Stuck Between Burnout and Bubble Baths: A Real Talk on Sustainable Caregiving

You know that feeling when you’re juggling everyone’s needs — aging parents, kids, work — and someone kindly suggests you “just take a little time for yourself”? Their heart is in the right place, but the advice doesn’t always match your reality. If you’ve ever smiled and nodded while feeling quietly overwhelmed underneath it all, this is for you.

So many of us in the sandwich generation — caring for aging parents while raising kids — are navigating life without a map.

And everywhere we turn, we’re handed one of two options:

• Do more. Push through. Stay strong.
• Wake up early, journal while drinking a green smoothie, and get 20 minutes of sunlight before starting your day.

But when you’re managing medication schedules and teenage mood swings, when your calendar is already maxed out and you’re still expected to show up consistently, neither message really fits.

Caregiving isn’t just logistical — it’s emotional, invisible, and deeply human. And the answer isn’t to do more or add complicated self-care routines to your day. As amazing as option #2 sounds, it’s not realistic for me or most people I know. But I think the answer lies somewhere in between — and that’s where I’m intentionally putting my focus and energy.

What we really need isn’t another checklist — we need a way to come back to ourselves, one moment at a time.

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When “Doing More” Becomes a Survival Mode

You’re doing more than most people can see.

Let’s talk about the version of you who gets things done. You keep the house running. You make the calls, follow up on labs, prep meals, manage insurance, and remember to refill the inhaler — while also attending soccer games, navigating high school transitions, and working. Whether you are working outside of your home, or inside of your home, you are working.

When someone says, “Just ask for help,” you may smile… but inside, you’re thinking:

Ask who? For what? And when would I even have time to explain what I need?

Because the kind of help you need can be hard to put into words.
And the burnout you feel has been building for a while.

You’re not lazy or unorganized.
You’re living in a role no one prepared you for — at least not in a way that’s sustainable.

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The Self-Care Dilemma: Why Even the “Easy” Advice Feels Hard

You want to care for yourself — but it often feels out of reach.

The advice often comes from a good place — friends, family, or professionals who genuinely want to help and remind you that your wellbeing matters. And they’re not wrong — we do need to care for ourselves.

But when you’re a caregiver, a parent, a partner, and running a household or business (or both) that advice can feel like it lives in another universe.

The challenge isn’t that the idea of self-care is wrong, it’s that the images we associate with self-care don’t usually fit in with everything we’re already doing.

What self-care often looks like online:

• Spa days and face masks
• Morning routines filled with journaling, green juice, and meditation
• Time-consuming rituals that assume you have free time to design your day from scratch

And instead of helping, it adds more pressure. 

It’s hard for me to recharge when I feel like I should have been waking up earlier to work-out, I should have been journaling in the morning, not just at night.  “I should have” and “just” can quietly take away our joy without even realizing it.

That’s why traditional self-care advice, while well-meaning, often misses the mark for caregivers and those of us in the sandwich generation.

Because real self-care starts with something much smaller:

• One deep breath
• One quiet moment
• One small reconnection to yourself

Sustainable caregiving isn’t about doing more — it’s about doing what recharges you, in ways that fit your real life.

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 Micro-Moments: The Real Self-Care for Caregivers

This is where self-care becomes sustainable.

This is where micro-moments come in.
They’re not big or dramatic. But they’re yours.

• The 3 minutes before the house wakes up.
• Breathing deeply before picking up the phone.
• Choosing silence over stimulation for a few minutes.

Self-care isn’t about checking a box — it’s about creating space for yourself.

And often, that space might only be a sliver on some days, but it matters.

You don’t need a perfect morning routine.
You don’t need to do everything differently.

You just need one opening — one thread of reconnection — to begin again.

Not the buzzword version of self-care, but the version that recharges you.

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 Celebrating the Small Wins (Because They Are the Wins)

You are doing more than enough — even when it’s invisible.

We’re taught to celebrate the milestones — the graduation, the recovery, the promotion, the perfectly organized pantry. 

But your journey is made up of thousands of invisible moments — most of which no one sees:

• The quiet advocacy you do at appointments.
• The tears you wipe — sometimes your parent’s, sometimes your child’s, sometimes your own.
• The appointments you juggle.
• The emotions you absorb.
• The time you kept your cool when you really wanted to break down.

These are the wins. These are the moments that matter.

But too often, the moment we reach a goal, we move the bar again. We skip the celebration. We go straight to what’s next.

What if you paused?

What if you gave yourself credit — not when it’s all done, but while you’re in it?

That’s what sustainable caregiving is:

• A shift in how we see ourselves.
• A softening of how we measure success.
• Permission to celebrate small wins along the way — because there are a lot of them.

Giving yourself space, a little bit at a time, in a way that makes sense to you.

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 Final Thought

You may feel emotionally drained and not even know why.
You may be keeping everything together — and still feel like you’re not together.
You may be doing a remarkable job… while still feeling like it’s not enough.

So let me be the one to say it:

You’re doing something that deeply matters.
Something that requires your energy, your heart, your intuition, your presence.

And you don’t need to do more. You need moments that allow you to recharge.

Start with:

• One breath
• One shift
• One small win

Then celebrate it!