Women who care for elderly parents need support
Two and a half years ago I quit a job I loved.
I was a widely recognised national expert in ageing services, running a consulting practice inside a growing firm. I had innovative clients, a bright and committed team, and a portfolio of services and products that I had designed to help organisations improve how they deliver care to frail older adults.
And then one day a friend’s mom had a terrible accident that left her with severe and permanent brain injury. As I looked on, my friend and her family began to navigate a system I barely recognized. I had spent a quarter of a century studying the economic incentives of this sector but I realized I knew almost nothing.
I was able to help her with some things. I could explain some of the mechanics of payment (government payments for services), the roles of various healthcare organizations in the US, and the likelihood of her mom’s care being managed at home.
And she taught me a lot too. I learned that family relationships fray under pressure, and that it takes enormous family time and energy to manage and provide care. That even when you have ample adult children, and plenty of financial resources, you still fight against the institutional bias in our care delivery system (which prefers nursing homes and hospitals to home-based care). But, most of all, I learned that there are virtually no sources of information that are easy to use, helpful and encouraging.
Anne Tumlinson, founder of Daughterhood. Photograph: Shane Yeager
So I decided to create one. I wanted to develop an online resource that would present my technical knowledge in an accessible way and provide a space for a community to support others going through the same challenges that my friend and her family encountered.
With the help of Joseph Liu, a career change consultant, I started experimenting with creating content through blogs and videos. I made a lot of mistakes, but Liu stressed that now was the time for trial and error. Just because I was finding the work hard didn’t mean I was failing. After about nine months of working through the concept, Daughterhood was born.
I wrote about the US Medicare programme, how to pay for long-term care, why you should avoid the hospital and what to do if you can’t. What really surprised me was the response I received when I wrote about the underlying emotional and psychological challenges of caregiving. Not just isolation from friends and sibling rivalry but feeling like you’re failing your parents. It’s something that many women, in particular, experience when they encounter a failing health and ageing care system. It’s not that men aren’t caring for their parents, it’s just that women need resources specifically to counteract their feelings of self-reproach.
I wrote about the importance of setting boundaries around what you can and can’t do, recognising the new normal and learning to get comfortable asking for help. This raw feeling of failure, of not being good enough – this is what women experience around caregiving and it’s what has created a relationship between the readers and me. Our number of website visitors, subscribers and social media following all grew and we started to see interest from around the world.
And I wanted to do more. So many women told me they needed information about how to solve problems and find support in their local area. My blogs and videos weren’t going to explain which home care agency to use in St Louis, for example, or who to call when you need a friend who understands. How could I provide that service?
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A year after launching the website and the blog, I started Daughterhood Circles. We connect neighbors and friends to those who need support. I brought in a part-time community manager to help mobilise women in local communities. We created toolkits. We advertised for leaders on Facebook and we have been working diligently for nine months to support groups that range in size from three members to 20. It’s a work in progress but one that makes me so proud.
The readership and community behind Daughterhood continues to grow and is starting to attract attention from further afield. From the start, I’ve been supporting myself financially through solo consulting projects, but I’m now hearing from organisations that want to sponsor content or partner with us to create more and better resources. It’s thrilling.
There is of course, nothing like creating something from scratch, taking a chance on it and seeing it take on life in the outside world. But, it’s impossible to experience this if you don’t take what can initially seem like huge risks. As I tell the community of Daughterhood readers who seem overwhelmed by the challenges they face, it doesn’t take an enormous amount of confidence and faith to overcome this fear of failure. You just need a little – just enough to keep going.

To hear more about Anne’s business journey listen to her interview on Joseph Liu’s Career Relaunch podcast - http://josephpliu.com/episode3
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