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Caregiving Comforts

Denise M. Brown

You do the work without the title. You feel like you're constantly canceling plans, running on empty, and wondering how long you can keep up this pace. Sound familiar?

Caregiving Comforts is the first and only podcast designed specifically for those overwhelmed moments when you need comfort, not another lecture about self-care.

What Makes This Different:
  • Episodes are just 2-3 minutes—perfect for your busy, unpredictable schedule
  • No interviews, no experts—just authentic understanding from someone who's been there
  • Content comes from 30+ years of writing comfort for family caregivers like you
  • Pairs with weekly blog posts for deeper reflection
  • From the author of the Take Comfort book series
You'll Find Comfort For:
  • Those days when you need a break but can't take a break
  • Feeling like life has canceled you
  • The exhaustion that no one else understands
  • Wondering if you're losing yourself in caregiving
  • Those 2 a.m. moments when you feel completely alone
Unlike other caregiving podcasts that require 30-60 minutes you don't have, Caregiving Comforts meets you exactly where you are with exactly what you need.

Your Monday Comfort Ritual Starts Here

With 80+ episodes available, you have a library of understanding waiting for you. Whether you're new to caregiving or years into the journey, these bite-sized moments of comfort will remind you that you're seen, you're not alone, and what you're doing matters.

#caregivingsupport #caregiving #compassion #stressrelief

Resources

You can read the comforts in "Support, Comfort and Compassion for You," our group on Caring Our Way, our community of support. Join us.

You also can purchase Denise's five-book Take Comfort series so you always have comfort with you.

About Denise

Denise M. Brown supports individuals managing difficult life experiences with coaching, planning and training. Through her work, Denise helps clients find hope, possibilities and a path forward.
Denise began helping individuals who care for a family member in 1990 and launched a business to help them in 1995. She created one of the first online caregiving communities in 1996 which she managed until its sale in 2020.

Denise now develops and delivers training programs for the workplace and for individuals who want to coach family caregivers. More than 400 individuals from eight different countries have enrolled in her training programs offered through her company, The Caregiving Years Training Academy. Her training programs have been approved to provide Continuing Education Units to health care professionals, including nurses, and human resource professionals.

Denise developed several concepts, including The Six Caregiving Stages, The 12 Caregiving Fatigues and The 17 Caregiving Systems, which both explain the complexity of a personal caregiving situation and inspire interventions to better support family caregivers. Denise completed life coach training through iPEC Coaching in 2004 to ensure she brings the best skills possible into her training, her workshops and her support groups.

Denise also hosts an online community, CaringOurWay.com, that supports individuals during and after their personal caregiving experience. Community members enjoy free workshops and special events like the Caregiving Listener Project and the 36-Hour Christmas Chat.

For 18 years, Denise led Lunch and Learn workshops at employers located in the Midwest on behalf of Employee Assistance Programs and Work/Life Benefit companies. She presented to employees in various industries, including health care, financial services, telecom and insurance. Her seminars consistently were rated “Excellent” or “Very Good” by attendees. Her workshops provide insights to help attendees manage their work/life balance, their stress and their caregiving responsibilities.
Denise is the author of several books that provide insights, comfort and hope to those who care, including The Caregiving Years, Your Guide to Navigating the Six Caregiving Stages and After Caregiving Ends, A Guide to Beginning Again. Her free resource, A Workbook for Your Workplace Wellness, helps individuals who care, grieve and work.

Denise began helping her parents in 2004 after her father’s bladder cancer diagnosis. Her mom, who had Parkinson’s disease, died in August 2022, one year to the date after Denise’s brother died. Her father died in July 2023.

Next Avenue named Denise a 2017 Influencer in Aging, one of “50 advocates, researchers, thought leaders, innovators, writers and experts who continue to push beyond traditional boundaries and change our understanding of what it means to grow older.” Her insights have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, US News & World Report, USA Today, SmartMoney.com, Time magazine and Chicago Tribune.
Play
  • 21 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 6 min
  • English
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • Monday · 5 min

    During Caregiving, Where Does the Love Go?

    Caregiving can bury the love under stress until it feels like it's gone. If you've had days where you couldn't feel loved — even by the people who love you most — this one's for you. A short practice to help you find your way back to it. Resources -...

    • Transcript
  • August 17 · 6 min

    During Caregiving, Naming Your Scope of Work

    You know your days are full. But do you know how many different kinds of work you're actually doing? This week, we're breaking down the scope of family caregiving — the nine distinct domains your work spans, often within a single hour of a single...

    • Transcript
  • August 10 · 5 min

    During Caregiving, Managing the Difficult Memories

    Your day feels like it's stuck on a loop. And it's not just the routine — it's the memories. The moments that broke your heart. The things you heard that you wish you could unhear. They slide into your mind uninvited, again and again, even when you're...

