Accompanying aging parents with love

Watching your parents age is not easy. I have spent the past two years traveling back and forth from my home in the desert to the US to spend time with my dad as he experiences dementia. The more I share about my experience with friends, the more I hear them talk about their own parents: the small things they are no longer able to do on their own, the loneliness they are feeling, the wondering when and how to intervene.

“We’re in the age of taking care of our parents.”

I’ve heard so many friends and colleagues say this to me over the past few years, as we see our parents age, shift, and transform. And in a time when our structures of community and holding are so broken down, it’s incredibly hard to navigate the journey of witnessing the transformation of an aging parent because we don’t have the kind of community holding that is needed in this vulnerable stage of life.

From my own experience of accompanying my dad through these years, it seems to me that one of the most important parts of the process is accepting the change that is happening. It is not a simple process to recognize what’s actually going on for your parents, no matter what your relationship might have been like when you were younger. This is a person who used to be your rock, the one you looked up to, the one who guided you into this world. And now, that person is becoming someone else.

Integrating these transformations takes time. It requires the movement of night and day, a good relationship between relaxing and doing.

When we relax deeply, the body finds a way to integrate what we are experiencing. Rest makes that possible.

The importance of rest is one of the many wisdoms of the cycles of life. The cycle that lives in the fertile womb, in the movement of the planets around the sun, in the turning of night into day reminds us that change is an integral part of life, that balance is necessary, that there is time for rest and time for action.

Resting into the wisdom of these cycles is essential when we are trying to remain present with and integrate deep experiences, like accompanying an aging parent.

It is really useful to recognize my need for balance. It’s good for me to spend time with Dad, but sometimes it can be too much, too painful, and I need more nourishing input from other relationships and contexts. I need to step away, to let myself be nourished by things that have nothing to do with dementia. And when I return, I have more to give. I have more capacity to meet him where he is.

I think this is true of so many of the profound experiences we move through in our lives. We need time to be inside them, and time to step back. Time to feel, and time to let what we feel settle into our bodies.

And yet, most of us have very little guidance in learning how to move with these cycles. We live in a culture that teaches us to keep going, to push through, to consistently produce. We have much less practice listening for the moment when something else is needed.

with honor and respect to the elders

who have led the way for us to grow.