Guilt Helps Nobody

If the job of being a caregiver only involved giving help to your aging parent such as doing the dishes and helping fill out the Medicare paperwork, your life would be considerably easier.  And if that were the case, even if there was a lot to do, the problem of caregiver burn out would not be such an issue.

But the real drain on you and even on the senior citizen you are taking care of comes in the emotional toll that the care giving relationship brings with it.  Because the “assumed understanding” of the care giving relationship is based on the extended giving of a very large favor, guilt becomes a common element in every aspect of the time you spend with your aging parent.

It’s very easy for the senior citizen to feel guilty for asking you for the work you do to take care of him.  It’s a strange situation because in most cases, they never asked.  You may have stepped in because you saw your parent’s life beginning to unravel and you knew that someone had to help get his retired life organized.  And yet, the senior citizen feels a lot of guilt because you are giving him huge amounts of time and that is time away form your family and maybe your work to do things for him unpaid and very often without thanks.

It doesn’t help that the time of transition from independence to assisted care is one of huge loss of self esteem for your aging parent.  There are a lot of tremendous changes that happen in rapid order for y our parent and they happen in areas of life that have remained unchanged for decades.  If inside of a year your mom or dad go through a loss of their home to go live in an assisted living facility, loss of mobility because they cannot drive and loss of independence because everything is being done for them, that causes a lot of negative emotions.  Guilt makes its appearance because they feel irrationally that if they had not grown old, this would never have happened.

But guilt also is an issue for you, the caregiver.  There always seems to be something more you could be doing for your parents.  It doesn’t help that the senior citizen you work so hard to care for also inflicts guilt on you by whining, “I wish you never had to go home” or by complaining about their lives and getting angry. 

So what can be done about all of this guilt?  Guilt doesn’t make the relationship better and it doesn’t improve the quality of life for the caregiver or from the senior being cared for.  So whatever we can do to shut it down would be a positive step for both parties.

Probably the most proactive thing you can do about guilt is confront it directly.  Sit down with your aging mom or dad and get those guilt feelings out in the open.  It’s not their fault they got old.  Your parent should not feel guilty about being cared for by you.  After all they cared for you for decades when you were just a child and young adult. 

Bu taking the teeth out of guilt, you have a real chance of getting that out of your relationship.  By learning not to put guilt on each other, you become a team in care giving, not combatants.  And these are positive steps toward a healthy senior citizen and caregiver relationship.

Are You Well?

Wellness refers to the condition of good physical and mental health, especially when maintained by proper diet, exercise, and habits.  Nutrition refers to the nurturing of our body, in our ability to keep it healthy and functioning as it is supposed to do.  Our ability to provide the body with all the necessary food, vitamins, and minerals so that we continue to thrive in our daily life processes.  But do we know if we are really well? 

The first place to start would be with the examination of your eating habits.  Since we are a product of what we eat, if our eating habits are unhealthy, or do not provide for the nutrition we need, we’re not going to be healthy individuals at the end of the process.
Do you take in more calories than your body needs?  Are you supplementing your vitamins and minerals to make sure you are getting your recommended daily allowances?  If you’re not making the most basic of efforts to take care of your nutritional needs, you aren’t a well individual.  You may not look sick, you may not have any noticeable symptoms of ill-health, but you’re not the well individual you could be.

Next, you might want to look at your exercise habits, if there are any.  If there aren’t any exercise routines to examine, no wellness.  Everyone, no matter what their age, benefits from exercise.  It keeps our bodies conditioned, our mental sharpness working at top speed, and thanks to the physical aspect, we get a boost to our cardio health, extra calorie burn, and more oxygen to those cells!
What about the stress levels in your life?  Do work in an environment with high levels of stress?  Is your personal life a source of comfort or does it add to your stress levels?  Do you engage in some form of stress-relieving activity?  Stress is the number on contributor to heart attacks and strokes, since they manage to speed up the affect of the real culprits.  Stress is basically an out of control situation for most adults today.  We manage to schedule every moment of our free time, and leave ourselves with no time for quiet reflection, or time to deal with life’s unexpected emergencies.

Stress brings us to the next two topics of health abuse.  Smoking and drinking are often used to offset the effect that stress has on our nervous system.  These solutions however do not provide any real help.  If you smoke, drink, or lose sleep to excess, you’re not the well individual you could be.  Smoking, drinking, and loss of sleep work to our detriment, and it takes extreme discipline to stop.  Smoking fills our body with carcinogens, and works to keep us tired and lethargic. 


There are so many occasions to stop and question our efforts at maintaining optimal health, that we usually don’t even take the time to begin the examination. But it is beneficial to our overall health, the quality and quantity of our life, to make every effort to be well, healthy, individuals.  

