Caregiving and Writing: What My Mother Taught Me About Care and Creative Practice

Learning Care

My mom was a social worker for forty years. She worked in a mental health facility for over a decade. After that, she spent several years in a brain injury unit. Later, she moved into a rehabilitation facility, which is where she retired. Her entire working life was spent meeting with people, their families, friends, and support systems. She met them at some of the most difficult moments of their lives. She listened, assessed, and developed plans to help not just the patient but everyone involved in their care.

My mom would often say that what she loved most about her work was supporting the whole person. This meant seeing their needs in the context of their full lives, not just as patients. She taught me that care is not abstract. Care is practical, communal, and shaped by the systems around us.

One of the moments where I learned the most about care came when I was helping take care of her. That was when care became deeply concrete to me. It wasn’t an abstract idea. It was a set of daily practices shaped by exhaustion, logistics, grief, institutional pressures, and the realities of what support was, or was not, available.

My mother was diagnosed with ALS in the spring of 2014 after months of symptoms that some doctors dismissed as aging. ALS has no cure and progresses differently for each patient. My mom’s progression was slow until 2018, when swallowing and balance grew difficult as her upper body weakened.

By 2018, my mom needed care 24 hours a day. My brother and father lived with her, and I commuted from Richmond to Chapel Hill several days a week to teach at UNC while remaining actively involved in my mom’s care. Early on, my family considered relocating altogether, but as my mom’s condition changed, commuting felt like the best way for me to stay present and help support my family. I had a network in Richmond that helped make this very difficult decision possible, from my partner to other parents at my kids’ school.

It was an incredibly difficult season. I was beginning another tenure-track job, my third institution in five years, as I tried to keep moving closer to her. I was building courses and learning new systems. I was trying to keep up with the expectations of academic life. I was also navigating anticipatory grief alongside caregiving responsibilities. On weekends and Mondays, I would stay with my mom during the day so my brother could rest. I’d bring my laptop. The living room became a makeshift office beside my mom’s bed.

I was grieving while also trying to prove myself professionally, and quite often it felt like no part of my life was receiving enough from me.

My mom, still being my mom, the care provider and social worker, offered me so much support even while going through one of the most difficult periods of her life. When she saw me anxious or overwhelmed about an upcoming deadline, frustrated about saying no to opportunities, or upset because I’d let a task on my to-do list linger for what felt like too long, she would remind me: “You need to take care of yourself. You can’t do it all.”

What My Mother Taught Me

If I’m honest, I struggled to hear this.

Of course, I knew I needed to take care of myself, but I felt like there wasn’t time. I remember saying things like, “Tenure doesn’t care about my calendar,” or “No one understands how much is happening at home.”

I was hurt. I was angry. I often felt scared, sad, and alone.

My mom’s actions in those moments stay with me. She let me feel my feelings and acknowledged how hard everything was. Then she would gently encourage me to think about small ways I could build care into my life: Could I order dinner instead of cooking? Was there support available for all the new courses I was building? What would it look like to slow down one project? Did the university offer resources for caregivers? What would make me feel the most peace at the end of the day?

I wish I had thanked her more for this. In a moment where she needed immense care herself, she was still caring for me.

What I understand now is that my mother’s questions were never just about individual solutions. Yes, maybe there were practical adjustments I could make, but she was also helping me recognize that institutions and workplaces need to acknowledge caregiving realities, too. Caregiving does not neatly fit into timelines, productivity expectations, or rigid systems. And yet so many people are expected to navigate it quietly while continuing to perform as though nothing has changed.

It took me another year before I was truly able to put some of these lessons into practice, and many people helped me build a system of support. I’m grateful for the HR representative who made filing for FMLA feel manageable and explained my rights clearly. I’m grateful for colleagues who extended grace when I had to step away from conference presentations and opportunities because my mom’s condition declined quickly. Many of them shared their own experiences as caregivers and reminded me that the work would still be there.

I also worked with a life coach who reminded me that the validation I sought for my work had to first come from myself, and that if I wanted to pause writing for a while just to be present with my mom, I could give myself permission to do that.

