November is National Caregiver Month, and we’re sharing a few helpful tips for supporting a cancer caregiver in your life!
Caregivers carry a heavy load, often behind the scenes, and when you’re caring for someone else’s needs, it can be difficult to know how to ask for help.
Instead of putting the responsibility on caregivers to figure out how to ask for help while managing all their other duties, it helps to meet them where they’re at.
First, it’s important to avoid platitudes such as “You’re so strong” and “You’re doing great.”
While those might feel true and like something a caregiver could benefit from hearing, most likely they’ve heard them before, and they don’t actually offer tangible help. These phrases can feel like they fall short.
Offering concrete, practical help over platitudes and general offers
helps take the pressure off the caregiver to ask for help
and come up with ideas of what that help looks like.
Caregivers, more than the average person, understand the depths of what it means to be needed. Meaning that caregivers will usually avoid putting the pressure, expectations, and realities that they face onto another person.
Instead of saying, “Let me know what I can do!” or “I’m here to help, just ask!”
Try one of these four things:
Food:
Bring meals to the caregiver and/or the person they’re caring for. Not only can cooking be difficult when all of their energy is focused on caregiving, but proper nutrition can also be challenging for cancer patients who might have specific diets. Helping feed either or both of them can be a big help.
If you can’t cook — you don’t feel like you’re good at it, you don’t have the time, or they live far away — you can always send gift cards to grocery stores, local restaurants, or for DoorDash!
Even $5 for a cup of coffee goes a long way. It lets them know that you’re thinking about them, and that you’re helping how you can. Sometimes, something like a simple cup of coffee can be just what someone needs to feel a little bit more human again, and a little bit more taken care of.
Chores:
Handle chores for a caregiver. Offer to come over and do the dishes, a load of laundry, or take their dog for a walk if they have one. Chores don’t have to be big; you don’t have to offer to deep clean their whole house, but even one small chore is one LESS chore that the caregiver has to remember and do.
Some chores you might be able to help with include:
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- Dishes
- Laundry
- Yard work
- Grocery shopping
- Childcare (even if it’s just for an hour)!
- Pet care
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Updates:
If you’re close to the caregiver and their circle of people, you can even offer to manage updates about the person they’re caring for. This could look like creating a Substack, a group chat, or sending out individual texts to other people in the caregiver’s life so that they only have to explain or update one person, one time. It can help take this responsibility off of their ever-growing pile of new responsibilities.
Listening:
Above all other forms of help, actively listening is the most accessible and most important help that you can offer a caregiver. Because even if there aren’t any physical ways that you can provide assistance — and it feels like you’re stuck, unable to do anything — you can ALWAYS listen.
You can be a safe place for a caregiver to land,
someone to talk to who meets them where they’re at
and gives their struggles a place to rest, breathe, and be seen.
Saying, “I hear you, that sounds really difficult,” and “Do you want to talk more about that?” can go a LONG way.
And if you’re already at your max capacity, sometimes a simple “I’m here for you, I’m thinking about you” message with no obligation to respond can really make a difference.
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Keep in mind that everyone is different, so try to meet the caregiver in your life where they’re at. It can even help to give a “menu” of ideas.
“I’m free this Thursday or Sunday. Can I bring you a lasagna that I’m making, get some laundry done for you, or pick up some groceries?”
It shows that you’re considering your own capacity — what you have the time and energy to do — because caregivers don’t always know what it looks like when someone offers to “help.” Talking? Food? Childcare? And caregivers never want to ask for too much from their loved ones.
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If you’re a cancer caregiver, check out the National Cancer Institute’s page, Caregivers of Cancer Patients.
