Ep 7: The State of Caregivers and Careers & Why That Matters For Our Medically Complex Kids

[00:00:01] Erica Stearns La la la la la la la la. Peter Piper picked up pepper pickle. I actually don’t. 

[00:00:08] Alyssa Nutile Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Right? I actually don’t I don’t have that memorized. 

[00:00:14] Erica Stearns So that was my favorite part of improv group were actually the vocal warm ups. Hello, happy New Year, and welcome back to Caffeinated Caregivers, where we have coffee dates and conversations about all things related to caregiving. Hi Alyssa,. 

[00:00:42] Alyssa Nutile Hi Erica. 

[00:00:43] Erica Stearns Good morning. Happy New year. We haven’t done this since before Christmas. 

[00:00:49] Alyssa Nutile Oh my God. Right. I know a lot of things have happened. 

[00:00:53] Erica Stearns So that the. 

[00:00:55] Alyssa Nutile Month long stretch. 

[00:00:58] Erica Stearns It’s wild because we have been seeing each other voice messages back and forth nonstop. Like that’s just how we roll, guys on the background. This podcast actually never ends. It’s just not all available to the public. 

[00:01:11] Alyssa Nutile You get about 5% of it. Yeah. 

[00:01:14] Erica Stearns So there’s a lot of like stuff that we have talked about. But I forget that, like, we haven’t done this recording together since before Christmas, which is wild. So it’s good to see you back on the microphone. Back in the camera. 

[00:01:29] Alyssa Nutile Agreed. 

[00:01:31] Erica Stearns I just want to make sure everyone knows Alyssa looks so cute. When we got on camera today, I was like, you kind of remind me of Steve Zissou from Life Aquatic in no surprise because you literally just got back from swimming. So she’s got the, like, glow, the swimmer’s glow water. 

[00:01:47] Alyssa Nutile Also, all of the moisturization stuff I have to put on because I’m a person who swims anchoring in the middle of windy winter. 

[00:01:55] Erica Stearns You didn’t think about that. Alyssa, what is fueling you today? 

[00:02:00] Alyssa Nutile Uh, you know what? Like, the swimming is fueling me, and I think I’ve talked about this before. I know I have on Instagram, but, like, it’s always funny because I’ll get comments from people who are like, oh my God, you’re so, like, dedicated to swimming and exercising and doing all of that. And like, I mean, I guess I do have to say though that, like, it’s always funny to me because I’m always like, I take meds, I’ve tried therapy, I’ve done a lot of things. And it’s just like swimming is the only thing that works like really well for my mental health. And some of it’s like the exercise portion. Some of it’s also that like you can’t take your phone into the pool. It’s like, uh, what’s the word like sensory deprivation to like a certain degree. Oh yeah. Right. The amount of stimuli around you is decreased significantly. And that just that part alone has been, like, super good for my mental health. So on that note, if you have access to a pool or a YMCA or whatever, you don’t have to be good at swimming. I would consider it like join a water aerobics class or something like that, because you might be able to get similar benefits. But anyway, that swim is definitely feeling me. I love to swim. Also, last weekend we went back to Ohio to go stay with my sister in law, who I love. I love their family so much, but like I also kind of needed it because I just needed like a break from like myself for a minute. So like it was stressful to travel, but it’s also like easy to go to their house and it’s not too far away. And she lives in the middle of Amish country, and they have these stores that are like Benton Dent stores. And so I got four packages of Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Coffee for $2 each, and I made a cup of one of them and put it in this mug with some coffee creamer. And I’m drinking it right now. 

[00:03:48] Erica Stearns Oh, it’s an I have matching. So my matching mugs today, as close as you can get for handmade mugs from really cool artists, you’re going to be so disappointed to hear what is in mind though. 

[00:04:00] Alyssa Nutile Oh no, it’s tea, isn’t it? 

[00:04:03] Erica Stearns It’s just water. Uh, it’s, uh. 

[00:04:06] Alyssa Nutile I mean, it’s fine, but it’s not exciting. 

