What is your Caregiver SuperPower?

INTRO - J Smiles:  0:00  
It was a cool morning, I was out for a walk. The sun was still sleeping. Ha! Yawl know I'm lying. Ain't nobody walking and the sun asleep. So it was the afternoon, cars were whisking by honking horns. "Excuse me, sir, slow down. I'm a pedestrian. Please don't hurt me." As I was streaming music, a commercial bombarded my playlist talking about, "Don't you want to take a test for your love languages?" Really? Oh my God. Then I started thinking, there's a test for everything. Oh, get your love language, then you can figure out how you present to other people. That's how people should show you love and you could find out how to love on other people. All the tests I've taken in my life; aptitude test when I was in middle school, personality tests when I was in corporate America, INTP, J, Do you know what that means? Independent, independent. So I'm an introvert that judges people. And I have fine motor skills and I know calculus. So then I'm going to be good with a backhoe. Oh, okay. DNA test. I'm 2% Dutch and 12% Nigerian. Oh, so I'm gonna be good at soccer and yellow rice. Where is that test that says, "Alright, when you in the middle of your life, and then your mama start losing her mind and she has that Alzheimer's. This is gonna help you be a superhero caregiver." That's what I need!

INTRO - J Smiles:  1:59  
Parenting Up, Caregiving Adventures with comedian J Smiles is the intense journey of unexpectedly being fully responsible for the well being of my mama. For almost a decade, I've been chipping away at the unknown, advocating for her, and pushing Alzheimer's awareness on anyone and anything with a heartbeat. Spoiler Alert- I started comedy because this stuff is so heavy. Be ready for the jokes! Caregiver newbies, OGs, village members trying to just prop up a caregiver, you are in the right place. 

INTRO - Zetty:  2:31  
Hi, this is Zetty. I hope you enjoy my daughter's podcast. Is that okay?

INTRO - J Smiles:  2:41  
Today's episode -  What's your caregiver superpower?

INTRO - J Smiles:  2:45  
Our global community is expanding. I want your feedback. Let's snuggle up. Send a Purple Heart, the little emoji, to plus 1-404-737-1449. Parenting Up family, I don't know why I was so disgusted that day on my walk. It irritated me so much to hear that commercial talking about the love languages test. The crazy thing is, I took the love languages test 3 million years ago. My love language is time. That's how you get me and let me know that you care. I was like, "J, why are you so freakin irritated?" Best I can tell, it's because what damn good is it for me to have this abundance of awareness around my love languages, my aptitude, my ancestry, if I can't use any of it, because I am slammed with my caregiving responsibilities. Snap your fingers and twist your head and holler if you hear me over there, wherever you're listening. How many of you have done Myers Briggs? Or the love languages? Or ancestry.com, 23 and me, anything like that in search of a better understanding of who you are, how you show up in the world, how other people inhale you, embrace you; all trying to be a better you. Operate more effectively, more efficiently. Be happier, less stressed, more productive. Every bit of that stuff is some version of self help. Maybe you're trying to make more money, maybe you're trying to work less. But what you're not trying to do is be stagnant and stressed. We know how it goes when you can't find what you want. When something that you really need is absent, you invent it, you make it yourself. So that's what we're going to do. The Parenting Up global family is big, and we push weight, okay? We're about to create our own caregiver personality superhero list, boom.

