Latest / You're Not Too Much / The Sandwich Generation, a 4am Fall, and a $6 Box of Equal
Transcript
- 0:00My consistent concern is that she's
- 0:03gonna fall, and she's gonna fall and hurt herself, which has happened
- 0:07before, and I'm not gonna know, or nobody's gonna
- 0:10know. We were literally just calling because I needed somebody to help
- 0:14me lift her up off the floor, but they sent 8 people.
- 0:18And they're all very nice. They all have different roles. They're all responsible for different
- 0:21things. I get that. And I guess they just want to be prepared,
- 0:25but It is so many people. And also, don't
- 0:28let old people run out of their artificial sweetener. They will get upset
- 0:32and they will riot, and that gets dangerous.
- 0:36Boop. Hi everybody, I'm Lauren Howard.
- 0:39Welcome to Different Not Broken, which is our
- 0:43podcast on exactly that, that there are a lot of people in this world walking
- 0:46around feeling broken, and the reality is you're just different and that's fine.
- 0:52I broke the sacred Pact of
- 0:56Daughters of My Mother. Accidentally. She was back in the
- 0:59hospital last week, and I let her run out of Equal.
- 1:03And I didn't have any Equal at my house, so I
- 1:07couldn't bring her any. So I had to go to the store to buy Equal,
- 1:11which felt incorrect. Equal feels like the kind of thing that you
- 1:15should never pay for. You should always get it free because you stole a
- 1:18bunch from the coffee shop. Like, it doesn't feel like a thing you should ever
- 1:22pay for. But I bought a box of Equal. Did you know that a
- 1:25box of Equal costs $6 for carcinogens?
- 1:29$6. So anyway, I went and bought a box of
- 1:33Equal, and I checked out, and I brought it to her. And she
- 1:37was like, why did you go shopping? I had some at my house. And I
- 1:40was like, the store seemed less complicated than going to your house, even though
- 1:44she lives 2 blocks from me and I have a key. And I know where
- 1:47everything is. It just seemed like a lot. It seemed
- 1:51a much more direct option to just go to the
- 1:55sugar aisle, and it was pretty fast. Also, I've
- 1:59apparently become that person who's like, in my day this was—
- 2:03which is ironic. But also, as I was checking out at the store,
- 2:07I looked up and I saw someone who
- 2:11very much looked like a guy I went And so
- 2:16while I was trying to figure out who he looked like, I
- 2:19realized and then went, oh, that can't be him. That guy looks
- 2:23like a 40-year-old man. And I thought about it and I realized
- 2:27that is correct. That would be exactly— yeah, no, that's it. Yeah,
- 2:31like, I'm almost 40. He didn't stay 18. That's not how it
- 2:34works. And then I just was like, oh, beans. It's
- 2:38like, what do you do with that? The people around you age while you do.
- 2:42That seems incorrect. I don't know if that's what I signed up for. And so
- 2:46that was just like a cosmic letdown. So I'm headed to the hospital
- 2:50to see my mother who was in the hospital again, and
- 2:54again faced with my own mortality while heading to the
- 2:58hospital. And I was like, all of this feels very cruel.
- 3:02I don't think I did anything to deserve any of this. So I got
- 3:05myself a mango drink and I drank my sorrows. It didn't have alcohol in it,
- 3:09it just had sugar. That's how I drink my sorrows. It's just through copious amounts
- 3:13of sugar and syrup drinks. But yeah, I don't know if you know this, but
- 3:17we're old. Somebody let us get old. And I don't know
- 3:20when it happened because I am so sure, like super,
- 3:24super sure that I was in college
- 3:28like yesterday. I was even in high school
- 3:31like yesterday. I still can't believe that they let me graduate high school.
- 3:36I still have dreams almost every night that I
- 3:40forgot to graduate high school or that I didn't take a class that I
- 3:43needed to graduate college. Literally every night, the same
- 3:47dream that I forgot to do whatever I needed to do to
- 3:51graduate, and somebody's gonna find out
- 3:54despite the fact that it has been a lot more years than I
- 3:58care to admit. So there is a world where
- 4:02That guy you know looks like a 40-year-old man because he's a 40-year-old man,
- 4:07and that seems unfair to me. I do not appreciate that.