I appreciated my mentors who assured me that a writing career was still an option for me, even with the challenges I faced.

I’m grateful, too, for my mom’s hospice nurse, who began every visit by first asking my mother how she was doing, and then asking my brother and me the same question. He listened to every problem, and I imagine, just as my mom once did with the families she worked with, he reassured us that our feelings and our care for us mattered too.

Writing With Full Lives

Why am I sharing this?

Because I often talk about caring for yourself as a writer, and because so much of my work is grounded in the belief that sustainable writing practices require us to think seriously about care, I say this as someone who did not always want to hear that message.

There were many moments when I just wanted to write. I wanted to publish more, research more, and travel more, but I was often incredibly hard on myself when I couldn’t, because life was demanding so much of me.

Over time, I began to understand what my mother was offering me through those questions and conversations: an acknowledgment that we come to our work with full lives and responsibilities, and that our writing practices must make room for that reality.

My experiences as a writing professor have only deepened this understanding. The writing process matters, and it is always shaped by the realities of our lives: caregiving, work, grief, parenting, stress, health, transition, joy, exhaustion. We do writers a disservice when we pretend writing exists outside of those realities.

In my work as a developmental editor, writing coach, and educator, so much of what I do involves helping people figure out what care actually looks like for themselves and their writing in this particular season of life.

Sometimes people immediately embrace this framing, and sometimes there’s understandable skepticism. How does thinking about care actually help a project get done?

I understand that question deeply because I once resisted these conversations myself. But I’ve come to believe that it is impossible to build meaningful or sustainable writing practices without acknowledging the person doing the writing.

It would not be effective for me to suggest a writing plan that ignores someone’s actual life, energy, responsibilities, or needs. Yes, I want people to finish their projects. But what good is finishing a project if you’ve abandoned yourself in the process?

Why I Created Write with Care

This program exists because I know what it is like to want to keep writing during times when life feels overwhelming.

I know what it feels like to want to make progress. At the same time, I know how hard it is to navigate caregiving, burnout, uncertainty, grief, work, and the shifting demands of everyday life. I also know, from my experiences as a writing professor and coach, that sustainable writing practices require us to think seriously about process, support, and care.

Write with Care is a three-week summer writing practice for any writer—academic, creative, essayist, or somewhere in between—who wants to make progress on their writing while also learning to care for themselves in the process.

Over three weeks, participants will receive curated emails and access to optional online writing sessions designed to offer both structure and flexibility. I intentionally designed the program with both synchronous and asynchronous elements because I know firsthand how unpredictable life can feel, especially during periods of caregiving, transition, or overwhelm. Sometimes we need support that we can engage with on our own time, and sometimes we need the encouragement and accountability of writing alongside others in real time.

The program is organized around three themes:

Week 1: Arriving

We begin by slowing down. Whether you’re entering with clear intentions or starting from scratch, this week is about taking stock of where you are and imagining what’s possible.

Week 2: Tending to Obstacles

Every writer encounters resistance: internal doubts, external pressures, competing responsibilities, fear, exhaustion. This week focuses on identifying what’s getting in the way and exploring strategies for moving through it with care and curiosity.

Week 3: Writing with Care

This week turns toward you, the writer. Together, we’ll reflect on what support, sustainability, and care look like in this particular season of your writing life as an essential part of it.

An Invitation

I think often now about the questions my mother asked me during those years: What would make this easier? What support do you need? What would care look like right now?

Those questions continue to shape not only my writing life, but also my work as an educator, developmental editor, and writing coach. I believe deeply that writing matters, and so do the people doing the writing. We come to the page with full lives, changing needs, responsibilities, and limitations. Sustainable writing practices have to make room for that reality.

Write with Care grows from this belief. It is an invitation to approach writing with curiosity, honesty, flexibility, and compassion—to make space not only for the work itself, but for the person trying to do the work.

Showing up to the page matters, and so does caring for the person who arrives there.

If you are interested in a version of this program for your department or institution, please feel free to connect. If summer isn’t the right time but you are interested in this program, please do reach out; it helps me to gauge interest for upcoming programs.

Write with Care runs June 22- July 13 with sliding scale and scholarship options.