There’s a season of life no one really prepares you for: when your parents begin needing you at the same time your children still do.

You’re booking your mother’s cardiology appointment and your son’s orthodontist appointment. Your father calls when something goes wrong. Your kids call when something goes wrong. And somewhere in the middle of holding everyone else, there’s a question nobody seems to ask:

Who is holding you?

In this episode of The Joy Shift, I’m talking about the emotional weight of caring for an aging parent while still raising or supporting your own family—and why what looks like a scheduling problem is often something much deeper.

This conversation is personal for me. My mom is 83, and I’m beginning to see a softness around the edges of the woman I’ve always known as strong, independent, and almost unbreakable. I love her deeply. I’m grateful she’s here. And sometimes, caring for someone you love is exhausting.

Those things can all be true.

We’re unpacking the guilt that tells women, “I should just be grateful I still have her,” and the belief that wanting five minutes, one afternoon, or one small piece of your own life back somehow makes you selfish.

It doesn’t.

This is the both/and of this season: you can love your parent and feel stretched by what they need. You can be grateful and tired. You can show up for the people you love without disappearing from your own life.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why caring for aging parents isn’t simply a time-management problem
• The emotional shift that happens when the parent who once cared for you begins needing your care
• Why gratitude should never be used to silence exhaustion, grief, or desire
• The guilt women carry when they want time or space for themselves
• How to hold love for your family and care for yourself at the same time
• What it looks like to include yourself in the life you’re working so hard to hold together

If you’re standing in this complicated middle—loving your parents, loving your children, and wondering where you fit into all of it—I hope this episode gives you permission to stop choosing between being a good daughter, a good mother, and a whole woman.

You belong in the equation, too.

Knowing changes nothing. Choosing changes everything.

SUBSCRIBE

New episodes every Tuesday at 6am.

Instagram: instagram.com/iamkileysuarez

TikTok: tiktok.com/@thejoyshiftpodcast

Substack: substack.com/@kileysuarez

Website: kileysuarez.com

The legal stuff: The Joy Shift podcast reflects my personal views and the experiences of my guests. It's meant for real conversation and inspiration, not medical, psychological, or financial advice. Everyone's situation is different. Before making any big changes, please talk with the right professionals for you. Take what resonates. Leave the rest.

You're the one who books your mother's cardiology appointment and your son's orthodontist appointment in the same phone call.

Your father calls you when something's wrong.

Your kids still call you when something's wrong.

Nobody asks who you call.

But here's what I know.

The woman who's holding all of it together is not disappearing.

She's becoming someone new.

And today, we're going to name what that actually looks like.

I'm Kylie Suarez, and this is the Joy Shift.

By the end of this episode, you're going to understand why the guilt you feel every time you want five minutes back is not the truth.

And you're going to have a way to hold your parent and yourself at the same time without picking one.

Now, before we get into it, if this episode finds you at the right moment, follow the show right now so it finds you every week.

It takes two seconds.

I promise.

It's worth it.

Here's the shape of what's actually happening, because I don't think we say this part out loud enough.

Nearly half of adults in their 40s and 50s are caring for an aging parent while still raising or supporting their own kids.

Now, most of that weight lands on women.

Not most of the weight.

Let's say almost all of it.

And here's what nobody tells you about that math.

It doesn't feel like a scheduling problem, even though it looks like one on your calendar.

Pharmacy pickup cardiologists, your daughter's practice, your mom's blood pressure log, your son's college applications, a birthday you almost forgot because you were tracking someone else's medication schedule.

It's a permission problem.

Wearing a scheduling problem's clothes.

You have permission to take care of your mother.

Everyone agrees on that one, including you.

What you don't have permission for, what you never once given yourself, is to be tired from it.

To miss your own life while you're living hers.

To want something back.

That's the part that doesn't get calendared.

That's the part we're talking about today.

And I want to be honest with you about something before we go further.

This episode isn't just something I researched or heard from clients.

This is something my family is living right now.

My mother is 83, and this season, the one I'm about to describe is mine, too.

I'm in it with you.

I want to tell you about her.

My mom was widowed at 42.

Four daughters.

No warning, no plan, no version of her life that included doing this alone.

And she did it Anyway, she did it in a way that never once looked like struggle from where we sat.

She was the one who showed up, the one who cheered loudest at every single thing any of us ever did.

The strong one, the.

The independent one.

And the woman who did not need anybody at 42, with four kids and a whole blown through her whole plan that she could hold up a house by herself.

And that's the mother I grew up watching.

That's the woman I have known my entire life.

She's 83 now, still active, still out in the world, still herself in every way that matters.

But lately I'm noticing something I don't have a clean word for yet.

A frailty that wasn't there before.

Not a crisis, not an emergency.

Just a softness at the edges of a woman I have only ever known as unbreakable.

Now here's the part I wasn't ready for.

It's not the frailty itself that gets me.

It's watching the strongest woman I know need something when she spent 40 years teaching me that she never would.

I catch myself doing new math now.

How many more years do I just get to call her because I want to hear her voice, not because I something needs managing?

Like how many more birthdays?

How many more of her stories I've heard a hundred times and will never get tired of?

And underneath that math, if I'm honest, there's also another feeling I don't say out loud very often.

A tired one.

Because loving her fully and being stretched by loving her are both true at the exact same time.

And I was never taught that both of those things are allowed to sit in the same sentence.

