Caregiver Support Groups:

If you are a close-by caregiver, your days are perhaps filled with doctors’ office visits, cooking, cleaning, endless hours on the phone with insurance companies, the same questions being asked over and over, glasses that don’t seem to work anymore, TV shows that no longer make any sense, middle-of-the-night emergency room visits, life and death decisions, heartaches, worry and stress.

If you are a long-distance caregiver, your days are filled with worry & frustration that your parent has so much trouble hearing you or talking to you on the phone, looking long distance for supportive services to try and keep your parent(s) in their home or talking to them about moving to a nursing home, trying to figure out what is best for your aging parent, and stress. Lots and lots of stress.

Whether you are close-by or long-distance, being a caregiver is probably the most difficult job you’ll ever have, the one you have the least training for and the one you used to be expected to navigate alone.

Fortunately, you are not alone. Caregiver support groups are developing all over the country — from government sponsored programs like the National Family Caregiver Support Program, to churches like Rick Warren’s Saddleback Alzheimer’s Support Group, to online Caregiver Chat Rooms like ours, Facebook pages like Memory People — and countless forums.

Regardless of whether you attend a support group in person or through an online chatroom or forum, you will find like-minded people. People you can share your experience strength and hope with; empathetic people who will share their experience, strength and hope with you. Only another caregiver can truly know what you are going through.

To search for a caregiver support group near you, you can search for National Family Caregiver Support Groups in our service directory below. If you are a caregiver for one of our brave Veterans, you might want to click here.