[00:04:08] Erica Stearns I told you we should do matching mugs today. But you. 

[00:04:12] Alyssa Nutile Did. 

[00:04:12] Erica Stearns I’ve been up since 530, and I’ve already had two cups of coffee. Very strong coffee, so I. But I can’t let us down. I’m the one who proposed matching mugs. Now I gotta fill this with water and show up and then disappoint her when I tell her. What do. 

[00:04:28] Alyssa Nutile You want? Uh, you don’t have to tell people like specifics, but would you like to tell our audience why you were up since 530? Is that a thing that’s been fueling you? 

[00:04:37] Erica Stearns Let me just lay the land for people, okay? 

[00:04:40] Alyssa Nutile Yeah. Here you go. Yeah, yeah. 

[00:04:41] Erica Stearns Do your friends. Uh, Alyssa did something to me this past year that cannot be undone. She introduced me to her book series that has changed my life. And if you’re interested in learning what that book series is, you are welcome to messages because a. Kind. Want to keep that a little bit. I want people to question and guess and figure out what we’re into. Although if you follow us closely. 

[00:05:07] Alyssa Nutile Also, let’s be clear. You got to be a certain type of person, probably to love this book series, although it is, it’s a very popular series right now. 

[00:05:14] Erica Stearns It’s not Harry Potter, although not Harry Potter like Harry Potter, but for adults. 

[00:05:21] Alyssa Nutile Yes, correct. 

[00:05:22] Erica Stearns And I would, in high anticipation of a new book being released at the end of this month. I have been trying to finish the entire series that this author has created, and I am now only three books away. I think 3 or 4 books away from that. And um, yeah, so I the last two nights in a row, I’ve been trying to like, sit down in bed and I listen because I’m an audiobook listener. It’s just a little bit more accessible for me. No, I take that back. It’s a lot more accessible for me. But unfortunately, because I’ve been so tired lately, I keep falling asleep or the book is so intense. It’s at such an intense point that I can’t sleep, so I have to force myself to turn it off. And, um, unfortunately, that has led to infiltrating my dreams and gnawing at my anxiety. So yeah, last few days I’ve been waking up at like 5 a.m. to turn on my book and get as much of it done as possible, leading to b c just started. You love this. You love this because you know you’re guilty of it. Yeah. 

[00:06:32] Alyssa Nutile I mean, I’m so guilty I this happens to me regularly. 

[00:06:35] Erica Stearns This is definitely sleep procrastination at its finest because I am sacrificing sleep to be emotionally battered. Honestly, truly, truly tortured. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if I could have texted you at 5 a.m., which I should have, because I would have been 6 a.m. your time and you might have been up, I don’t know, you would have been getting some, like, crazy messages for me because I was just reeling. So, you know what we want won’t talk about the origin story of this right now, because you and I have joked, um, but if we ever want to make money podcasting, we should start a side project where we just talk about the books that we’re reading on the side. And if people want to see that side of us that they can pay for that, we’ll be behind a paywall. 

[00:07:20] Alyssa Nutile That has to be behind a paywall because my parents listen to this podcast sometimes. 

[00:07:25] Erica Stearns So and then we could say, well, if you didn’t want to know that, you shouldn’t have paid for it, right? 

[00:07:30] Alyssa Nutile Exactly. This is on you at this point. It’s just your your life, your choices. 

[00:07:36] Erica Stearns We’ll save this conversation for maybe another time. If you guys want to hear about that, uh, check out our side project. What would we call her? 

[00:07:45] Alyssa Nutile She’s joking. It doesn’t exist. I mean, I guess if you want to send us a message. But I want to keep talking about books. I could talk about books forever, but we can’t because we have a big, big, big, big, big, big, big topic to get through today. And it’s a careers topic. Guys like this shouldn’t be a surprise if you’ve been paying attention. We’re we’re setting the landscape. I think for you this podcast like we are going to come back to this topic and dig into like certain facets of it over and over again. Today we’re going to keep it kind of like how did we describe it to like the jobby job aspects of it. So like we’re not going to dig a lot into like the personal life ramifications, not into like mental health stuff so much now because all of that isn’t like super important to this, but I think we’re going to dig into that in its own episodes, like in the future. And also just we do not have time today. 

