Ginkgo Leaf is still responding to the emergency in Asheville, NC. We will be resuming business operations as of October 7. If you are in crisis, please call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.
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If you have been charged in error during this time for a visit that did not occur, you will be refunded or this will be offered as a credit to your account when we regain Internet access.
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The start date for the RISE program has been changed to October 21, 2024.
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We are thinking of you all. Stay safe.
-The Ginkgo Leaf team
Caregiving
Maybe you thought you were ready for this. Maybe you knew you weren't. Now, your loved one is sick, and you are tired. Deep in your bones tired. Living in the uncertainty is exhausting. It is hard not knowing when the next shoe will drop. When the illness will get worse. Whether the doctors will be able to help your loved one through this time, or whether it will all just get harder.
Watching and Waiting
Watching your loved one drown in an illness is heartbreaking. Seeing someone you love change in ways that are outside of your control feels like death by a thousand cuts. You feel helpless as you witness them turn inward and away from you. You feel angry - sometimes desperately angry, even rageful - at the situation you and your loved one find yourselves in. This is a grind through grief and loss. How do you keep showing up to care for someone, when doing so keeps reminding you of what you miss? You long for the relationship that was, and you try not to think about it. You don't want the relationship that is, and you try to exist within it.
You're trying.
The things you are trying just aren't working.
You have reached out to people, but can't shake the feeling that they don't really understand what this is like. You try to stay active and that does help, until it doesn't. You're not really sure what to do next, except to keep showing up to the next medical visit, the next medication check, the next nebulizer or chemotherapy treatment. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other, trying to prove that you are the child, sibling, parent or friend that your loved one needs you to be.
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It’s not the weight you carry
but how you carry it –
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.
"Heavy," by Mary Oliver
Caregiving stress is real. It places a burden on both body and heart. Psychotherapy can help you find ways to soothe your central nervous system, clarify your needs and boundaries, and communicate with your loved ones - even when doing so also means confronting entrenched family dynamics and frightening healthcare problems.
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A good listener can go a long way. Humans heal through telling their stories. Perhaps being deeply witnessed is the medicine that you need.
Your story is worth sharing. You are worthy of being heard.