INTRO - J Smiles:  6:03  
Lego, we are starting with ten. And I appreciate your feedback. We can tweak it, we're inventing it. All inventions are works in progress as the market and participants tell the inventor, "That's right. That's not right." When coke first hit the market, it had to be tweaked a little bit, the same with the automobile. Let's get in it. I want you all to think about these and take ownership of this caregiver personality superhero list. Because that's what you are. You wear a big ol CG Cape every day, whether you're with your LO or not. I want you to feel empowered, and feel invincible cause you're doing something that without it, your LO couldn't survive. And while you may have every trait that I'm about to list, there is one that is your ace in the hole card for anybody who plays card games, or it is your secret weapon that you know you really shine and you feel good about it. And you know you can't be knocked off your pedestal if you pull this one out your back pocket. For those of you who are fans of Black Panther, it's your Vibranium. You fans of Superman, it's your ability to fly. Whatever it is, it's that power that makes you undefeated when you're caring for your LO. That's where I want you to tap into, cause that's the thing that makes you superhuman in your ability to care. These are not ranked in any particular order of importance. I repeat, they are not in any order of importance. Number one, compassion. Compassion is defined as the ability to translate empathy, that feeling into action, a desire to alleviate another's suffering. OMG! Yo, if that is your superpower, I would like you to come and visit Zetty and J.G. immediately. Compassion ain't sympathy, and it's not pity. You have this ability to feel so deeply for your LO and to translate their suffering almost that you can put yourself in their position and in their shoes and you want to remove their suffering in that moment. No, you can't erase the dementia or the Alzheimer's or whatever their disease happens to be. But any given moment, any given day, you can just jump into motion to remove the suffering. So if they're dehydrated, you come up with all kinds of ideas around mitigating that suffering. Maybe it's ice chips, maybe it's Vaseline, Chapstick. I don't know. Compassion is not really my superpower. So for those of you where it is, I can't wait to see in the comments or send me a text. I can remember a nurse once when Zetty was in the hospital, just speaking so softly, almost like what I think a saint or an angel would speak like if I ever met a saint or an angel. It was the way she communicated verbally with Zetty. And the way she was brushing her hair and talking, it was so soft and so loving that the compassion poured out that. That's the best I can say it. Again, that is not my lane. Number two, optimism. Honk your horn if you driving and you are that crazy, eternal optimist. Optimism is defined as: you expect a favorable or positive outcome. So your LO falls, and you're like, "Oh, no, we bout to get up off this floor. Yeah, I know, nobody else is here. But we're gonna get on all fours, we're gonna roll over, I'm gonna put a sheet up under you, or I'm gonna get a spare tire or a crowbar, we gone figure this out." And you really believe it. You believe you're gonna get your LO that weighs twice as much as you do off the floor by yourself. Who knows if you do it or not, but you believe it.

INTRO - J Smiles:  11:47  
You're like a kid at Christmas time. You believe you're gonna get all the toys every year. Even though last year, you ain't get nothing on your list. Next year, you write the list just as hard. If you leave cookies and milk for Santa just the same. I love it. I absolutely love it. And by the way, I did create this list by utilizing resources from the internet webs. I didn't pull it out of my booty. I used the compilation of what various expert sites thought were very positive strengths and skill sets within caregivers. And then I spit shined it on what J Smiles has learned and witnessed to be really really useful in top notch five star caregiving balanced lives. Number three, confidence. Confidence is defined as: sure of one's self and one's abilities. I don't know if this is my top one yet, but I'm gonna tell you, it has to be under consideration. I walk into the hospital, any doctor's office, and every time Zetty sees me, I walk like I know what the hell I'm doing and what I'm talking about. Fake it till you make it. If you are that caregiver, slap your thighs right now. Because that has to get you past a whole lot of bumps in the road. Right? I mean, your LO has dementia, they don't know what the hell is going on. And if you can talk and act and walk and breathe and gesture with confidence, they'll just follow along. And so will other family members, friends, relatives, on other side. Yawl know, okay, that was wrong. But you know sometimes the in laws, some people don't really call them family members, they are relatives and family members are your bloodline. That's so wrong. Anyway, that was a little J Smiles slip up. That's so funny, but it's true. So that confidence can get you a long, long, long way because it helps you lie. That confidence can help you lie and that lie of love. I'm laughing because oh my goodness, I can remember so many instances where impromptu lying, comedy improv, got me through with Zetty. Next, number four, patience. Where y'all at? The people with the patience. Now, I'm gonna say this. If you are patient anyway, I don't know if that can count as a caregiver superpower. If you've been patient all your life with anybody, with your pets, with your teachers, in traffic, then I want you to wait till we finish the list before you throw your hand all up. While you're driving down the street, "That's me, that's me, J Smiles." You know what I'm saying? Like I want... I want this to be a list where you're saying, "Wow, caregiving made this be a superhero power." That's what we're trying to create here with the Parenting Up family. Where this is a talent, or a trait that rose to the top of your humanity through your process of becoming a caregiver, and learning how to love on and snuggle up to your LO. Listen to the definition of patience: capacity to tolerate or accept delay.