[00:08:38] Erica Stearns No. 

[00:08:39] Alyssa Nutile We tried to write an outline for this episode and it was like four pages long. And then I kept cutting it down and it’s still like two and a half. 

[00:08:45] Erica Stearns So yeah, I mean, it’s an important topic. You know, the reason I’m sacrificing sleep to listen to her book is because I also have to go to work. You work at my job. Job, and I love what I do. But getting to this point where I am both a caregiver and a person with a career, it’s been a challenge. And the navigating that challenge has been so complicated, fraught with a lot of difficult decisions. And ultimately, that is the conversation that led us to where we are right now. We’ve mentioned that. We’ve talked about how nursing support or lack of nursing support was kind of the subject. That was coming a lot for me and Alyssa when we started Caffeinated Caregivers there started talking about this idea of caffeinated caregivers, but all of that was tied to the support we need in order to work. As we kind of joked a while ago, like a full year later, we’re finally coming around to this subject. 

[00:09:48] Alyssa Nutile It’s a theme for caffeinated caregivers. Also, this like we ruminate on things for forever before we actually get around to getting them into action. 

[00:09:58] Erica Stearns In our defense. We’re not just ruminating. We’re actively squirreling away information and data. Thanks to you guys who are listening and commenting and sending messages. We are saying that it is registering work, noting themes. We’re noting patterns where we’re seeing like where does the significance of this information lie? And so it does take time because we’re not coming to this conversation with only our experiences in mind. We really wanted to come to this conversation with a broad idea of what our community as a whole is experiencing. So with that said, neither of us knew just how big of a topic this would be. I mean, to kind of like set the stage, I think like the beginning of January, Alyssa posted something on her private page, um, mentioning that we were going to maybe revisit the subject that we had been thinking about that we have been talking about. And, um, did you get a lot of feedback on that? That was on your private account? 

[00:11:05] Alyssa Nutile I don’t yeah, I did, and that was kind of the reason that I did it because I was like, I don’t know if this is like super relevant to like all caregivers. So I’ll just like bring it up here. But let’s just say that like very quickly the feedback was like, yeah, it’s relevant. And then I was like, oh, I guess we should talk about it on caffeinated caregivers. And then when we put it up on Caffeinated Caregivers, it became abundantly clear that it’s extremely relevant and people want to talk about it. 

[00:11:34] Erica Stearns Like right now it’s relevant for a lot of reasons, and we’re going to get into that. But it’s important to say that the conversation surrounding careers, employment in general, we want to acknowledge that we are aware that many marginalized and minority groups face career employment discrimination. And we know that as people with disabilities, I’ve experienced my own unfortunate employment discrimination as a person whose voice regularly just kind of goes out, and my job is very much dependent on having a voice. 

[00:12:08] Alyssa Nutile So and also, we’re both mothers. 

[00:12:11] Erica Stearns We’re both mothers. So, yeah, I mean, I think it’s fair to say that caregivers do fit into that kind of marginalized category when it comes to employment and careers. I know that because I’ve experienced it’s. 

[00:12:27] Alyssa Nutile Yeah. And we’ve we’ve also heard that over and over again. We’ll dig into this a little bit more later. We’ll have the like in depth what the marginalization is I think in like future episodes. But we’re also going to share just today ways in which people have very clearly felt the career discrimination based on things that come up, you know, around caregiving basically, and the time off and the resources that they need to be able to, like, be an effective caregiver while also working. 

[00:12:57] Erica Stearns And the reality is this is a very emotional and difficult thing to talk about. I feel so vulnerable talking about money, talking about social supports that we’ve relied on. I am uncomfortable with it because of the stigma that exists out there in so many different ways, so many different angles of that too. So one thing we heard over and over when we started having these conversations online was just how relieved caregivers were to have a space to talk about this and to see that this challenge that they’re facing in navigating these difficult decisions surrounding employment, careers, income, they’re not alone in that, because oftentimes it can feel really lonely, and you can often feel like a failure because you’re having to face these difficult decisions, not just a failure at your career, but a failure as a parent having to face those. And just what kept coming up was that we’re not failures. There’s a lot of systems that are actually just failing us and our children. 

