Episode Transcript
Welcome back to Lewy Body and Mindful Caregiving. I'm Krystal Jakosky and I'm glad that you're here today. I want to give you a little bit of an analogy, a visualization, so that you can see and understand the balance of the heavy stuff and the light stuff, meaning all of your responsibilities and how you need to add self-care. It's really the importance of bringing joy into your life as you're dealing with all of this other challenge.
So I always start with self-care and what did I do? I actually I took a welding course or a lesson, and I have started welding Wednesdays, so I'm learning a new skill and it tickles my brain and it makes me really, really happy to learn something new and then see those beads and be like, “Yeah, I did that. Okay, now what do I want to do?” So that's exciting for me.
The importance of adding to your schedule. Now you're going to think I'm crazy when I tell you to add something to your life, and yet it makes perfect sense. I want you to think of Lady Justice and her scale. And on this one side you have caregiving and you have your job and any other responsibilities that are uniquely yours that you cannot get off of that plate.
They are there, they are stuck, and they are not going anywhere. There's a lot of them. And caregiving might take up a pretty big chunk and it's heavy, it's weighty, it's frustrating, it's emotional, it's all over the place. You can't take it off of your plate. It'll come off of your plate, sadly, when your loved one passes, which has a mixed bag of emotions in and of itself, because on the one hand you might feel relief that you don't have to go through that anymore.
And on the other hand, you might end up just a wrecked mess because your loved one is no longer here and you can't call them out to hear their voice or their laugh or hear them call you by your nickname.
So that's the heavy side. The other side, since this one's down here, the other side's pretty up here. And the thing is that you have to put something on this to balance that out. You have to put something positive here, something you want to do to balance out the “have to”.
So what are you doing here that's bringing you joy? What are you doing here that's helping make things a little bit better? I've always been someone who goes and does. My dad told me years and years and years ago, he said, “Krystal, you are happiest… You're not happy unless you're super busy.” The way that he said it, I was kind of offended with it. I was kind of frustrated with him, like, “Well, leave me alone. I can do my own thing” but he was right. I am happiest when I'm doing something, when I'm achieving something, when I'm building people up. I am happiest when I'm active.
So instead of “you're not happy unless”, putting it into a much more positive light of “I am happiest when…” You're right. I'm happiest when I'm busier. Now, sometimes that busyness is just busyness because I want to be doing something and I want to go to bed feeling like I accomplished something. But in being a caregiver, I have had to be way more intentional about what it is that I'm putting on my plate, what it is that I'm doing for joy and happiness, what I aim at doing to stay busy.
So I recently added a few things. I told you that one of my self-care things is that I took a welding class. Well, I've wanted a weld for a long time. I thought it would be really fun, but I didn't know. I mean, you got the welder and you've got the gas and you've got the trigger and you've got the metal. And I mean, like, what am I doing? I need somebody to walk me through this.
So I just hadn't done it, hadn't done it. And I kept telling the universe, if it's time, send me the right person to teach me. And that's just worked out beautifully. But I added welding for like 4 hours every Wednesday, and people look at me and they're like, “How do you have the time to do that? You are already so busy. You're so busy.”
My mom says to me, “You're so busy.”
I took it as a negative thing because I know that when she's saying you're so busy, it's actually also “You can't spend time with me.” She's reminding herself that she can't pull me into her world, and I can't just sit there with her all the time. She's reminding herself that I am living my life.
“You're so busy.”
I also added viola lessons because I've wanted to do that forever and ever and ever. So I'm learning the viola again because I had one hanging around the house and I thought, “If I'm going to have an instrument hanging around the house, I will better know how to play it.” So I'm learning how to play it.
My husband added dancing and we added pickleball. Now it meant that we had to shift a couple of things around. We had to figure out what our priorities were and how we wanted to work with our priorities. In the beginning, for the first month, it was a little stressful because we had so much on our calendars that we were like, “Wait, what's going on?”