- 4:11And also, don't let old people run out of their artificial sweetener. They will get
- 4:15upset and they will riot, and that gets dangerous. So I'm in this
- 4:19weird kind of suspended place. I don't even know— I
- 4:22don't even know how to describe it. It's just a place, and it is
- 4:26not a physical place. It's like a Mental, emotional
- 4:30place that if you've been listening at
- 4:34all, you know that I have been caretaking for my mom a lot, which
- 4:38was never supposed to be my lot in life. I said it was
- 4:42never going to be my lot in life. Not supposed to be, but I said
- 4:44I was never going to do it. And then here I am doing it, which
- 4:47is shocking to no one except me, by the way.
- 4:51Shocking to exactly no one. But for the most
- 4:55part, it's kind of her and I against the world, and that has all
- 4:58sorts of implications. My husband is very instrumental and super helpful and takes
- 5:02care of a bunch of stuff for us. And I do have a brother who's
- 5:05nearby who will help out when he can, but he's not the
- 5:08decision-making type. He is not the critical thinking type. He is the be at
- 5:12this place at this time and do this thing type. And so I still have
- 5:16to kind of run the show even when he's involved, which I again swore I
- 5:19would never do. And yet here we are. Yay,
- 5:22eldest daughter. I was one of the full-time caretakers for my dad. There were
- 5:264 of us, and we were basically at his
- 5:30house taking care of him all the time except to sleep. And one of my
- 5:33siblings lived there, so he was there all the time. And then I
- 5:37came and went. I had literally just had a baby, so I would bring the
- 5:40baby back and forth, and she was literally a couple of weeks
- 5:44old. We're not talking about infant stage, like she was still a newborn, and I
- 5:47was bringing her back and forth. The anxiety was constant
- 5:50then. It was about his eventual
- 5:54demise. It was not about his day-to-day wellbeing. I was
- 5:58not concerned that while I was gone,
- 6:02something was going to happen to him other than
- 6:06the worst possible thing. Like, I was concerned that was gonna happen. That wasn't my
- 6:09anxiety. My anxiety was this stage of life, the fact that he was so sick.
- 6:13But there were things that, as much as I worried all the time and it
- 6:16was stressful all the time, I didn't have to worry about. Because there were other
- 6:19humans there. And that is just not the case this time.
- 6:23It is so wildly different. And so my
- 6:27stress level about her general wellbeing is not nearly as high as
- 6:31it was when we were caretaking for my dad, because she is
- 6:34not as sick as he was by any means. But my stress
- 6:38level about her needs is 10 times higher
- 6:42because it's just me. Again, my husband does help out and I do have a
- 6:45brother who can help out, but nobody's jumping in and doing
- 6:48things unless I ask them to. Unless I'm directing traffic, nothing's
- 6:52getting done. She does do some things for herself. And so, went out of
- 6:56town 2 weeks ago, and I didn't leave anybody instructions
- 7:00on what to do with my kid, but I left instructions on what to do
- 7:02with my mother. And like, here's the key to her house, and this is how
- 7:06you get in, and if you need to do things, and you need to text
- 7:08her this, and ask her to do this, and make sure she does— like, I
- 7:12literally left instructions. On how to take care of my mother.
- 7:15But my kids, I was like, they'll be fine. They can scrounge for Pop-Tarts.
- 7:19It's fine. They're fine. Also, like, my husband is a competent
- 7:23adult who parents and doesn't babysit, so he didn't need
- 7:26instructions from me on how to take care of our children. He's fully capable of
- 7:29doing that as a grown-ass man. I don't have that
- 7:33for my mother because that guy died, which is rude.
- 7:37So Like trying to figure out what the right level of
- 7:41anything is for her because she is
- 7:45ambulatory, she is able to get around, but she also falls
- 7:49and she's had a couple of nasty falls. She's also had a couple of just
- 7:52like innocuous falls. Like she was fine, she just needed help getting up.