INTRO - J Smiles:  16:18  
Whew! Ohhhh weeee! Capacity, who has the capacity for that? Also suffering without getting angry? Now I ain't gone lie. I might have the first version of patience capacity to tolerate or accept delay. I probably got a little bit of that on most days. But suffering without getting angry. God ain't through with me yet. The universe is still working on me, and I'm telling you, the universe has put me on the back burner with that one. And the universe is trying to stop tsunamis... that one ain't really... it's still on my list. I can't take that one off. Number five. I didn't even plan this. Yawl know five is my favorite number. Flexibility. I am good at this. But I'm not claiming this to be my superpower as a caregiver. But it's high, I'm really good at this. Bending easily without breaking. Oh. I mean, as a caregiver, we all are better at this than the average knife in the drawer. We have to be by definition. I mean, if you've been a caregiver for more than a week, it comes with the territory, doesn't it? Whew, gee whiz. Even if you have an attitude about it. When plans don't go according to schedule, a caregiver that's going to help you doesn't show up, the facility where your LO is, they don't quite have enough adult diapers. So you got to run by there and drop some more off, or they forgot that your LO is not supposed to have salt so now your LO's blood pressure is up and now you got to take your LO to the emergency room. Things happen at the drop of a dime that really arise to an emergency and you got to do something. Before your LO had dementia, you didn't have so many critical issues popping off every Tuesday. Like what it's just Tuesday, aren't we supposed to be having tacos? I hate Taco Tuesday, but it's an alliteration. It's easy to say. Maybe we gone say, um, Tequila Tuesday. Ain't it's supposed to be Tequila Tuesdays? That's better. You know what, maybe we should institute that. Tequila Tuesdays for all caregivers. Okay, after your LO is safe and secure. Look at that, another alliteration. I'm boi, I'm killing it. Next, the ability to laugh. This is number six. Laugh all the time. Laugh while you're crying. Laugh while your LO is cussing you out. Laugh while your LO is in surgery, while they're asleep. Maybe while another family member is cussing you out. While you're happy. While you're sad. Laugh while you're cleaning up feces out of the middle of the kitchen floor. Just the ability to laugh at what otherwise would be an extraordinarily sad and stressful set of circumstances. That's what caregivers can do. I sincerely believe that's how my comedy career was born. It was sad. Being a caregiver was very sad and stressful. And I was like, this is not gone last. What is this? "What is this? Harpo, who that woman?" I didn't understand my mom, I couldn't really recognize her. Hell, I couldn't recognize me. Ahahaha! Look how quick that laugh came. The laughing does come a bit easier, in my opinion, when you stop taking things personally. When you really remember that your LO is sick, that he or she has a disease. They didn't ask for it. They don't want it. Their actions and activities, their words or lack thereof, are completely outside of their control. And it may piss you off. It may hurt your feelings. But they don't know what they're doing. And so like, dammit, they got the best of me. Shit. That's funny. Once again, Alzheimer's got the best of both of us. Cause my LO's brain is crumbling second by second. And I got emotional, lost my cool. Um um um, ain't that funny. I mean, you gotta laugh at it. Because you as the healthy brained person, you know better. But you know, you get caught up. "I can't believe that you won't get up and get dressed. You know, I gotta go to work, Mama. If you don't hurry up and get up and get dressed, so I can take you to adult daycare. I'm gonna be late for work. Why are you pussyfooting around?" That might be an exchange you've had with your LO, something similar. They don't understand where adult daycare is even if they understood yesterday. Your mama doesn't understand what you're going to be late for work means. Your mom doesn't understand what the hell you're going to work means. I know, it's crazy, right? Isn't that crazy? That a sentence that simple can elude your mother's comprehension?