The Cave Paintings of Trois Freres

In the depth of winter my thoughts focus on travel and the adventure of finding unique areas to explore. Helpless romantics dream of traveling to France for a number of reasons. The country is quite well-known for its romantic places and atmosphere. But did you know that there's more to see in France aside from the lovely romantic places? Yes, that's true and one is the cave paintings of Trois Freres. Les Trois Freres is located in the Commune of Montesquieu-Avantes, Ariege department, in the Midi-Pyrenees region of southwestern France.

Not all individuals appreciate paintings. Oftentimes, it depends on the person's taste and interests. If you're interested in cave paintings, you can also find some of them in France. Trois Freres shows fascinating images about the people of prehistoric times. Visiting the cave is like exploring the world many years ago. You can learn a lot from the paintings, but only if you appreciate them.

Though people lived primitively thousands of years ago, they seem to know quite a lot. They knew about the different patterns and seasons of life. The seasonal variations and their food supplies are the determining factors between living or dying. The cave paintings in France show this great knowledge about the ancestors of the French people.

Translated in English, Trois Freres means Three Brothers. The paintings on the cave show indistinct images of animals and certain figures which experts believe to be a shaman. Trois Freres attracted international attention because of the depictions in the cave. The paintings are found in the far corners of the cave and so you have to go deeper to be able to get a good glimpse of such a work of art.

The paintings have a graphical nature and was skillfully drawn. You can easily make out the figures to be beasts and cattle surrounding a high figure that reaches the cave roof. This central figure is about 70 cm or 2 1/2 ft tall and appears to be half human and half animal. The figure has deer antlers and wears a mask with an eye of an owl. Below the mask is a beard and the hands are hidden within bear paws or lion paws. The back of the figure can be compared to that of a certain animal and somehow it appears that the figure is wearing an animal skin of some sort.  The figure has an erect penis covered by a fox tail.

Experts called the figure 'Animal Master' and if you want to see the picture of the cave painting, you can go to France or you can search the net and simply type the words 'Trois Freres'. Find a link that will show you the painting itself. You can use any of the popular search engines in order to get a glimpse of the cave painting.

If you try to conduct a research on the net, you can read many speculations and comments about the cave painting. The painting is like the sketchpad of the prehistoric people. Animals or beasts were drawn on top of one another. Experts believed that the paintings are more than 14,000 years old or even longer.

Today, painters and other artists treat art as a process. It is the expression, recording, and reflection of the divine or inner nature of the artist. But did the primitive artists view art in the same way? Perhaps there's more to their drawings that what modern experts and artists can understand.

You can find other cave paintings in Asia and in Europe. To better understand the paintings, just allow your imagination to take over.

Travelling this spring?

Thinking of travelling this spring, consider England as a trip destination. When you are in England why not take a guided tour. Most guided tours of England focus on London and yet miss the beautiful and historic places you can go in the rest of England.  It’s a lovely country with lots of history and places in which you can truly have an adventure.

A favorite place for many guided tours of England is Stratford upon Avon.  Located on the Avon River, it was the birthplace of both William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway.  You may be able to stay in hotels that date back to the time of William Shakespeare, see his place of death and surrounding gardens and the Anne Hathaway House.

Guided tours of Stratford upon Avon will take you to Trinity Church where both William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway were buried and you can see the lovely Hathaway Cottage—a must-see on most guided tours.  In addition, Shakespeare’s birthplace has been turned into a showplace of period furniture that takes you back to the time of his birth in a delightful little museum.

You may also wish to travel to Warwick Castle—another must-see destination on many guided tours.  It is perhaps one of the best preserved old castles in all of England.  Located along the Avon River, your tour guide will tell you that the original castle was built around the year 900 AD. Gradually, parts of the castle were added onto and fortified until it became the huge and sprawling castle you can see today.

Guided tours of Warwick Castle are available to groups and include the dungeons, the high buttresses, and rooms from various eras, including the Victorian Era.  One of the special features of this castle is that it has been outfitted with wax figuresmade from Madame Tussaud’s galleries.  There is an entire section of ornately decorated Victorian period rooms, complete with wax figures.

Often, guided tours will allow you beyond the castle walls and out into the massive gardens and conservatory, where visitors can have lunch and enjoy the beauty of the gardens.  If the weather is right, you will be able to walk among real peacocks strutting through the gardens.  All in all, it is a day worth remembering.

Guided tours that partake of the southern part of England will take you to the famous Stonehenge, built more than two millennia ago and a favorite tourist attraction.  Those who come during the summer or winter solstice should expect that there will be a crowd there at the crack of first daylight.

Fun guided tours of England will take you to Oxford, home of the famous Oxford University and to Christ Church, where some aspects of the Harry Potter movies were filmed, including the scenes in the great hall.  In fact, you can take an entire Harry Potter guided tour that will guide you to as many places as possible that were included in the filming of the movie.

After rolling past the many castle ruins, fabulous gardens and quaint British homes on one of the guided tours of England, you may forget all about London itself.  If not, extend your tour into the big city of London—a city that often offers  guided tours involving just those wondrous things you’ll find right there.  Take your time and enjoy all that England has to offer.  .