- 7:56She lives alone. There's nobody in her house with her. We considered having
- 8:00somebody move in there, but we haven't been able to figure out what the right
- 8:03balance is there. Like how much freedom does she need? I'm not letting her drive
- 8:07right now. So anytime she has to go to a doctor, I have to take
- 8:09her. Sometimes I can arrange with my I'd rather have him take her, but certainly
- 8:13not letting her drive right now. And so it's just like
- 8:17every day is, first off, like, are we doing any of this right? Are there
- 8:21resources we should be using that I don't know about? Like, I wasn't paying
- 8:24attention to her home health company and she's supposed to be getting PT
- 8:28multiple times a week and they didn't show up for 10 days. And she
- 8:32forgot to tell me that they hadn't been there and that they had canceled a
- 8:34couple of times. And the home health company certainly didn't tell me. And I'm like,
- 8:38my goal is to get this woman back up and functioning and you guys don't
- 8:41show up for 10 days? Why do I have to manage the home health
- 8:45company to make sure that they send somebody? Who is supposed to be
- 8:49taking care of this? And so it's just stuff like that all the time.
- 8:52But my biggest fear is that she's going to fall and she's gonna fall while
- 8:56she's alone. There's little things that you just don't think about that in the
- 8:59way we live currently become this like cascading issue.
- 9:04So when she was in the hospital, she kept saying, this weird thing keeps
- 9:07coming up on my phone about my voice services not being available.
- 9:11And I reset something and the prompt went away and I figured I fixed it.
- 9:15But she said, like she had said multiple times before that, and I had been
- 9:18there when she had tried to use Siri to like unlock the front door or
- 9:21turn off lights and it, it just hadn't worked and she just wasn't
- 9:25responding. And so I went in and tried to reset Hey Siri and do all
- 9:28the things, but like as soon as that's not an immediate problem in front of
- 9:31you, you don't stop. think about the fact that your mom's voice activation is not
- 9:35working. Like, there's 10,000 other really important things to be thinking about.
- 9:39That's not the one you're thinking about. And so
- 9:43I had known there was a problem. I didn't realize it was still a problem.
- 9:46I didn't know we needed to test for it still, but I did know that
- 9:50there was a problem or there had been a problem in the past.
- 9:54And my consistent concern is that
- 9:58she's gonna fall. And she's gonna fall and hurt herself, which has happened
- 10:01before, and I'm not gonna know, or nobody's gonna know.
- 10:05And so we're doing some things to take care of her and to take care
- 10:09of that. I check in on her all the time because it's the right thing
- 10:11to do, and I want to make sure she's okay. But like, mostly I want
- 10:14to make sure that she's upright and that she hasn't slipped on something or whatever.
- 10:21So 2 things happened over the weekend. One of them is funny, one of them
- 10:24is less so. Saturday I wanted to make sure she had food because she had
- 10:28just come home from the hospital the day before. And so I knew she didn't
- 10:30have groceries in the house. We got her something she likes to drink, but I
- 10:34didn't think she had food. And so I texted her. I said, do you need
- 10:36lunch or groceries? And she didn't answer me. And I was like,
- 10:41okay. And so I text again. I said, hello? No answer. Sometimes she misses the
- 10:45first one. She usually responds to the second one. So I did something I never
- 10:47do. I called her and she
- 10:51sent me to voicemail. And I was like, excuse?
- 10:56And I might have had the little Nancy Guthrie moment where I was like, did
- 10:59somebody kidnap my mother because she just sent me to voicemail? But
- 11:03went down that rabbit hole. Not that, like, if somebody kidnapped my mother,
- 11:07they would bring her back in 2 seconds. I would not worry about them keeping
- 11:10her out for long. So then she called me back probably like 5
- 11:13minutes later because I sent her a text that said, IS EVERYTHING OK? In all
- 11:17caps because she was not responding to me. And I needed to make sure that
- 11:20she was not dead on her kitchen floor. And
- 11:24I was grabbing my keys to her house. She lives close enough away that I
- 11:27can walk there in about 3 minutes. So I was
- 11:31grabbing my keys and literally just gonna walk over there and make sure that she
- 11:34was not dead on the floor somewhere. And then she calls me back
- 11:38and I was like, are you alive? And she goes,
- 11:42yeah, I'm alive. Kind of hedged. And I was like,
- 11:47are you sure? And she goes, I didn't want
- 11:51you to get mad at me, but I went out with my friend. And I
- 11:53was like, my, how the tables have turned.
- 11:58How many times did I get yelled at for the completely
- 12:02innocuous trips I took out with my friends, probably to do things similar
- 12:06to what she did with her friend on Saturday?
