I spent twenty years as a caregiver. Then I became the one being cared for.

For nearly thirty years I have been the primary caregiver for my son, Isaac. When he was small we were given a prognosis for his life that my husband and I decided not to accept. We chose our own story instead, and we poured into him. He is an adult now, and he is the reason I know what caregiving costs and what it gives back.

I know the consistency it demands. The vigilance. What it does to a career, a marriage, a body, a sense of self. I did not learn that from a book.

Alongside that, I built a career as a speech-language pathologist, working with individuals and families through some of the hardest chapters of their lives. Later I trained as a Master Certified Health and Wellness Coach, because I kept meeting caregivers who were holding everyone up and had no one holding them.

The clinical work gave me language for what families were living. The caregiving gave me the right to use it.

Then a car accident left me temporarily paralyzed, and for the first time I needed extensive rehabilitation and care myself. I lay there and watched my own caregiver work — and I understood, in a way twenty years had not managed to teach me, what I had been asking of myself all along.

I made a full recovery. I did not go back to caregiving the same way. Everything I teach now comes from that bed.