[00:14:05] Alyssa Nutile Totally, and also needing a certain level of income and feeling like you don’t have enough support and like asking for more support. We also had people tell us, like, it’s such a relief to like, see numbers to some of this because I don’t feel greedy. 

[00:14:21] Erica Stearns Yeah. 

[00:14:22] Alyssa Nutile Needing this amount of income to take care of my kids or, you know, like having some support, but like needing more to, like, do it effectively, like all of those kind of things. Because that’s the thing that comes up too. There is a certain amount of like, oh, well, maybe we’re just like too comfortable or whatever. Like that’s like wild. Yeah. For me to like, say about caregivers. But we sort of had people that were like, they kind of like felt that way for whatever reason. And then like putting numbers and like having this whole conversation, they were like, okay. Yeah. So it’s not like a personal feeling of mine, like, this is just really hard and you need this amount of resources to be able to do this really well. 

[00:14:58] Erica Stearns That varies. Depending on so many different factors like where you live. Like what is the cost of living and cost of homes or rent where you live? 

[00:15:09] Alyssa Nutile How big is your family? 

[00:15:10] Erica Stearns Are you someone who you know went to school? You have student loan debt that you’re trying to pay off on top of her career? There’s so many things that factor into this. 

[00:15:21] Alyssa Nutile Yes, correct. Let’s go ahead and dive into this portion too, because I don’t know that we’ve said this explicitly very many places, but this is a core tenet of caffeinated caregivers that we have talked about. It’s not just the idea of like, oh, poor being. I’m a caregiver. Life is hard. First of all, all of those things are valid, and you deserve support and care as like an individual on your own. So there there is that aspect. And I don’t mean to like minimize that. But on top of that is the fact that like we are caregivers to disabled. And I think in this community very often very medically complex children, yes. Children who rely on us for everything, they rely on us for positioning. They rely on us for feeding. They rely on us to keep them healthy. They rely on us to transport them everywhere that they go. They rely on us to breathe. If you have a kid who has like oxygen support or a trigger event or any of those things, they rely on us for so much and we cannot be the best caregivers. We can not be the most effective caregivers. We cannot give them everything that they need. If we are struggling to, like, get ourselves out of bed every day, if we are struggling to find money to buy food for our families, if we never get to sleep because we have to like, work, two jobs and caregiver and do this and that, whatever. Like we cannot be effective caregivers when our attention has to be pulled in so many different directions, and there’s so much stress placed on us, and that has a directly negative impact to our kids. So this whole place is a space for caregivers, and we talk a lot about caregiver issues. But I, I just want to make that connection back. That like part of the reason we talk so much about caregiver issues is because they are so closely connected to the well-being of our kids. We cannot take care of our kids the way they deserve to be taken care of if, like, we can’t even take care of ourselves and that’s not our fault. We need solutions for that. But that’s part of the reason we’re so passionate about these type of topics. 

[00:17:25] Erica Stearns Absolutely. You know, one thing that came to mind as you were listing those things is that there are certain aspects of caregiving to beyond the scope of the daily care, the administrative tasks, the appointments, the travel, all of those things. It’s really challenging for one person to maintain all of that in addition to another job, in addition to themselves and just household tasks. So bottom line, we need and we deserve support as caregivers. Our kids need it too. I feel like I can see that firmly. I’ve seen it demonstrated in my personal life, watching my mom raise me as a single mom without much in the way of support, relying on multiple systems of welfare to maintain a roof over her head and food on the table. I’ve also experienced it as a caregiver, and the decisions that I’ve been confronted with in navigating how to give my kids the very best quality of life, that’s been difficult. You know. 