- 12:09That is the kind of trouble I got into as a teenager. And the number
- 12:13of times I got yelled at for going out with friends. And I was like,
- 12:16oh, oh, you went out with a friend and you didn't tell me? You didn't
- 12:19think to check in before you left? You didn't send me a text or a
- 12:22note? And she was like, well, I didn't want you to get upset. And I
- 12:25was like, well, you know, here I am thinking that you're dead on the side
- 12:28of the road. And she finally goes, I'm fine, Mom. And I was like,
- 12:32mm-hmm, mm-hmm. See what that's like?
- 12:36So anyway, she texted me a couple hours later and said she was home and
- 12:38staying in for the night. It was like 5:30. It was not late. So she
- 12:42was in for the night. I made sure she didn't need anything. I went to
- 12:45bed kind of early, I think, feeling like, oh good, I was glad
- 12:49she got out. She was out, she was walking around, she went to
- 12:53HomeGoods and terrorized people with a shopping cart. Good for her,
- 12:56good for her. I went to bed not thinking much about it,
- 13:00and okay, we survived day 1 of whatever this
- 13:04setup is, and I'm like Constantly thinking about, all right, we need to go to
- 13:07the gastroenterologist. She needs— I need to find her a neurologist. We need to make
- 13:11sure that the cardiologist has an appointment set up. She's not waiting for November
- 13:14to see the cardiologist. We need to find a different cardiologist. Like, this is constantly
- 13:18running through my brain. Do we need a caretaker? Do we need somebody to move
- 13:21in with her? Does she need somebody who's physically there? It's nonstop.
- 13:25I'm asleep, and if my phone rings at night, I
- 13:29wake up. I leave my ringer on now, so like I would wake up.
- 13:33But all of a sudden my husband is standing there and he goes,
- 13:38your mom just called me. She fell in her bathroom
- 13:41and she's on the floor and she can't get up. I look at the clock,
- 13:45it's like 4 o'clock in the morning, and I'm like, what? What do you mean
- 13:48she's on the floor? 'Cause the way he was saying it, he wasn't saying she
- 13:50was hurt. He wasn't saying there was an emergency. He was
- 13:54just saying she's on the bathroom floor. And I'm like, okay, but what
- 13:57does that mean? What am I walking into? And he really didn't know. And I
- 14:01was like, why did she call you? I looked at my phone like, oh my
- 14:04God, I must have missed 7 calls from her. Nope. Nothing.
- 14:08I'm like, why did she call you? What? That doesn't even make sense. And he's
- 14:11like, I don't know. But she called me. She's like, I will go over there.
- 14:14He said, I will go over there with you. If she's in her bathroom, I
- 14:17don't want to walk in first because I don't know what I'm going to find.
- 14:20And I was like, that's fair, but I have no idea what the hell is
- 14:22going on. So we go over to her house and
- 14:26She's in the bathroom and she's laying flat on the bathroom floor.
- 14:30It was terrifying. There was nothing wrong, but it was just the way she was
- 14:34laying. She was laying like basically like starfished on the bathroom floor.
- 14:37And I didn't turn on the light before I got
- 14:41to her. So I went over
- 14:45to her and I guess she had put like a shirt behind her
- 14:48head because she couldn't sit up and she didn't wanna have her head on the
- 14:52hard floor. But the way it looked with the
- 14:55shadows, it looked like there was a pool of blood behind her head. And so
- 14:59I freaked the fuck out and then turned on the light and realized it was
- 15:03like a navy blue t-shirt. And I was like, oh dear fucking God.
- 15:07Oh my God. I think I got her sitting up. I don't
- 15:11remember. I know that I texted her and she didn't open the front door, which
- 15:15she can do from her phone, which told me she didn't have her phone with
- 15:17her. So I had no idea how she called my husband. And so
- 15:21then he brought me the key, 'cause I didn't even think to grab it, and
- 15:25I let myself in, and that's when I found her on the bathroom floor. She
- 15:28wasn't hurt, but she had slipped and she couldn't get back up, and then
- 15:31eventually she got so exhausted from trying to get up that she just
- 15:35basically laid down on the bathroom floor. And she said she'd been down there for
- 15:38a really long time. Nobody knows how long a long time is. I have no
- 15:41idea. So both my husband and I tried to get her up, and we were
- 15:45not able to. We could have Literally lifted her, but she's
- 15:49just in such a weird kind of body habitus that everything hurts her.
