Respite that finally happened

Started 19 February 2025 · 22 replies · 230 hearts · read 1.9k times

ÖzlemIzmir, TR · 19 February 2025

1.4 years ago

Something I have been sitting with: Respite that finally happened Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

The logistics of this are defeating me more than the medicine is.

Practical question, and possibly a silly one, but the logistics of this are defeating me considerably more than the medicine is.

I have a plan for the ordinary weeks and no plan at all for the unusual ones, and the unusual ones are where everything has gone wrong.

If anybody has an arrangement that works and is willing to write it out, I would be very grateful.

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA

My experience is that this is entirely doable while caring, and that it needs more planning than the guides assume.

LandoLeeds, UK

I have stopped apologising for the length of time it takes me to reply to things. Everybody here understands.

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

Stepping in to say that asking for help with logistics is not a smaller kind of asking. It is most of what makes this sustainable.

26me too 1

BramberSteyning, UK

Picking up Wren’s point rather than starting a new one.

What surprised me was how much I needed somewhere that was not about him. This circle is the only place in my week that is.

SableCape Town, ZA

My own appointments come last, always, and this was the first thing in a decade I have organised for myself.

FitzLimerick, IE

Reading Sable, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

What I found is that the logistics assume a person with a spare afternoon, and I have not had a spare afternoon since 2019.

BrennaEnniskillen, NI

Fitz — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Coming back to say we found a rhythm, that his care has been stable for a year, and that I have kept going, which two years ago I would not have predicted.

PipBristol, UK

Reading this properly rather than skimming, which is all I have to offer today.

9me too 5

IzoldaVilnius, LT

Something practical: I got my collections aligned with the ones I already do for somebody else, and it saved me a journey a month.

8me too 4

SerenLlandudno, UK

#10

Building on what Brenna wrote rather than answering the original question.

Eating properly is the thing that goes first when I am stretched, and it goes without me noticing, and this circle is where I noticed.

KeeleyBlackpool, UK

#11

Holding this with you rather than answering it.

GigiNaples, IT

#12

Coming back to what Seren wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

The best practical advice I have had here was to prepare for the bad weeks rather than the good ones. Everything I built assumes a difficult week.

11me too 6

ZoraSarajevo, BA

#13

I would gently say that if you are the only person holding everything, that is worth telling somebody clinical rather than absorbing.

IdrisCardiff, UK

#14

Keeley said something I want to sit with for a second.

My respite arrangements took nine months to organise and are the reason I am still standing. Do start that conversation early.

LinnetKendal, UK

#15

Nobody has asked me how I am in about four years and this circle asks every week, which is most of why I am still here.

7me too 1

GwythFishguard, UK

#16

I do mine at six in the morning because that is the only twenty minutes of the day that belongs to me.

ÖzlemIzmir, TR

#17

Gwyth — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

The exhaustion was already there before any of this. Working out what was new and what was simply caring took me a long time.

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA

#18

My GP asked how I was doing as a carer, once, unprompted, and I cried in the appointment, which surprised us both.

LandoLeeds, UK

#19

What Gwyth described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

My sleep is broken for reasons that have nothing to do with this, and separating the tiredness has been the hardest analytical problem.

PamSouthport, UK

#20

What I would say to somebody starting is to build it into something you already do, because anything additional will not survive a difficult month.

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

#21

Noticing the drift towards what other people ought to be doing. We can describe our own arrangements and that is the whole of our authority.

SableCape Town, ZA

#22

What helped was one hour a fortnight that is genuinely mine, arranged formally, so that it cannot quietly disappear.

10me too 6