[00:18:35] Alyssa Nutile If you’re wondering what the consequences to some of this is, ask yourself, what would happen to your kids? Like where would your kid be left? Your family be left if you had to be hospitalized for a week, right? You know, like, do you have someone who can step in and take care of your medically complex kid and your family and all your other things? And you some people do, and that’s awesome. Not everyone does, though, and that one that’s a problem, but two, I think that highlights like just how important you are to your kid’s life and like how important like your health and well-being are. And I also want to point out that, like, this premise is not unique to us, to the idea that, like, you have to support the structures around kids, where you’re talking specifically about medically complex and disabled kids as caregivers. But like, it’s one of the tenets of, you know, like social welfare in general, that you support mothers to support their children like that is part of the structure that needs to be in place. So, like, this is not a novel concept. We’re just applying it in our specific situation. 

[00:19:41] Erica Stearns I mean that it says a lot that the funding that has been created to support families like ours is under the umbrella of maternal and child health at the federal level. Speaking about the US here, sorry guys. For those of you with me in a different. With that said, let’s talk about some of the responses and feedback that we got from the community in the last few weeks. 

[00:20:08] Alyssa Nutile We’re just going to start with some polls for right now. Again, these aren’t just Instagram polls, so I’m not claiming that they are academic survey level polls. I do think they’re pretty accurate as far as like a good representation of what’s going on in our community, though we do know for a fact that we have mostly care givers in our community. We don’t vet every single person that comes into our community, but like we check to make sure it’s not a lot of bots. Also, we just hear from a lot of you. We can see your profile. We hear the things that you say to us. It’s very clear to me that, like most of our community are caregivers, and then we have a fair amount of like medical people, practitioners, that sort of thing that follow us too. So I feel pretty good about our data. And again, to set the stage, we had between 3 and 500 people answer every single one of these polls. So we’re not talking about a couple dozen people here, like in the hundreds for everything that we’re going to share with you today. 

[00:21:09] Erica Stearns Yeah. And I think to your point, oh, it’s about this not being like very rigid academic level research. The reason we’re doing this is because that does not exist. This data specifically looking at the intersection of caregivers and careers, not just parents, but specifically caregivers of children with disabilities and medical complexities. It doesn’t exist. I think we saw a number going around. At one point. 

[00:21:38] Alyssa Nutile We tried to find the numbers we tried to do. When we did do our research, we just didn’t come up with a lot that was like, I think super accurate to our community. There was one study, I think Nationwide Children’s did it. The parameters of the study, I think we’re more broad than our audience tends to be. It was basically like parents and caregivers of disabled children. 

[00:22:00] Erica Stearns Mhm. 

[00:22:00] Alyssa Nutile Not like specifically medically complex or like whatever, but like disabled children broadly. Um, which I don’t think quite covers like our little umbrella. Like it’s much bigger than our umbrella. They came up with a number. Anywhere from 15 to 40% of caregivers have career impacts. I think the 40% number, how they phrased it was like families with children with an intellectual disability, up to 40% of them have career changes. Again, they don’t I can’t remember anywhere in that study that they like, specifically talked about, like medically complex kids who tend to have multiple layered disabilities requiring machines. 

[00:22:43] Erica Stearns All right. 

[00:22:43] Alyssa Nutile Exactly. 

[00:22:45] Erica Stearns I still think even 40% for parents of children with IDD. I still think that’s pretty low. 

[00:22:50] Alyssa Nutile Yes, I would agree. So the data, there’s not a ton of it. It’s not great. The stuff that exists, it’s not very detailed or broken down. And it’s not just us who have run into this problem. We just talked with another organization this week actually, that they have been doing their own survey. They actually came up with a number. This is Katheryn from Hello Nurze. She shared an Instagram post over the summer that in their survey data, up to 87%. 

[00:23:22] Erica Stearns Of. 

[00:23:23] Alyssa Nutile Families and caregivers of medically complex children had major career impacts. 

[00:23:29] Erica Stearns Which tracked with our data. And that was. 