- 15:53And she like screamed when we tried to get her up cuz it was hurting
- 15:56her shoulder and whatever. And we finally got to the point where we're like, we
- 15:59have to call somebody to help. So 4 o'clock, 4:30 in the morning
- 16:03on a Sunday morning, I had to call 911
- 16:07and they got there very quickly. And I don't, maybe this is just an Orlando
- 16:11thing. I said this to someone today who insisted that this must just be a
- 16:14Either an Orlando or a Florida thing. But when we call
- 16:19for medical support via 911,
- 16:22so anything that affects like EMT
- 16:26paramedics, they send both the truck,
- 16:30the fire truck, and the ambulance, and they're
- 16:34both full. So anytime, like we were literally
- 16:37just calling cuz I needed somebody to help me lift her up off the floor.
- 16:41But they sent 8 people and they're all very nice. They all have different
- 16:45roles. They're all responsible for different things. I get that. And I guess they just
- 16:48wanna be prepared, but it is so many people.
- 16:53And so these guys come in, they were able to very
- 16:56quickly get her back up. They gave her some time. They checked her blood pressure
- 17:00to make sure that her blood pressure was high, but her blood pressure's always high.
- 17:03Also, she had just been lifted off the floor by several burly men, so that
- 17:07could make your blood pressure a little high. The people who came were great.
- 17:10She was fine. Anytime this happens, because
- 17:14she's geriatric, they do what's called a mental status
- 17:18exam where they ask certain questions that you have to answer
- 17:22so that they can make sure that you're oriented to all 4 planes.
- 17:27Time, place, person. I'm forgetting one anyway,
- 17:31but alert and oriented times 4 is what they're looking for. So. So they ask
- 17:34you where you are, they ask you what your name is, they ask a
- 17:38couple of other things. And then the last one they always ask, or the second
- 17:41to last one, is the one that they always give up on because every time
- 17:45they ask her who the president is, she says something along the lines of, that
- 17:49guy can go to hell. And then they go, okay, she's fine. She
- 17:52knows. And so I was giving all of her information to one of
- 17:56the paramedics and I hear them start doing the mental status exam. And
- 18:00I was like, he asked me something about her medications and I went,
- 18:04her medications are, hold on, she's about to yell. And then like clockwork, I
- 18:08hear her go, that guy can go to hell. And I was like, yeah, that's
- 18:11what I expected. And the guy goes, did they just ask her who the president
- 18:14is? And I said, yep. And he goes, yeah, we get that a lot. So
- 18:17anyway, they left her there because she's fine. They said, will you sign this form
- 18:20to say that you did not wanna be taken to the hospital? She said,
- 18:24absolutely. She got in bed. She promised me she would not get out of bed
- 18:27without notifying me so that I could come over if she needed help. And then
- 18:31she was able to get up and around on her own that day. And then
- 18:35the next night I said, I'm probably gonna come sleep at your house tonight because
- 18:40I don't want you getting up in the middle of the night by yourself. To
- 18:43which, this is so unlike my mother. My mother is usually like, you want to
- 18:46come spend time with me and dote over me and whatever?
- 18:50Absolutely. And she was like, no, you absolutely will not. You are going to sleep
- 18:54in your own bed. You do not need to come sleep here. I will be
- 18:56fine. And I was like, that might be a sign of some neurologic
- 19:00problem. Are you okay? Are you sure you're— this is the, this is what
- 19:04other parents do. This is not what you do. What is happening here? But I
- 19:07said, okay, then do not go to bed without your watch. 'Cause that was part
- 19:11of the thing. So when she fell, and this is part of like
- 19:15all of the things you just don't think about, when she fell, she
- 19:18didn't have her watch on. She hadn't been wearing it because she'd been in the
- 19:21hospital. And she has an Apple Watch that has done an excellent
- 19:25job of notifying us when there are problems before, but also her
- 19:28Hey Siri was not working. So the reason she ended up calling my husband
- 19:32instead of me is because she just kept screaming for Siri to
- 19:36call somebody. It finally listened when
- 19:40she said Kyle's name the 10th or 12th time.
- 19:44So it just wasn't being reliable, and that's
- 19:47the one that it happened to catch. So it's like these little things, like who
- 19:51would ever think to be concerned that Siri isn't working on your
- 19:55septuagenarian mom's phone? And then it's like
- 19:59the one time it's not working, we have an actual problem. And so
- 20:03there's stuff we just have to consider all the time that I never would've even
- 20:07thought to care about before. But she did do okay the next day.
