How to alleviate regrets about moving one’s family into Senior Living!

The reality of life is that it is not stagnant. A family is the smallest unit of life. The family that we take for granted while we grow up into adults has a very different feel, look, thought…but as we have our own families and watch our parents get older, we are hit by other realities, as our parents now need the care that they once provided us with. Care is a delicate word that can mean everything, bring back memories of an entire life, make us go through a spectrum of emotions and so on. 

Caring and caregiving are the norms of the society. Children are supposed to care for their elderly as they grow older and the cycle then continues. However such scenarios are changing, as our lives change, our living changes. A senior living as we grew up understanding makes us concerned. It is still a stigma in many parts of the world. This stigma is based on lack of positive exposure, maybe cultural or perhaps personal experiences. The senior living are versatile and caring and sometimes provide better care to an elderly to enjoy life’s simple pleasures as their beloved family may be busy with their careers or personal lives. 

Though we do not want to have any regrets in life… we are all humans and feelings like these are normal. Our elderly need care and sometimes, opening our mindsets to possibilities that will get them the required care is on us. 

Here are some ways to alleviate those regrets, fears, anxieties of moving one’s family into Senior Living: 

1. Knowing that this is a phase of life that we may have to go through, it is not mistake, a misfortune or mistake. 
2. Understanding that Aging and Geriatrics are very very intricate things and not everyone ages exactly the same, hence the care requirements vary.
3. Valuing that life still continues on even if our elderly move to senior living. We can still visit with them, enjoy good times, dine together, celebrate occasions and many more. 
4. Educating oneself that we may not possess all the skills to handle something like caring for our elderly as caregiving is a very personal topic and that moving someone to a senior living is to empower them with the life they should live due to caregiver and skills offered by the senior living.  
5. Noting time is valuable, precious and sometimes urgent, so making that decision of moving our beloved to a senior living is all of the above and buying time, life, space. 
6. Seeking health as a factor and taking steps to ensure good health is an important decision to make or maybe one has made already. 
7. Empowering oneself with the understanding of the components of life’s purpose and putting it together to find out if one truly can do the job as well as the other without any compromises is enough to help us alleviate our mental concerns. 
8. Thinking of senior living as an extension of one’s home is a great way to continue to build on those foundations and principle with how a family would otherwise work together as we age. 
9. Completing a journey into oneself to understand that what we are fearing is missing a person physically but will always be connected through soul.  
10. Giving oneself love and appreciating ourselves for how far we have come and how we have helped our parents is key to alleviating regrets, fears and anxieties. 

It is an emotional topic, but the more we share and speak about it, the easier it will get as we move into the future. No decisions in life are right or wrong. It is a matter of how we comprehend certain situations that come in our way of life. As our future is built, empowered, dreamed and appreciated, we will have a better understanding about many more aspects of aging and caregiving. 

We want to thank our followers and we look forward to your insights and you are welcome to share. Until then a very humble thank you to all.