[00:23:32] Alyssa Nutile Cool. That tracked very closely with our data. And so it’s just dive into it. Okay. So the very first question that we asked was, did you have a career prior to becoming a caregiver? 80% of you, which was 400 people, said, yes, that you did have a career. We then asked, did you want a career? I just wanted to ask that because I sort of wanted to break down, you know, like there are plenty of moms in particular, not exclusively moms, but oftentimes moms, right, who are like, well, I did intend to stay home and like, raise my kids. And I didn’t really, like, plan to have a whole career outside of that. And I think that is totally fair. I also the data should reflect that. So almost 70% of people said that, like, yeah, they did. We only had about 23% that were kind of like indifferent, like if it came up whatever, and then 9% said no. And then, all right, here’s the kicker. And here’s the one that aligns with the whole owners data. Did you have to quit your career? Yes. Completely like full stop. No more career at all. That was 42%. Over 200 people said that. Yes, partially. So like perhaps you went from full time to part time, 21%, 105 people said yes, no, but had to make changes. So you got to stay in your career. But again, maybe like you’re doing flexible work, maybe you took a different position. Maybe you changed your hours. I was 29%, 142 people. No, stayed the same. So only this last category. These are the people that did not have any career changes. It was 8% of people. Over 400 responses. Only 41 of them actually had no career changes. 

[00:25:21] Erica Stearns So let’s break that down. So if we were to do this at the academic level and have the same amount of people answering this question, which we hope researchers find our data so that they can see the significance of this question and then do that research like this would be broadcasted all over the news. 92% of caregivers have experienced some sort of change, challenge or impact when it comes to their career. That’s huge. That is beyond significant. 

[00:25:55] Alyssa Nutile Yes. Coming back to. All right. So why does this matter, though, even outside of like, the personal impacts on caregivers, right? Like, yes, it can be mentally distressing. It can be very emotional. It can be all these things for caregivers. But like, let’s get to the real kicker here, which is we also asked about caregiver hardships. All right. I’m just going to read the question to you. In our ongoing research on careers and caregivers, we’re curious, have you faced similar challenges? These challenges could be loss of income, insurance and benefits, housing, transportation, food security, others. But those are the ones that we just listed. 20% of caregivers said no, we haven’t faced any hardships on that list. 34% said they have faced one hardship, 34% said they have faced multiple hardships, and then 12% of caregivers said they have faced every one of those hardships loss of income, loss of insurance and benefits, loss of housing related to all of that, loss of transportation and then loss of food security because they don’t have income to cover all of their needs. So again, when we’re talking about very tangible impacts on our family and then also on our kids from the fact that we cannot continue our careers, this isn’t just us sitting around saying, like, I’m sad that I don’t have anything to do. We don’t have time for that. We don’t have time for pity parties. We’re talking about this because it has like real, tangible effects on our families and negatively impacts our kids. 

[00:27:29] Erica Stearns Well, because 80% of us have indicated that we have struggled to have our basic needs met, like the hardships listed are basic needs. 

[00:27:39] Alyssa Nutile Absolutely. 

[00:27:40] Erica Stearns We have to have transportation to get our kids to and from their appointments to get the care they need. We have to have income or benefits or all of the above in order to just honestly keep our kids, because if we didn’t have those things, including a roof over our head, our ability to care and parent our kids would come into question without a doubt. 

[00:28:00] Alyssa Nutile Let’s be real. Like if someone came to your house, you could have child services called on you and your family if it became clear that, like, you don’t have adequate housing or food security or like means to get your child to the adequate, like education that the school district that you’re in says that they need to have. Like you could legitimately end up losing your family due to some of these reasons. And I think I’m obviously getting worked up about this. I have a lot of feelings about this, but it’s upsetting to me because I think that sometimes, like, people do not realize, like how serious and how much like the career aspect affects caregivers and their kids in like, every part of their life. 

[00:28:45] Erica Stearns Mhm. This shouldn’t be a controversial topic. In order for us to give our children the very best quality of life or just a quality life in general, let’s take very best descriptive words out of it. Although we’re all striving for that, I’m pretty sure we have to have support. We have to have systems that are functioning well for us. And these numbers speak to the fact that they are not okay. We worked up about this because it matters and I care a lot about it. 

