Run, Walk, Crawl: Caught Between Generations

Imagine running a marathon that you didn’t intend to compete in,
let alone train for, and the finish line is nowhere in sight.

Such is the situation of family caregivers, many of them women, who suddenly find themselves trying to simultaneously hold down a job, look after family, and care for elderly parents. Struggling to put on a good face to hide their stress, they compartmentalize their roles and push through their days—treading most carefully when navigating the multi-generational workplace.

 

Written in a spirit of perseverance and knowing “this too shall pass,” Run, Walk, Crawl: Caught Between Generations, describes Sarabeth Persiani’s “marathon”—her deeply personal story about figuring out how to meet the daily demands of work and family while taking on increasing responsibility for her aging father. By turns funny, insightful, and poignant, this memoir chronicles her successes, her failures, and, ultimately, her goodbye to a hard-earned, respected professional persona on the way to miraculously finding her better self.

Run, Walk, Crawl: A Caregiver Caught Between Generations

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Why I wrote the book:

They say it does not help anyone to stay stuck in your failure. That’s what my story is about — getting back up. My failure was not that I didn’t care enough, or do enough. It was that I went head-down, nose to the grindstone with every aspect of my life. I believed that I could, by sheer force of will, with my checklist in hand, make everything work out okay. As a self-proclaimed, card-carrying member of the Superwoman Club, it did not occur to me, even when I was physically run-down and anemic, that I could not do it all. If only I had a nickel for every time I’ve asked myself in the aftermath:

 

Why was I so ill-prepared?

 

I initially started writing for me. I needed the catharsis of venting in order to make sense of what I had gone through. Waking in the middle of the night, I would replay a cacophony of memories, mainly family caregiving and work-related missteps. I found solace jotting down random notes and questions that ended with me pondering how I could have managed it all differently… better.

 

Then it became about others who might be caught in the same situation. Women, whether working full-time, part-time, or in the home, (and some men) who take care of children and parents at the same time.

 

It’s also for those who don’t yet have caregiving responsibility, but will, before too long. Medical advances that allow us to live longer, combined with economic factors and couples waiting longer to have children, all increase the chance that at some point in your life, you could be caring for your children and your elderly parents simultaneously.

My time as a family caregiver put me on a path to change course and find purpose. My experience being part of the Sandwich Generation, (a.k.a- inter-generational caregiver) changed my life. By the grace of God — for the better!

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