I think you know exactly what I'm talking about.

One woman that I'm very good friends with told me she didn't cry once during her father's whole decline.

Not at the diagnosis, not at the hospital, not at any of it.

She cried the first time she had to help him put on his shoes because that was the moment the roles actually flipped.

And no calendar entry prepared her for what that would do to her chest.

Now that's what this season does.

It doesn't just rearrange your schedule.

It rearranges who you are to the person who used to be the one holding you up.

And here's what I've learned.

There's a sentence running underneath almost every woman I know who's caring for an aging parent.

And it goes something like this.

I should just be grateful I still have her.

How many times have I said that?

Countless.

Say that sentence to yourself right now.

Notice how fast it shows up and notice what it does the second it lands.

It doesn't just remind you to be grateful.

It shuts the door on whatever you're about to say next.

And that's the move.

That's what I call the gratitude bind.

And once you see it, you can't unsee it.

The gratitude bind takes something true that you're grateful and uses it as a lid.

It says, because this is true.

The other that you are about to admit doesn't get to exist because you're grateful.

You don't get to be exhausted because you're grateful.

You don't get to grieve your own disappearing time because you're grateful.

You don't get to want five minutes that belong to nobody but you.

Gratitude was never supposed to be a gag order, but that's the job we've assigned it now.

Here's how the gratitude bind actually sounds in real life so you can catch it instead of just absorb it.

It sounds like at least I still have her when someone else's mother is already gone.

It sounds like other people have it so much worse when you're describing your own exhaustion to a friend and cutting yourself off mid sentence.

It sounds like she gave up so much for me so the least I can do is give up my Tuesday nights without complaint.

Every one of those sentences starts with something true and that's what makes the bind so effective.

And it's not lying to you, it's taking a real fact and asking you to use it to erase the rest of what's true.

At the same time, you can hold that your mother sacrificed for you and still feel the weight of what you're carrying now.

One does not disqualify the other.

They're not competing.

They're just both true, sitting in the same body on the same Tuesday.

So if the gratitude bind is the trap, here's the way out.

And I want to be honest.

It's not a trick.

It's a decision.

I call it Both slash and you don't have to choose between loving your parent and grieving what this season is costing you.

You can be a devoted daughter and still be worn down by devotion.

You can treasure every single phone call from your mother and also mourn that version of your Tuesday that used to be yours.

Both slash and isn't permission to complain.

It's permission to be a whole person instead of a character in a story that only has room for the good daughter.

The measure of your love for your mother was never going to be how invisible.

You made your own exhaustion.

That's not devotion.

That's just a woman disappearing again, this time with a better excuse.

You get to love her fully and you get to be tired, both at the same time in the same sentence.

That doesn't make you ungrateful.

It makes you honest.

Think about the woman with the shoes.

She didn't need a better system for managing her father's care.

She was already managing everything better than anyone could ask.

What she needed was permission to say, this is breaking my heart a little.

At the exact same time she was showing up for him completely.

You're allowed to be the daughter who shows up every single time and the woman who sits in her car afterward for a minute before she can drive.

The shift is letting both things be true out loud instead of only letting the acceptable half be seen.

Here's the exercise I want to leave you with.

Somewhere in you there's a boundary you already know, you need and have not said out loud.

Yet you know exactly what it is.

Maybe it's telling your sisters you can't be the one who handles every appointment.

You know exactly what it is.

Maybe it's telling your sisters you can't be the one who handles every appointment, every single time, forever.

Maybe it's saying no to a Sunday visit so you can have one afternoon that belongs to you.

Maybe it's as small as telling your mother you need to call her back tomorrow and instead of tonight and letting that be okay, you already know the sentence.

You've rehearsed it in the car and swallowed it before you go out.

You've typed it into a text and deleted it three times.

Saying that sentence out loud doesn't make you smaller in this story.

It makes you the kind of daughter who can stay in it for the long haul instead of the kind who burns out halfway through and has nothing left to give.

If you don't have the words yet, borrow mine.

Try I love doing this for you and I need some help so it doesn't fall only on me.

Or you can also try.

I can't be at every appointment.

That doesn't mean I love you less or even try.

I need tonight.

I'll call you first thing tomorrow.

None of those sentences are unkind, and every one of them is true, and every one of them can be said in a voice that's steady and not defensive because you're not asking permission.

You're stating a fact about your own limits, the same way you'd expect anyone you love to state state theirs now, this is your 5% this week.

Not the whole season fixed.

Not every boundary set at once.

One honest sentence said once out loud to the person it belongs to.

That's the shift that starts it.

Here's what I want to leave you with today.

You're allowed to love her and miss your own life at the same time.

You're allowed to be grateful you still have her and still grieve what this season takes from you.

That is not betrayal.

That is what it actually looks like to be a full human being loving another full human being through a season this hard and this tender.

Now, you're not failing at this.

There is no version of caring for an aging parent that doesn't cost you something.

The cost isn't proof that you're doing it wrong.

It's proof you're doing something that actually matters.

Your mother didn't raise you to disappear for her.

She raised you to be a whole woman.

Being that woman now, even here, even in this, is the truest thing you can give her back.

This season is proof of the woman you're becoming.

Show up whole.

That's the shift.

If this episode names something you've been carrying, quietly follow the joy shift so you don't miss what's coming next.

We go deeper every week, and I'd love for you to be there.

I'll see you next Tuesday.