    • Transcript
  • August 3 · 7 min

    What's Your Caregiving Value?

    You've done the math on everything else. Grocery bills. Gas mileage. The cost of the good coffee versus the store brand. But have you ever done the math on yourself? This week, we're putting a number on your caregiving — a real one, built from what...

    • Transcript
  • July 27 · 3 min

    During Caregiving, You Can Get Tired of Trying

    You spend your day trying. So why does it feel like you spend your day failing? If you've ever felt like you're working with old pieces that don't fit the new puzzle life just handed you — no matter how much you ask, delegate, or research — this...

    • Transcript
  • July 20 · 5 min

    When Your Caregiving Life Feels Like Such a Different Life

    Ever sit in a room full of people and feel like you just don't connect the way everyone else does? Like the conversation is happening in a language you almost speak, but not quite? In this episode, we sit with that feeling of being on the outside of...

    • Transcript
  • July 13 · 4 min

    During Caregiving, Managing Mistakes

    You didn't make the mess. But somehow, you're the one cleaning it up — in your day, and in your life. Maybe you've wondered it too: did I get someone else's life by mistake? Because surely this can't be the one meant for you. The wreckage piles up....

    • Transcript
  • July 6 · 4 min

    During Caregiving, What's Luck Got to Do With It?

    We're told family caregivers should feel grateful — lucky, even — to still have their caree with them. But what happens when the person is here and also, somehow, gone? This week, Denise sits with the uncomfortable gap between what we're supposed to...

    • Transcript
  • May 18 · 3 min

    During Caregiving, Your Thoughts About the Mess Others Make

    Sometimes, before you can let something go, you have to let yourself feel it first. This week's Caregiving Comfort sits with the revenge fantasies that family caregivers rarely admit to — the ones about the doctor who made the diagnosis so hard, the...

    • Transcript
  • May 11 · 8 min

    During Caregiving, The Reality of Your Reality

    You share a little of what your day looks like. And someone tells you that you're exaggerating.It's one of the more isolating moments in caregiving — having the weight of your experience questioned by someone who isn't carrying it. In this episode,...

    • Transcript
  • May 4 · 4 min

    During Caregiving, You Build

    You build every day — pushing, patching, hammering solutions together. But where's the building? In this episode, Denise explores the structure family caregivers actually create: precise, fragile, and holding everything together. What happens when...

  • April 27 · 5 min

    During Caregiving, How Do I Fit My Life?

    Rearranging your home is something you can see as you go. Rearranging your life during caregiving is different — it requires trust before you can see the results. In this episode, Denise explores what it really means to add help, shift schedules, and...

  • April 20 · 4 min

    During Caregiving, You Can Wonder: Is This All There Is?

    Some days, caregiving feels like pushing a boulder up a mountain — moment by moment, with no end in sight. In this episode, Denise sits with the question that can rise up on those days: Is this all there is? This short reflection explores what happens...

  • April 13 · 5 min

    During Caregiving, How Do You Cope With So Many Endings?

    Too much ends during caregiving — the life you knew, the services you counted on, the friendships that couldn't hold the weight of it. In this episode, Denise explores what happens when you give yourself an intentional beginning in the middle of all...

  • April 6 · 6 min

    During Caregiving, They Defer While You Do It

    There's a word your family uses when they want to sound supportive. Defer. "We defer to you." "Whatever you think is best." "We know you've got it covered." That's not support. That's a load — handed to you, wrapped in a compliment. You can...

  • March 30 · 8 min

    During Caregiving, Where's the Love?

    During caregiving, the certainty we once felt — of being loved, appreciated, and supported — can quietly slip away. When the people in our lives struggle to show up, we begin to doubt what we once knew to be true.In this episode, we explore what...

  • March 23 · 8 min

    During Caregiving, Dealing with Mansplainers

    You know more than they do. You live this caregiving life every minute of every day — and yet, the mansplainers show up anyway, ready to tell you what you should do based on a headline they skimmed or a story they heard through someone's cousin's best...

  • March 16 · 9 min

    How Do We Cope with Our Painful Caregiving Days?

    Twice the pain. That's what family caregivers carry — their own suffering and their caree's. In this episode, we sit with the moments when we really, really want caregiving to end, and we explore what that wish is really telling us. Because inside...

  • March 9 · 6 min

    When Caregiving Saturates

    You are filled with the stuff of caregiving — the decisions, the schedules, the unexpected problems, the constant adjustments. You cannot take in any more. Yet more keeps coming. That's when saturation turns to drowning, and drowning turns to tears....

  • March 2 · 7 min

    During Caregiving, the Search for Completion

    Caregiving can feel like one long list of incompletes — the to-dos unfinished, the routines abandoned, the projects stalled. But what if life isn't grading us at all? In this episode, Denise explores what it means to be a beautiful work in progress,...

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