INTRO - J Smiles:  23:10  
Yeah, it's true. Laugh to keep from crying belongs to us. It's our phrase. Siete, number seven. Communication. The ability to communicate effectively with your LO. Muah! Chef's kiss if you can do that. It has nothing to do with having a good command of a language. English, Russian, Swahili, Costa, Spanish, French, doesn't matter. You could be great with that. But can you communicate well with your LO? Now communication is defined as: the act or process of exchanging information through speaking, writing, or gestures, facial expressions, body language, and that's where caregiving can really shine. Right? The gestures and the body language. The words,  we can't know which words are sinking in. But if you tap your LO's right hand and grab it and put it on the spoon, you have a higher statistical probability that your LO will then wrap his or her fingers around the spoon. That has nothing to do with them putting the spoon into the soup or mashed potatoes and step three putting that in the mouth. And then step four, chewing and step five, swallowing. Less, J Smiles, you're going down a slippery slope. But gestures, charades, all of that. That's communication. Who out there feels like they are bananas with how they communicate with their LO? Some of your family members or friends may not come around for this very reason. They are trying to use words. They haven't learned how to use gestures or body language to communicate with your LO, then they get scared. They don't know what to do. So they're so freakin uncomfortable, they just stop coming around. But not you. You have learned a new language. You have learned the language of Alzheimer's. Hell yea! Okay, we're getting toward the end now. Otto, that's Italian for eight. Organization. Now, this is another one. If you were super organized in your previous life, your B.A.L.Z. BALZ, before Alzheimer's. Before my LO has Alzheimer's. I... You at you can't just jump all over here saying, "Aaaah, that's my superpower." No, it ain't. Sit down, clown. Organization, the definition: arranged into a structured whole, orderly. If you have figured out a way to create organization around your LO's being. Around his or her life, and that is the superpower by which you command a greater sense of authority, control, love processing effectiveness, and how everything flows for your LO. Bay Bay, kudos to you. I mean, finger snaps, hand claps, tap dancing, backflips. Cause that is hard. There are so many moving pieces to our LO's lives. You got medicine and food, equipment. I mean, just keeping up with the toileting is a ton of stuff. Doctor's appointments. Oh my goodness. Oy vey. But if you got that down to a fine science. Listen, I hope you are giving yourself enough credit that the IRS doesn't make you pay taxes. You hear what I'm saying? That is a bonus right there. Because that means others who come around to help, strangers, church members, the little girl across the street, if you got that stuff organized, where the I's are dotted, the T's are crossed and the Zeds got the little line in the middle. Everybody knows Zed is really a Z and not a two. Bay Bay, yes, please. You running that thing like the army. Like an Amazon delivery team. What? Let's go. Nine. Neener, neener, number nine. Resilience. Elasticity. That's how it's defined. Really as elasticity, the conceptual essence behind elasticity: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. 

INTRO - J Smiles:  29:35  
But get this, I didn't know this until very recently, like recently doing research to decide what was going to be the big ten. Experts have agreed upon four different types of resilience for us as human individuals, not looking at resilience in turn terms of organizational entities. Physical, emotional, mental, and social. I said, "Woooooah." You could have phenomenal resilience physically, but suck at being emotionally resilient. Okay? Now that's another whole podcast episode; I'm not getting into all four. But think about that. I am clear that my physical and mental resilience are way higher than my emotional resilience. When Zetty was initially diagnosed, and everything started falling apart with my family, I was out there in Californ I A, getting it done. I didn't need sleep, I didn't need food, I didn't need water. It was about identifying what was happening with my mom and saving her life. I could give two flying you know what's, starts with an F and ends with a K, there are two letters in between, about anything or anybody else. But emotionally, when that period was over, I was a wreck. I was an absolute wreck. It took forever. It took years and 1000s of dollars of therapy. Oh my God. Oh my God. Like, you know, when you're playing with a Slinky, those of you who remember Slinkys. They're like big ol' springs. Like if you could imagine a spring that's about three inches in diameter, and you could sit it on a step, and you tip it over, and it would just, using its own weight and gravity, walk down the steps. But if you did it too many times, and you would stretch the slinky out, it would lose its elasticity, and then it wouldn't work anymore, and it would just droop down one step, and that would be the end. It was almost like, hold your ears if your kid is around, like a droopy penis. You're like, "That's not going again." There's no more rounds happening out of that guy. But that's me! Like, my slinky can go down 100 flights of stairs on its own, physically and mentally. But emotionally, it has like one flight. If I'm hurt, ain't no resilience. Un un, and the caboose. Dieci, number ten. Problem solving. Clap it up. Everybody has some of this for sure as a caregiver. The process of finding solutions to complex issues. Okay. I want to highlight that: to complex issues. Trying to find where your keys are. That's not problem solving. Looking for a stick of gum at the bottom of your purse. That's not problem solving. The life of caregivers, whew, filled with problem solving. Fraught with anxiety and fright. But is that your superpower? Do you knock problem solving out of the park? Do you feel like, "Hey, throw it at me, I don't care. Mama might be sundowning, she might be throwing up and having diarrhea. No worries. I'm gonna figure it all out." I don't care how complicated and complex it seems. That's where I shine. The tougher the issues, the more issues that you throw at me once pertaining to my LO, the better I rise to the occasion. Is that you?

