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My Story

Life hands us lessons whether we are expecting them or not. I never expected to have so much experience as a caregiver that I would want to write a book about caregiving. But that’s what resulted from those unexpected lessons that began more than 35 years ago.

My first experience came in the ‘70s with my Mom while she was in the final stages of her 11-year battle with breast cancer. At the end of that decade, I had new learning experiences in helping my grandmother who was suffering from acute Parkinson’s disease. A year later, my mother-in-law found herself in a battle with the final stages of cervical cancer, and once again, I was in the role of caregiver. When my only sister, MaryKay, became ill with a virulent form of breast cancer in 1997, I was able to put to use all the lessons in caregiving I’d learned earlier. Shortly after her death in 1999, our father was diagnosed with a blood cancer. Once again, I discovered how much there is to learn from each experience of caregiving.

I might have simply kept these lessons to myself, but for the illnesses of two dear friends, both of whom were diagnosed with breast cancer at about the time of my sister’s death. “I know a lot about this,” I told myself. “I’ll write them each a note with some tips and advice on how they and their families can make the process more manageable and less stressful.”

When that “note” was finished, it was 20 pages long. That’s when I realized how much I’d learned over the years, and how much information there was to share. So I began to research caregiving-- what makes it difficult, and what makes it effective. The note based on personal experience, and the research finally grew into a book, Blessings in Time of Darkness published in 2006 by The Valeo Group. The book was re-written and published in 2010 by Tate Publishing under the new title Search for Light: Ten Crucial Lessons for Caregivers. This new release contains more information based on both my caregiving experiences and the lessons I’ve learned from other caregivers in the workshops and classes I have been teaching since 2006.

Now there is a new addition to this caregiving information, Blueprint for Caregiving. These print out CDs containing 52 short chapters come in four versions that cover three specific types of caregiving—cancer, dementia, or elder—as well as general information for all other types of caregiving. The Blueprint for Caregiving series contains additional material that is not in the book, so it augments the lessons that you can learn. By fall of 2010, the abridged audio CDs of Blueprint for Dementia Caregiving and Blueprint for Elder Caregiving will be available. Audio CDs of Blueprint for Cancer Caregiving and the general Blueprint for Caregiving will be available by the end of the year.

In addition, I’ve created two workbooks to help ease the organizational stress of caregiving—The Medical Journal and The Tool Box: Life Documents File. I did this because too often in my caregiving experience we were scrambling to find a document or report that we’d lost track of. These workbooks will enable you to keep all the important information that I know you need close at hand and organized.

The one over-riding lesson that I have learned, and re-learned many times, is that there is always a spiritual context in the process of caregiving. When we open ourselves up to the divine presence that is constantly with us, then the patient’s process, and the caregiver’s tasks all take on a much deeper meaning. When we can find those deeper meanings, which are I consider gifts of light in the darkness, then we all can access the blessings that await both patient and caregiver.

- Joanne Reynolds