For more than twenty years, caring for people I love has been a significant part of my life.

During that time, I learned a great deal about life as a carer. The ups and downs. The rewards and frustrations. The many challenges that come with caring for someone you love. Some might even say I became an expert at navigating government, aged care and medical systems, and a master at juggling countless responsibilities, competing priorities and my own time. Not out of desire, but necessity.

Some of the biggest lessons, however, had very little to do with the practical side of caring. I was absolutely blindsided by the impact caring had on my own life, my health and my wellbeing. I simply hadn't seen it coming.

Your time becomes less your own. Plans are changed or cancelled. Friendships can become harder to maintain. Your health gets pushed down the list. Things you once enjoyed slowly disappear from your week. And for many carers, caring doesn't happen in isolation. You're also raising children, working, running a household, maintaining relationships and trying to keep your own life moving. My children were just one and three when I first started caring. Today, they're 23 and 24. For much of that time, I was part of what is often called the sandwich generation, raising my own family while also caring for ageing parents. Somewhere amongst all those competing responsibilities, it can become incredibly easy to lose sight of yourself.

Often, it happens so gradually you don't even realise it's happening. That's why I created The Turning Tides Library.

WHY I WRITE ABOUT CARING

There is already a great deal of valuable information available about how to care for someone else. This Library is different.

Here, I want to talk about the person doing the caring. The person sitting in the waiting room. The person remembering the appointments, making the phone calls, filling prescriptions, organising paperwork and lying awake at night thinking about what needs to happen tomorrow.

The person who loves the person they care for, but sometimes misses the life they used to have. These are the experiences I want to write about because many of them were my experiences too.

Through these articles, I'll share honest stories from my own life as a carer, the things I've learned along the way, practical ideas that helped me and some of the things I wish I'd understood much earlier.

Not because I have all the answers. I don't.

But more than twenty years of caring has taught me a lot about what can happen when caring for someone else begins taking up more and more of your own life.

FROM ONE CARER TO ANOTHER

I want this Library to be a place where carers can read an article and think: "Yes. That's exactly what it's like. "Sometimes simply recognising what is happening can be important.

You might realise you've been living what I call a parallel life, trying to keep your own world moving while helping to hold someone else's together. You might recognise the invisible mental load you've been carrying. Or perhaps you'll begin to see that reclaiming some time for yourself doesn't have to start with a major life change. It can begin Little & Often, with ten minutes, one decision or one small piece of your life that you decide to put back in. That's where change can start.

YOU ARE STILL PART OF THE EQUATION

Caring for someone you love may be an important part of your life. But it should never require you to disappear from it. Your health matters. Your relationships matter. Your interests, plans, goals and dreams still matter.

The Turning Tides Library is here to help you recognise what caring may be taking from your own life, understand that experience a little better and, most importantly, begin doing something about it.

Sometimes that will mean practical information. Sometimes it will mean looking at things differently. Sometimes it might simply be a story that makes you feel understood. Because turning the tide doesn't mean the caring ends. It means you start making room for yourself within your own life again.

JD Brimblecombe
Carer Advocate | 20+ Years Lived Experience