INTRO - J Smiles:  34:57  
Parenting Up family, I bet you have grown more as a human being because of your journey as a family caregiver. I hope that this episode has triggered some fond memories of ways your personality has expanded and extended into areas where you didn't know you could grow. I don't know where your superpower is, but I can't wait for you to text me or email me and let the whole Parenting Up community know about it. Everything about being a caregiver doesn't suck. A boatload of it does, but not everything. To be fair, I'm going to share which of the ten really resonated with me as a J Smiles superpower. My top three are patience, communication, and problem solving. I'm holding myself to the same test I asked you to use. I'm really sticking to which of these attributes really lit up as a strength since I became a caregiver. I'm not allowing myself to dovetail and piggyback a whole bunch on something that has always been, "Oh, yeah, let J do that because she'll kill it." And I can tell you right now, patience has never been my thing. My capacity to just wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait when he comes to my mom, in a hospital, in a doctor's office, if she's sitting on the toilet, if she's in the shower, waiting for her to swallow water, it's amazing. I can't believe it. I will sit there and be like, "Oh my God. She's been sitting on a toilet for 37 minutes, and I'm just sitting on the floor watching her. And I don't want to shoot myself in the head." There are times when I just start choking like, "Man, this is the universe's divine grace because I cannot believe that this amount of grace has been bestowed upon me." Period. Because not only do I have it in that moment, I don't have that kind of patience anywhere else. Now my patience has grown across the board. But it ain't that deep and heavy. Anywhere but with my mama. I absolutely speak Alzheimer's. My ability to come up with some version of how do I say this in a way that Zetty is going to understand. It's crazy. I know that the Holy Spirit has given me something to communicate with my mother. Many times it's not words. It's some game pantomime. See Spot Run, pointing at my ear, pointing at her ear, sounds like blah blah blah. But I've also just really been observing her and then if I'm noticing, Oh she took her right shoe off that probably means her foot is hurting so then if that foot is hurting then the other foot isn't so if I'm trying to get her to put her sock on to see it the sock fits, I should try the sock on the foot that is not hurting because when she says, "Un un." And, "Ouch.", she is not going to really be saying ouch because she's in pain because this foot doesn't hurt. Hopefully you all followed that. Much of my ability to communicate with Zetty has come through observing her. Noticing what her words really mean. If she says, "Ouch.", it doesn't mean she's in pain. It might mean that she doesn't like something which is very different than she's in pain. I also have recognized that "No." doesn't mean no anymore for her. It actually just means, "Hold on a minute." For Zetty, when she really doesn't want it, she shakes her head left to right, saying, "No." And then she moves her entire head and her shoulders away from you. But that took observation. And then I told other caregivers and friends who would come over and sit with Zetty, like, "Hey, you got to watch her. Don't listen to her words, watch her body." But that's how I communicate Zetty Alzheimer's. So I can't even say that I speak Alzheimer's. I probably should say, I speak new Zetty, Newsy. I speak Newsy. 

