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Last time, we talked about saying no. We talked about the guilt that comes with it, the weight of that tiny two-letter word, and why learning to set boundaries isn’t a failure of love — it’s one of the most important things a caregiver can do for themselves and for the person they’re caring for.
Today I want to talk about the other side of that coin. Because here’s what I’ve noticed after 30 years of publishing Today’s Caregiver, hosting hundreds of Fearless Caregiver Conferences, and sitting across the table from exhausted families in my work as an Elder Mediator:
Caregivers are also afraid to say yes.
Not yes to more responsibilities. Not yes to another task on an already impossible list. I mean yes to themselves. Yes to rest. Yes to help. Yes to joy. Yes to the things that used to make them feel like a whole person before caregiving consumed everything.
If saying no is about protecting your limits, then saying yes — the right kind of yes — is about protecting your life. And I’ve come to believe that for many caregivers, that second yes is actually the harder one.
The Yes We Stopped Asking For
I’ve talked to thousands of caregivers over the years — at conferences, in workshops, in the quiet moments after a presentation when someone hangs back because they have something they couldn’t say out loud in a room full of people. And one of the things I hear most often, once the defenses come down, is some version of this: “I don’t even know what I want anymore. I’ve forgotten how to want things for myself.”
That sentence breaks my heart every time I hear it. Because it tells me something important: this person has been saying yes to everyone else for so long that they’ve stopped being a person who gets to have yes said to them.
This is what prolonged caregiving without self-care does. It doesn’t just exhaust the body. It quietly erases the self. Slowly, without fanfare, the things that used to bring pleasure — a morning walk, a phone call with a friend, a book read for no reason at all, a meal eaten without rushing — become luxuries that feel shameful to want...And that is not caregiving. That is disappearing.
Why Saying Yes to Yourself Feels Selfish (And Why It Isn’t)
Here’s a question I often ask at our Fearless Caregiver Conferences, and I want to ask it to you now: If the person you are caring for — your mother, your father, your spouse, your child — knew the full cost of what you were giving up for them…Would they want that? Would they want you to have stopped living your own life entirely in service of theirs?
In nearly every mediation session I’ve been part of, when the care recipient is able to participate in that conversation, their answer is an immediate and heartfelt no. “I don’t want you to sacrifice everything for me.” “I want you to be happy too.” “Please take care of yourself.”
The guilt that keeps caregivers from saying yes to their own needs is very often guilt the person they’re caring for wouldn’t ask them to carry. Saying yes to yourself is not selfish. It is not indulgent. It is not a sign that you love your person any less. It is the thing that keeps you in this for the long haul. It is the fuel that makes sustained, loving care possible.
The Yeses Worth Saying
Let me be specific, because I think caregivers sometimes need permission to get concrete about what taking care of themselves actually looks like.
- Yes to help. When someone offers to sit with your loved one for a few hours, say yes. When a neighbor asks what they can bring, tell them. When your doctor suggests respite care, explore it. Accepting help is not weakness. It is wisdom, and it is the thing that keeps you standing.
- Yes to rest. Sleep is not a luxury. It is a medical necessity. Sleep deprivation in caregivers is linked to higher rates of depression, physical illness, and cognitive decline. When you have an hour, rest. When you have a night, actually sleep. Your body is not a machine, and even machines need to be switched off to function properly.
- Yes to joy. This one is the hardest for caregivers to accept, and it’s the one I feel most strongly about. You are allowed to laugh. You are allowed to enjoy a meal, a sunset, a song, a conversation. Joy is not a betrayal of the person you are caring for. It is the proof that life is still happening, that you are still in it, that there is still something worth protecting in yourself.
- Yes to connection. Isolation is one of the great silent threats to caregiver health. At our Fearless Caregiver Conferences, I’ve watched people walk in looking hollow and walk out looking human again — not because anything in their caregiving situation changed, but because they spent a day with other people who understood. Say yes to caregiver support groups. Say yes to the phone call you’ve been putting off. Say yes to the conference, the workshop, the community that reminds you that you are not alone.
- Yes to your own health. This is the one caregivers most consistently neglect. According to national caregiving data, nearly one in four family caregivers reports neglecting their own medical care because of caregiving demands. Make the appointment. Fill the prescription. See your own doctor. The person you are caring for needs you to be healthy enough to still be there.
A Lesson From the Mediation Table
In my work as an Elder Mediator, I’ve sat with families at some of their hardest moments — when caregiving has strained relationships to the breaking point, when resentments have built over years, when someone who has been giving everything finally has nothing left to give.
Almost without exception, when I trace back the roots of a family caregiving crisis, I find the same pattern: one person said yes to everything and no to themselves, for far too long, without asking for help, without taking breaks, without acknowledging that they were drowning. And then one day they couldn’t do it anymore, and the whole system collapsed.
The families who navigate caregiving most successfully — the ones who manage to maintain relationships, stay functional, and provide real, quality care for years — are almost always the ones where the primary caregiver is saying yes to their own needs alongside yes to their loved one’s. Saying yes to yourself is not a detour from the caregiving path. It is what keeps you on it.
Some Yeses Worth Practicing
Just as we offered some sentences for saying no, let me offer some for saying yes — because sometimes the words are the hardest part.
- “Yes, I’ll let you help me.”
- “Yes, I’m going to take this afternoon for myself.”
- “Yes, I’m going to call a friend, go for a walk, and not feel guilty about it.”
- “Yes, I deserve care too.”
- “Yes, I’m going to make my own doctor’s appointment today.”
- “Yes, I am allowed to still have a life.”
If those sentences feel foreign or uncomfortable, that’s important information. It means you’ve been running on empty long enough that refueling feels unfamiliar. That’s not a character flaw. It’s a signal worth listening to.
The Yes That Makes All the Other Yeses Possible
I started this piece talking about saying no — and I want to end by bringing the two together, because they are really the same conversation. When you protect your limits, you protect your capacity. And when you protect your capacity, you protect your ability to keep saying yes to the person who needs you most.
The caregiver who says yes to rest can be more present tomorrow. The caregiver who says yes to help can carry this for longer. The caregiver who says yes to joy — who lets themselves laugh and breathe and feel alive — brings something irreplaceable to the room: not just their hands and their time, but their whole self. Their warmth. Their spirit. The parts of them that their loved one fell in love with, or looked up to, or has always counted on.
That is not a small thing. That is everything.
So the next time someone offers to help, say yes. The next time your body is begging for rest, say yes. The next time something small and beautiful crosses your path — a song, a meal, a conversation, a moment of stillness — and you feel the familiar guilt start to whisper that you shouldn’t enjoy it because there is so much still left to do…
Say yes anyway. You have earned it. And the person you love needs you to mean it.
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