- 20:12She did okay the next night. She made all the appointments she's supposed to make.
- 20:15She did all the things that she's supposed to do. She's not. Having issues cognitively.
- 20:19It's all physical. But it's this weird suspended place to
- 20:23be of, oh, that thing you were scared about that you
- 20:27told yourself over and over you were probably overreacting about? Oh, that happened.
- 20:31So now what do you do? I don't have space in my house to move
- 20:34her in here. I don't. We are bursting at the seams.
- 20:38I could move in with her, but I have kids.
- 20:43My kids deserve as much of me as my mom does, probably more.
- 20:47Actually, lots more. I do have this guy I'm married to who
- 20:50I want to see like occasionally, not that often. He'd be obnoxious. But
- 20:54like for the most part, I do enjoy having him around. And so just
- 20:58like moving out isn't an option. Moving out to take care of my mom is
- 21:02really not an option. But like the thing happened. The thing
- 21:06that I have been telling myself over and over is not going to happen and
- 21:09this is fine, it happened. And what do we do now? I'm
- 21:13genuinely not sure what we do now. Are there old people night nurses? I
- 21:17don't know. I think there actually are. But also, like,
- 21:21hiring somebody to be in your house all the time kind of sucks.
- 21:25It's terrifying. Like, she's given her passwords to
- 21:29Russian hackers before. I don't know. So there are so
- 21:32many things, so many decisions we have to make now that I did not anticipate
- 21:36having to make at this point in my life. That I did not think I
- 21:39would end up responsible for. And 3 or
- 21:434 days ago, I was worried about a thing that I had no proof was
- 21:46going to happen. And now I am worried about a thing that actually very
- 21:50much did happen. And that is so much
- 21:54worse. It's so much worse. And so
- 21:58am I just gonna have to bite the bullet and move in with her for
- 22:01a little while? So while we figure this out, I don't know. Are we gonna
- 22:04have to find a full-time person to live there? Can we find like a nursing
- 22:07student who needs a place to live who might
- 22:12wanna get paid to live there and help her out? Maybe. I don't know.
- 22:16But like, there are ways to solve these problems and
- 22:20none of them are good. Like my husband and I have talked for a
- 22:24long time about the fact that eventually we are going to have to get a
- 22:27house big enough for both my mom and his mom. We've known that
- 22:31since we got married. It's a conversation we have every couple
- 22:35of months. Are we getting to that point? And we started taking it seriously a
- 22:38year or two ago, but it's not like something we can do. We can't
- 22:41just build onto our house and end up with a house big enough.
- 22:45It's not gonna happen. We're either gonna have to buy a new house or build
- 22:48a new house that has a private space for one of them, a private space
- 22:52for the other one. And then we've always assumed that it would be
- 22:55like a separate unit where they would each have a separate space that's
- 22:59disconnected from the house, but that's not
- 23:03better than her living 2 blocks away. It's a 30-second commute
- 23:07rather than a 3-minute commute, but it's the same thing. Like, she's still not in
- 23:10the house. She's still by herself.
- 23:14Anyway, so yeah, that's where we are, and that's what we're
- 23:18doing and what we're trying to survive through. But it is a weird
- 23:21suspended place to be in where Sandwiched
- 23:25between our parents and our children, trying to do the best by
- 23:29everybody. And I just wanna go on the record to say raising
- 23:33parents is 1,000 times harder than raising children.
- 23:37If my kids get extra mouthy, I can literally just pick them up and move
- 23:41them. They are both very thin and very small
- 23:44comparatively. One of them's tall and thin, the other one is just
- 23:48thin. She has no tall in her body, but if she gets
- 23:51Completely off the rails or something bad happens, I can literally just
- 23:55pick them up regardless what the ramifications are to me
- 23:59and my body and move them. And at the end of
- 24:03the day, they are scared to do most things without me. These
- 24:06adults, these, these old people think that they are
- 24:10allowed to make decisions for themselves and that they have this like
- 24:14misguided perception that they are fully functional
- 24:18adults. Who can give their passwords away to strangers on the internet.
