You’re shouldering a double burden – responsibility for your life and for someone else’s.
There’s barely enough time to look after the basics of life—food on the table, pay the bills, grocery shopping, cleaning, carrying out all the extra responsibilities for the loved one who is depending on you. The days are crammed with care, maybe medical appointments—you may be struggling with trying to keep up with whatever is left of your own life. Or you may feel like you’ve just had to give up on that for now.
You’re exhausted. You’re feeling isolated, and stressed. You’re full of other feelings too—grief, loss, sorrow, anger—and on top of it all, you’re feeling guilty about those negative feelings toward your loved one.
AWA offers the Caregiver Project to help cope with some of that.
The Caregiver Project is an online writing workshop for those who, in taking on the care of another or others, may have lost much of their former lifestyle and the social activities and supports that were in it, and who, as a consequence, are feeling stressed and isolated.
Expressive writing has been demonstrated in research to be associated with fewer visits to the doctor because of stress-related illness, improved immune system functioning, reduced blood pressure, improved lung and liver function, improved mood and affect, and a feeling of greater psychological well-being.
You do not need to consider yourself a writer to join and benefit from these workshops. The AWA method has a proven track record of holding safe, generative and supportive space where both writers and writing can flourish.
The Caregiver Project is a chance to experience writing in a group with peers, both professional and family caregivers, who deal with similar challenges every day. It allows them to connect, to express themselves and to learn, through bearing witness and having their own writing listened to, that they are absolutely not alone.
________________________________
In March and April of 2023, AWA will be offering six stand-alone, introductory sessions to writing in the AWA Method with those who provide professional and/or family caregiving. To see dates and times and to register, please visit this link: The Caregiver Project Introductory Sessions.
Registration is on a donation basis, from free to $30.
Please feel free to share this information with anyone you know who is providing care.