He was happy and thrilled. He was loving all of it. And I was overwhelmed just like, “But I'm doing the caregiving and I'm doing all of this stuff and how do I navigate that? And how do I hold it all in the same vessel and make sure that I am meeting the needs of myself and others that are relying on me?”
The crazy thing is all of these things went up there. All of these things went into the part of, I'm finding joy because I am laughing my butt off while I'm playing pickleball and I am encouraging other people while I am playing pickleball and I am being that fun person that people want to play with. And we're just having a really, really good time.
I love it.
My husband and I go dancing now, and when we go dancing together, he's repeating the steps out loud. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, slow. He's verbalizing it. And then all of a sudden he gets this twinkle in his eye and he's like, “I've got it.” And then we can twirl around the dance floor in our dance lesson and he's really happy. I love seeing that light. We laugh on the dance floor all the time and it feels so good.
I'm doing these viola lessons. I'm an adult taking viola lessons. And I the first week I was like, “I didn't practice enough.” I felt so much like a little kid getting called to the principal's office because I hadn't practiced. But I went in there and she was really pleased with what I had done and that made me feel so good. I can pick up the viola and I can play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and it's not horrible. I can play I had a little dreidel and it's not bad and it makes me happy.
So this is balancing it out.
Before I added all this stuff, I'm going to tell you, the first month of it was a challenge because I felt like I was forgetting things. I felt like I was saying, “Yeah, I'll go ahead and do that.” But if I didn't make a note about it or do it immediately, I would forget about it and people would have to come back and say, “Hey, Krystal, where you know, were you going to do that?”
“Shoot, you're right. I totally spaced that.” I would be at work and I would forget something and forget how to do something or just a myriad of things. I felt like mentally I was struggling. Mentally, I was not all there and I was not able to fully function. I felt like my brain was at like 85% compared to where I've normally been and that was so frustrating for me.
I've added these things, I've balanced it out, and in adding those things, it's amazing because I still have as much free time as I did before. I still have entire days that I'm going, “What do I want to do? This is not as heavy, this is not as weighty. This is easier to deal with because I've added all of this.”
Because I've added all of this I am now clearer mentally because there's not as much brain fog and I'm able to look at things and go, “Yeah, I got that and I got that and I got that. I'm good to go.” I would have thought; if somebody had told me, “You need to add things to your plate to feel better”, I would have told them they were absolutely bonkers and go suck on an egg because I already have enough on my plate.
Reality was, how much was I sitting on the couch and going through like doomscrolling? Or how much was I binge watching a show at night when I could have been practicing piano or the viola? How much time was I actually letting fall by that I have now reclaimed and said, “That's what I want to do”. I now have a purpose and I'm excited about so many things. It's like, “Okay, I've got to do this so that I can do that. I’ve got to finish this. I’ve got to take care of these things because I'm really excited about doing all of those things.”
Think of the scale. What can you add? A half an hour is not that much time. So what do you want to do with a half an hour? What can you add that would bring you a ton of joy, a spark, some glitter in life? What can you add here to make here a little bit better, a little easier to deal with? Not so weighty, because if everything is heavy where is your joy? Where is your self-care? All of these things that I've added are new forms of self-care because I come out of there feeling so good. Yes, it takes up a little bit of my time and yet it gives so much more back to me than what it takes. And for that, I'm grateful.
So I hope that you use this analogy. I hope you take it and digest it a little bit and see, “What can I add?” And maybe you don't add as many things at one time like I did. Maybe instead of adding four or five at the same time, maybe you just add one or two and say, “Okay, on this day, this week I am going to dedicate one hour to this. And on this day of the week I'm going to dedicate one hour to that.” What can you do? How can you make things so much brighter, so much easier for and help yourself out?
It's a scale, finding that little balance. Thanks for coming. Thanks for listening and watching. And come back next week for the next episode of Lewy Body of Mindful Caregiving. Until then, take care.
