Caring on Empty

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 There’s something I’ve learned about caregiving.
You can be quietly running out of capacity while the world still sees you as strong.

You don’t realise you’re exhausted.
You don’t stop and check how you’re coping.

Your attention moves outward and stays there.

Locked and loaded.

Is she okay?
What needs doing next?
Did I miss something?
What happens if I stop?

Somewhere along the way, I disappear from my own radar.

Especially when life and death sit close.

You don’t decide to be strong.
You just become the one who holds things together because there is no alternative.

And there is no shift change at home.

No clocking out.
No drive home to reset.
No place where responsibility pauses.

Home becomes vigilance.
Love becomes duty.
Rest becomes something you might get later.

Maybe.

People say carers need to look after themselves.

But carers don’t forget themselves.

There is simply no room left to notice.

The body narrows.
You stay ready.
You stay steady.
You hold it together one more time.

And the weight builds quietly.

It becomes so heavy I can’t move. The dishes sit there. Small things feel impossible. Not because I don’t care, but because every bit of energy is being used to keep it together, to stay stable, to be the support.

I’m not saving energy for living.

I’m saving it for the next heart attack.

For the next phone call.
The next emergency.
The next moment everything could change.

Inside all of this, there is still a daughter.

A daughter crying quietly, Mum, please see me.

I have lost my Mum many times without losing her. Moments where I prepared myself for goodbye while still making tea, answering questions, staying calm.

Each crisis asks you to rehearse grief and then keep functioning.

When she pulls through, and every time feels like a miracle, everything moves quickly toward recovery. Appointments. Stability. Relief.

As it should.

But something inside me never quite catches up.

The part that just prepared to lose my rock has nowhere to go.

So it folds itself away and carries on.

This was never meant to be carried alone.

Once, care was shared. Someone else stepped in when you couldn’t stand anymore. Someone noticed before you broke.

Now one person becomes the stabilizer.

The strong one.

And strength makes you invisible.

People think I’m okay because I keep going. Even when I ask for help, life carries on as if I’ve got it handled.

“She’s strong.”
“She’ll manage.”

Meanwhile I am quietly running out of capacity while still appearing capable.

A friend once told me support services said caring was killing her.

I understood exactly what that meant.

Not because love harms us.

Because responsibility without relief slowly empties you.

I keep showing up because love doesn’t switch off when energy does. Because she is my Mum. Because walking away was never an option.

Love and exhaustion live side by side.
I can feel grateful she’s still here and still feel unbearably tired.

I am proud of what I have been capable of doing for her.

And I am sad, sometimes angry, for what I haven’t been able to do for myself.

The hardest part isn’t always what needs doing.

It’s never putting the weight down.

Humans recover by being held after holding.

Here, there is no contrast.

Just one long posture of readiness.

No off switch.
No witness to the witnessing.

And so carers don’t falter because they are weak.

We falter because we have been strong for too long alone.

Carers are drowning quietly.

We need care too.

Not advice.
Not praise for resilience.

Just someone who notices.
Someone who shows up.
Someone willing to share even a small part of the weight.

Sometimes the strongest people are simply the ones who had no choice but to keep going.

And somewhere inside them is still a daughter, quietly hoping someone will show up.