young Adult
[33:20] of people living with dementia, but I think they’re vital for a young adult caregiver. And then the last point that we’re going to look at today is managing the caregiving journey. So something that may be a little bit more challenging related to being a young adult caregiver specifically related to somebody living with dementia is that likely because they are going to be a child of an early onset, they are going to be a niece or a nephew or a grandson of someone who is going to be a child of an early onset. with dementia. They could even be a great grandchild of somebody with dementia.
[33:59] They are not likely going to be the primary decision maker, which will be very difficult sometimes if they are the one who carries the most information and the most understanding of what happens or what is happening. And this is certainly something that I see with the grandchild in my community where he is not the decision maker and we have to work through how can he still help the primary decision maker make the right decisions and guide the journey without being the actual decision maker. And so it is definitely a, can be a challenge. And if you are the young adult caregiver, because you are a parent of somebody with a child with dementia. I encourage you also to go back and listen to episode 145, which was the episode related to being the adult child of somebody living with dementia. Because even though you’re a young adult, you’re also so now the decision makers. So I would encourage you to go listen to that episode to give yourself some additional guidance and help and support.
[35:25] As a young adult caregiver of somebody with dementia who is not the decision maker, you also have to know your specific relations and places because you might be what’s considered in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 64, the inferior, and please understand I am not talking about inferior in anything other related than that particular question.
[35:57] Station that you’re in life, we all, as created in the image of God, carry the same inherent worth as a person. That’s not what we’re talking about. I’m just talking about your specific role and your specific place is going to be different, which then loops us back to the part where we talked about boundaries. You can work on planning, but you’re not going to necessarily be able to implement the plan. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t know what the plans are because you can plan for it. You can plan and be aware of what you are willing to do. You can put up boundaries for yourself. You can draw the lines in the sand that you need to have.
[36:47] But it definitely is different when you are a young adult caregiver because you are not likely going to be the one who is making those decisions unless you’re in one of the categories that we have already talked about. I really hope that this mini-series on how to be the best dementia caregiver as a spouse or an adult child or a young adult caregiver, I hope these were valuable to you. I believe they were extremely valuable. They were extremely valuable to me to prepare for you because young adult caregivers are definitely in a different category and their challenges are not the same. The challenges that an adult child has is not the same. The challenges that a spouse has is not the same. So I really found these to be so beneficial to me to truly understand the differences between each of these different caregivers. But to just recap briefly, we talked about statistics, the statistics for young adult caregivers, the unique challenges that they have as a young adult caregiver, how to manage the emotional and physical well-being as a young adult caregiver, and how they can manage their caregiving journey. And so.
Join the Monthly Meetup for Guidance and Support
[38:16] I invite you today, if you have not yet been a guest or joined my monthly meetup, I do a free monthly meetup on a Thursday at six o’clock once a month, and it’s coming up next week. It is July the 25th, and it is a segment that you can actually be on the podcast. If you have concerns about privacy, we can change your name. We can make all sorts of different ways of making it so that if you don’t want your specific individual characteristics to be mentioned, there are ways that we can do that. But I want you to join the Ask the Dementia Coach segment and sign up for it. I keep the group. I only let 12 people register because usually only a third of people show up.
[39:16] So 12 people can register, which means they’re usually only two to four people in the room. So you can get guidance and support and mentorship from me, asking your own specific questions. We can interact together. I love doing these coaching style episodes because it truly benefits the people who are willing to sign up and come on. Like I said, the next one is July the 25th at 6 p.m. You do have to register for this because otherwise there’s no way for you to show up in the Zoom room live. But I do want to extend this offer to you. It is extremely valuable. It’s my way of giving back. It’s my way of serving you. And so the link is in the show notes. I’d love you to join this next week’s Ask the Dementia Coach session. And if you know that I always, always, always pray for you. I know a lot of people say I’ll pray for you, but I do a prayer journal every single day. And every day I pray that the Lord will bless all of the family caregivers of somebody living with dementia and that he will find it in his will that I can serve you in this unique and different way.
