The Porcelain Sanctuary
The vibration of the phone against my thigh feels like a low-voltage shock, a tiny intrusion in the only sanctuary I have left: the closed lid of the toilet. I’m sitting here in the dark, the porcelain cold through my jeans, listening to the rhythmic, wet rattle of my husband’s breathing through the thin drywall of our 1953 bungalow. The screen glows with a notification from a well-meaning friend. It’s a link to a meditation app, accompanied by a chirpy text: ‘You’re doing so much, Riley. You need to remember to breathe! xoxo.’
I stare at the little icon of a cartoon lotus flower. I want to throw the phone into the hallway, but that would make a noise, and noise is the enemy. Noise triggers the waking, the questioning, the 43rd request of the day for a glass of water or a repositioning of the pillows. Instead, I just sit there. I started a diet at 4pm today-a desperate, ill-timed attempt to reclaim some shred of control over my own biology-and now, at 8:23pm, the hunger is a dull, rhythmic ache that matches the pulsing of my headache. It’s a specific kind of hunger, one that doesn’t want kale; it wants to consume the entire concept of responsibility and spit it out into the yard.
We have privatized a massive, systemic public health crisis and dumped it onto the sagging card tables of individual families, and then we have the audacity to sell them consumerist ‘solutions’ for the resulting exhaustion. If I hear one more person suggest a bubble bath as the antidote to the soul-crushing weight of 24-hour terminal care, I might actually lose my mind. A bubble bath is just a place where you sit in lukewarm water and think about the 13 loads of laundry waiting for you in the basement.
The Palate of Chalk: Riley B.’s Reality
My friend Riley B. knows this better than anyone. Riley is an ice cream flavor developer-one of those people whose entire professional existence is dedicated to the architecture of joy. She spends her days thinking about the specific gravity of marshmallow swirls and how to balance the bitterness of 73% dark chocolate with the brightness of sea salt. But for the last 513 days, Riley’s palate has been dead. She’s been caring for her mother, who has advanced dementia, and she told me last week that everything she tastes now just reminds her of chalk.
The Daily Math of Caregiving
Riley B. is the personification of ‘doing it all.’ She tracks 23 different medications on a spreadsheet that looks like a NASA flight plan. She manages the 3 recurring weekly appointments with specialists. She cleans the accidents. She endures the accusations-the heartbreaking moments where her mother looks at her and asks when the ‘mean lady’ is going to leave her house.
People tell her to go to yoga. They tell her she needs a ‘mental health day.’ But who watches the mother for those 3 hours? Who ensures she doesn’t try to cook a shoe on the stove while Riley is in downward dog? The advice isn’t just useless; it’s an insult. It suggests that Riley’s burnout is a personal failing of her own resilience rather than a mathematical certainty of her circumstances.
Infrastructure, Not Aromatherapy
Weighted blankets, apps, candles.
Against 24 Available Hours.
I realized the depth of this scam when I looked at my bank statement. I had spent $173 on ‘relief’ items in a single month: weighted blankets, aromatherapy diffusers, a subscription to a sleep-sound app that sounds more like static than rain. None of it worked. You cannot meditate your way out of a situation where you are the only person standing between another human and the abyss. What I needed wasn’t a different mindset; I needed a different reality. I needed another pair of hands.
Respite care is often framed as a luxury, something for the wealthy or the desperate. But it is actually the only thing that works. It is the only ‘self-care’ that isn’t a lie.
– Structural Necessity
This is where the conversation has to shift. We have to stop talking about ‘stress management’ and start talking about structural replacement. When Riley B. finally broke down and hired professional support through Caring Shepherd, she didn’t do it because she wanted to go to a spa. She did it because she wanted to remember what it felt like to be a daughter instead of a medical technician. She did it because she realized that her mother deserved a caregiver who wasn’t a hollowed-out husk of a person.
The Guilt of Having Limits
There is a specific kind of guilt that comes with admitting you can’t do it alone. It’s a heavy, oily feeling that coats your throat. I felt it when I first considered bringing in outside help. I felt like I was failing a test I never signed up to take. But the truth is that the test is rigged. No one is meant to provide 24/7 clinical and emotional labor for months or years on end without a break. Even the most sophisticated machines require maintenance. Why do we expect the human heart to be more durable than industrial steel?
The Power of Removal
Riley B. told me that the first day a professional caregiver arrived, she didn’t go to the movies. She went to her car, drove three blocks away so she wouldn’t be tempted to run back inside if she heard a cough, and she slept in the driver’s seat for 143 minutes. When she woke up, she could smell the vanilla on her skin again. It wasn’t the sleep that saved her; it was the removal of the burden.
We need to stop asking caregivers how they are ‘practicing wellness.’ It’s a shallow question that demands a performative answer. Instead, we should be asking, ‘Who is coming to relieve you?’ We need to treat the lack of respite as the emergency it is. If a person was forced to work 103 hours a week in a factory without a break, we would call it a human rights violation. When we do it in our own living rooms, we call it ‘devotion.’
Respite is not an indulgence; it is the floor of the building.
– A Mathematical Certainty
Admitting the Limit
I’m still on the toilet lid. My stomach growls again, a reminder of the 4pm diet that was doomed from the start. I realize now that I don’t need to lose five pounds; I need to lose the weight of the world. I look at the meditation app notification again. I don’t swipe it away. I just let it sit there, a tiny digital monument to how little the world understands about the reality of this room.
Because a bubble bath might make you smell like lavender, but it doesn’t give you your life back. Only help does that. And as I finally stand up, my knees cracking in the silence of the 8:43pm gloom, I realize that the most ‘self-care’ thing I can do is admit that I am absolutely, unequivocally done doing too much, and I’m not going to do it alone anymore.