The Sandwich Generation and Self-Care

Following on from my post yesterday, there's some interesting research going on with people like me called the 'sandwich generation'. The ‘Sandwich Generation’ - originally coined by social worker Dorothy Miller in 1981 - describes those who are “sandwiched” between looking after young children and aging parents, as their primary caregiver. This is a growing group as families are having children later and seniors are living longer. This is certainly true for me and apparently lots of other people in this 40-60 age group.

ABDO commissioned media agency, the Relations Group, to interview 2,000 members of the ‘Sandwich Generation’, asking them about how they look after their own health, that of their parents and their children. The research found that looking after their eyes was a key area that was sacrificed due to lack of time, with 7 per cent having not been to the optician for a staggering nine years or more.

As many as 1 in 6 (16 per cent) say they don’t have enough time to spend on their own health, while a quarter (24 per cent) are most likely to go to the optician for their child and 2 per cent for their parents, over themselves.

This again is very true for me. We’ve recently been doing some resilience training at work and the thing that stood out the most for me from the training was that the person I look after the least is me. I’m sure that the statistics above ring true not just for Parents but certainly for us in the sandwich generation. I’m very aware that I need to work on this

To find out more about looking after your eyes follow the link here.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post, words and opinions are mine but statistics were shared from ABDO.

Giving Back - Alzheimer's Society

I have a special place in my heart for the Alzheimer's Society and suspect that I now always will. My Grandma was diagnosed about 8 years ago and as she has deteriorated over the years, myself, Mum and Auntie have become carers to try and enable my Grandma to remain in her own home.

With much love and hard work we have so far (touch wood) managed to keep her there. Over the last couple of years I've been keen to try and give something back but with uni, caring duties, a full time job and a family it can be difficult to find the time.

I did over the year however manage to do a couple of things. First off volunteering at the Nottingham Memory Walk. I (very naively) had NO idea how emotional the day was going to be. My volunteer duty was to man the 'memory tag' stand. This involved giving people tags and pens to write out a tag like this:

This genuinely made me sob!! I actually spent so much of the day in tears! The idea of the memory tags is that they all hang together on this amazing tree:

It truly is a beautiful thing. There are sad memories, happy memories and all of those in between that make up people's lives.

I also managed to fit in a little swim around Lake Windermere and raised £565 for the Alzheimer's Society which I was really please with. This is me just out of the water with my medal:

The next fundraising mission on my list is to complete the Clumber Park Memory Walk on the 1st October. If you would like to help out in any way you can sponsor our team here:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/MW16PamBrowneTeam

or to find out more about memory walks near you then please click here. 

Now wondering what my next challenge should be................. Any ideas??

Disclosure: I haven't been asked to do this by the Alzheimer's Society and am certainly not being paid for it. It's just a charity that's very close to my heart!

(A very short) Catch Up

So it's been a while........ As most of you know, I'm sure, I've spent the last 2 years studying for a Post Graduate Diploma in Human Resource Management. Along with working full time, trying to raise decent human beings and caring for Grandma so my poor blog has taken something of a backseat. I'm hoping though now that this has happened, I'll be around a bit more:

I'm so excited and relieved to have finally passed :)

The End of Summer

With all of my recent ‘back to school’ posts I feel that Summer has ended before it even began!! As I’ve mentioned previously, I was ill for most of the Summer and felt like we hadn’t done very much at all, but then today I was looking back over my pictures trying to find something and actually we did get some stuff done. Chick learnt some new Circus skills and went ‘canoeing’:

We spent some time with the people that we love:

Did our annual jaunt down to Norfolk (remembering to renew our breakdown cover this year!!) and camped out under the stars:

Enjoyed some sunshine and blue skies:

Saw a gorgeous sunset with my man at the cabin:

Now the new term has started, I’m back at work and missing my family but at least we have Paris to look forward too. How did you spend your Summer??

Great North Swim and my First Training Sessions

As you know, last year I started a fab new hobby.....lake swimming. Now, I'm not the fastest but I absolutely love it. I'm also sure you know by now my lovely Grandma has been suffering with Alzheimer's for the last few years. One of forty before forty things is to do some work for charity. I did some voluntary work with the Alzheimer's Society at their Nottingham Memory Walk which was fabulous but very emotionally draining (blog post to follow).

To combine these two awesome things I've signed up to the Great North Swim and will be trying to raise as much as possible for the Society on behalf of my lovely Grandma:

With this is mind I have already started training. I've managed to swim a mile in the pool (OMG it's so far!!) and I also managed to get out into the open water for 15 minutes for my January swim:

The water was a rather chilly 4 degrees but I managed it and it was lovely apart from the numb feet! I'll keep you updated on progress and sponsorship details :)