HOW TO COPE
IT’S OFTEN difficult enough juggling home life with a career, but when a parent becomes ill many women enter a whole third dimension of care and responsibility. Here, author
ALANA KIRK, who wrote Daughter, Mother, Me: A Memoir Of Love, Loss And Dirty Dishes (£13.99, amazon.co.
uk) to document her juggle between career, children and caring for her mother after she had a stroke, shares some sage advice. RESENTMENT IS NORMAL DO NOT feel guilty about feeling resentment and frustration. You are being pulled in so many directions, and none of the signs say ‘Put your feet up’. It is a challenging and draining experience and feeling guilty about resenting the responsibility is one guilt you can do without. Resentment does not make you a bad person, it makes you human. LEARN TO SAY NO IN THE early days I cried out of
frustration as much as grief. I was carrying on my life in exactly the same way as before, but just taking on the extra emotional and physical workload. You can’t. Something has to give, and often it is the ‘extras’ and that hurts. But there are times that saying no is the only way to survive. cus on the things that matter — your parent, your family, your work, and postpone other things for a while. BE FLEXIBLE I WAS lucky in many ways that as a copywriter, my desk was wherever I set my laptop . . . on a train to my mum’s, on a table beside her bed, at home on the kitchen table. It was still very stressful. I couldn’t concentrate as well with the TV on in my mum’s room, and often she wanted my full attention, and often I just couldn’t give it to her. But I did the best I could, trying to be there as much as I could, albeit sometimes having to not be as focused on her. LOOK AFTER YOURSELF GUILT drove me into the ground. Caught in a revolving door of childcare, parent-care and work-care, I never allowed myself to step out and look after myself. As a result, I fell apart but it was the best thing that happened in many ways because I left guilt behind in the rubble. I learned to accept that doing the best I could was enough. I gave what I could to my mum, my children, my job, and I left a little bit over for me. It was a tough lesson to learn, but when I think of the love my mum gave me, it was one I know she would have wanted me to learn.