- 24:22And that is a different experience. So anybody who tells you
- 24:26that raising kids is the hardest thing you'll ever do has clearly not been a
- 24:29full-time caretaker for their sassy, irreverent parents who have
- 24:33all of these thoughts in their brains about what they
- 24:37should and shouldn't do with their lives and like what they should be
- 24:41allowed to do with their time and money and whatever. These
- 24:44kids don't have money. They can't do anything without me.
- 24:48These old people have money and they make bad decisions with it.
- 24:53Anyway, so that's where we are. And if you have been a caretaker,
- 24:57if you are a caretaker, if you've experienced any of this, I would love to
- 25:00hear your stories too, because I know this is far more common than I think
- 25:04we talk about. And yeah, the sandwich generation is
- 25:07not for the faint of heart. This is the wildest
- 25:11timeline yet, and I've had some pretty wild timelines. And now
- 25:15we'll go to Allison, who has
- 25:18this week's Small Talk. We have a question from Nada.
- 25:23I raised my rates up 40% last month and every single client said
- 25:26yes without blinking. Now I'm angry instead of
- 25:30excited. What do I do with that? You're angry
- 25:34instead of excited? I'm just trying to process
- 25:37through why that would be the case. Is it
- 25:41because you felt like you were undercharging before and you didn't realize it, and now
- 25:45you could have been making that the whole time? I guess that's a
- 25:48valid thing to feel, but if you didn't know that you could
- 25:52charge more, or you weren't in a situation where you had to
- 25:56charge more— everybody's financial situation has changed a ton in the
- 26:00last year, especially the last 6 months, but Definitely the last year.
- 26:04And so there's a world where the kind of
- 26:07intense need to raise your rates has become a thing more
- 26:11so in the last couple of months. Or maybe you
- 26:15changed your services. Maybe you added things that are of higher value that
- 26:19people need to pay more money for. I don't know, but you didn't do anything
- 26:23wrong and your clients certainly didn't do anything wrong if they
- 26:27paid what you charged them. And also, how awesome is it if every client
- 26:30you have was just on board for you
- 26:35charging a ton more for what you do. That means you're really good at what
- 26:38you do and you have people who think you're worth it. It sounds like maybe
- 26:41you're a little bit mad at your former self, and I understand
- 26:45that, but I don't think you need to be. You make the best decisions that
- 26:48you have available at the time, and sometimes those don't look
- 26:52like the decisions that you would have made later. And sometimes you find out that
- 26:55maybe that wasn't the best thing, but you didn't have the information to make a
- 26:58different one. That's fine. There is somebody who I really
- 27:02admire, Arlan Hamilton, and I was talking to her. She is the founder of a
- 27:05VC fund and she runs a, a bunch of entrepreneur groups that I've really enjoyed
- 27:09being part of. And I was talking to her a couple months ago 'cause I
- 27:12was in this place where I just like had to figure out, I had to
- 27:15figure out what to do next. I had to figure out where, what the right
- 27:18move for business was. I was getting more heavily into consulting. It was
- 27:22right around when we were selling the company. I wasn't getting the same kind of
- 27:26consulting work that I got before, and it wasn't the same magnitude. And I just
- 27:29kept saying, the last time I did consulting, I did this with 2023 and it
- 27:31was such a different world. It didn't work like this. This is different and I
- 27:34don't know if it's right. And finally, after like maybe the third time
- 27:38I said that, she said, why does 2023 matter? That was 3 years ago.
- 27:42Drop it. Stop worrying about 2023. What's in front of you in 2026?
- 27:46That's what matters. You can use that as a roadmap or as a guideline, but
- 27:50we can't make 2023 decisions in 2026. That's not gonna happen.
- 27:54Stop worrying about 2023. And that sounds like the same thing. If you were
- 27:59undercharging before because you didn't fully realize your worth, now you have,
- 28:03and I'm proud of you for that. And you did an amazing thing, and I'm
- 28:06so proud of you that all of your clients decided that they wanted to
- 28:09stick with you despite the fact that their bill is going to change substantially.
- 28:14Good work. Good work for doing good work. Good work for
- 28:17figuring out how much you should be charging. Good work for doing the hard thing
- 28:21and having the hard conversations about your rates changing. Good for you. You
- 28:25did all the things. You have nothing to be mad about. I'm proud of you.
- 28:33Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you. Me— like,
- 28:37I literally have to put cameras in my
- 28:40mom's house to check for feet. Like, that's right.
- 28:44Like, that's— this is bizarre. This is a weird timeline.