INTRO - J Smiles:  40:32  
The wait is over. The J Smiles caregiver superpower is... problem solving. Yep. I mean, I used to do an itty bitty itty bitty itty bitty amount of it. But it became intergalactic. I mean, aliens can come down, the Milky Way could implode. But when it comes to Zetty, if something is going down with her health, from the moment she started urinating on herself making that sandwich in the kitchen while watching TV. Bay Bay, you don't want none of this. You don't want none of J.G. if Zetty's health is involved. Crazy thing is, if anything else is going on in my life, it could be simple. It could be medium, it could be complex, it might all fall apart. Y'all don't want to see my bathroom, my closet. Omg. The pantry; it's all a mess. Like right now, as I record this podcast, there are areas of my life that wouldn't take me more than an hour to rectify. The inbox in my junk mail. Now listen, I realize it's junk mail, but still, dang gone. Even the junk mail needs to be scrubbed every so often, right? Yawl, I just assumed cancel that whole junk mail and start another one. But if Zetty's health is involved, problem solving, Ph.D. iz, IZ, me. Un hun. And I didn't really give myself credit for it. Until other people started to call me and say, "J, will you help me? My mom is sick." The mom didn't even have Alzheimer's or dementia. Maybe the mom needed a hip replacement. Or maybe there was some form of cancer. And the idea was, "J, you're such a good health advocate, will you just come get involved?" I was like, "What? Really? You want me to?" I was like, "I don't know nothing about hip replacement. I'm don't know nothing about lung cancer." They were like, "Girl, you ain't gotta know. It's just the way you do that thing you do." But unfortunately for them, it's a caregiver superpower. I can't turn it off for anybody but Zetty. That's what I'm saying, yawl. When you really click in to what your caregiver superpower is, the way we're defining it here on Parenting Up, it's not just a skill set that you're great at all the time in all situations with all people. It is something that is... it's like caregiver Olympics for your LO. For reasons you can't explain, the gun goes off, it's the 100 meter dash and you beat everybody in the world. You're like, "Shit! I didn't even know I was that fast." But it had something to do with your LO. CG superpower. CGS. You know like CSI, CGS. Dun dun dun dunnn. 

INTRO - J Smiles:  44:43  
There you have it, our very own caregiver superpower list. I can't wait for you all to text me and give feedback on what your special superpower trait is. And, hell yea, if you all think that this list is crap, and yawl want to add or subtract something, let me know. I do want to cap the number at ten. We can plug and play other traits. It's a democracy not a dictatorship. It does need to be a critical mass though. Aight, until the next episode. You know what's next.

THE SNUGGLE UP:  45:25  
Snuggle up. Number one, what's that one thing that you believe you're better at doing or experiencing with your LO than anyone else in the world? It may be the way you hug them or hold their hand, put their socks on, or lotion their feet. Feed them, read their prayers. Who knows? But it's that thing where if you're in the room with your LO, somebody else tries to do it, you say, "Ah, no, that's okay. I got it." That's that thing where it nudges you into your place of your superpowerness because you're better at it than anybody else. Number two, if there are things that you invented in order for your LO's like to work more smoothly, give yourself credit. I don't care if you only rearranged the counter in their bathroom. Well, if that means that the facility nurses can keep up with your LO's toothbrush and dentures better, hell yeah, pat yourself on the back. Or if your LO still lives alone, and now they know where all their medicine happens to be in the kitchen because of the way you arranged the pill minder and the Froot Loops. Hell yeah, give yourself credit. Absolutely. Number three, you're not cocky, you're a caregiver. That's your hashtag. I'm not cocky, I'm a caregiver. It takes guts, kahunas, and a lot of nerve to accept the responsibility of being a caregiver and to believe that you can actually do it. So pop that collar, drink that Coca Cola, drink that champagne, have that cigar, have a sip of that water, Chardonnay, whatever it is. Celebrate you. You are badass.

OUTRO:  48:21  
That's it for now. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe for continuous caregiving tips, tricks, trends and truth. Pretty, pretty, please with sugar on top share and review it too. I'm a comedian. Alzheimer's is heavy, but we ain't got to be.