[00:29:17] Alyssa Nutile It’s such a big deal. All right. We’re going to try and go through this next portion a little bit faster. We’re just going to cover really quick. There are caregivers working right. Like roughly half of caregivers were able to work in some capacity as far as our data. And we did asked a whole bunch more questions than what we’re just sharing today. We’re just trying to again, give you the overview and we’ll dig in deeper. But we asked what kind of jobs caregivers hold. Over 100 of you responded. We were looking for trends in the data and I’ll say of 100 responses, probably like 70 of them were unique in. Some way or another. So all of that to say, there’s not one job that most caregivers have. There were a lot of caregivers in the medical fields in teaching and then in jobs that they can do working from home, and those all tend to be relatively flexible careers. That was basically the only really common trend. Most of the jobs have some amount of flexibility in them. I also just want to go ahead and point out we asked for caregivers who couldn’t work right now or don’t work because it’s not like quote unquote worth it, right? Like, basically they can’t afford childcare or they can’t afford to lose their public benefits, like whatever that like determination is right now, what amount of money would you need to make to be able to go back to work? On average, I think the median number was they’d need a career that would pay them between 60 and $80,000. But we also had multiple answers in the 100 to $150,000 range, particularly for people who had large families or live in really high cost of living areas like people who live around Denver, people who live around LA and Portland and New York City and stuff like that. Like you just need more money to live in those places. And to them, it wasn’t even worth trying to go back to work if they couldn’t make that amount of money. 

[00:31:17] Erica Stearns And it’s not like relocation is just a simple answer for every family. I know some people have the flexibility within their own family dynamic to relocate, but that’s just not the reality for a lot of people. I also want to know I personally did have to do this kind of math over the summer before I took a new job. I had to figure out if it was worth while for me to take a job that was offering me money that would make us unqualified for things like Social Security and Medicaid. I had to do the math and figure out if it was enough to make up for the loss of those social supports. And what is wild, you guys? So to exchange a part time job with public benefits for a full time job with private benefits, it was an even exchange. And that to me is wild. Yes, that’s really wild. 

[00:32:20] Alyssa Nutile Absolutely. We heard that sentiment expressed multiple times in a variety of ways. We heard people who are like, we can’t take a promotion because if we take a promotion, we’re going to lose a bunch of our benefits or we can’t take a different job, because my job gives us really good benefits, and I can’t quit because we’re going to get worse state benefits, and we’re not going to be able to make it. If I don’t keep the job that I have right now. So I’m more or less trapped in the employment that I have currently. We heard people who are like, we make like $5,000 too much, or we own two cars, so we can’t get a certain amount of benefits, like all variations of these sort of things where like it’s more complicated than like just how much money you make, right? It’s like all these interplay of things that converge to make it really difficult to navigate careers and then to take care of our kids right on top of that. 

[00:33:18] Erica Stearns And also, sometimes we feel nervous about asking for flexibility or accommodations, especially if we have understanding employers that have met us where we are. It feels uncertain to ask for more when we need more. And that, of course, is something that society has ingrained in us that we were not deserving of these accommodations. And and also the fact that it’s not normal, as we see, for employers to provide those accommodations. So it leaves a lot of caregivers truly experiencing discrimination, you know, whether they realize it or not, it is a form of discrimination. 

[00:34:00] Alyssa Nutile Well, I’m comfortable calling it discrimination because we also heard at least half a dozen stories of this where and this is illegal, by the way, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. Just like it’s illegal to discriminate against pregnant mothers during the hiring process like that. Like, yeah, it’s technically illegal, but what are the ramifications for employers? And the truth is, like oftentimes the answer is very little ramifications. 

[00:34:25] Erica Stearns Happens all the time. 

[00:34:26] Alyssa Nutile So we have multiple stories that we’ve heard now of employers actively discouraging their employees from taking FMLA. 

[00:34:35] Erica Stearns Mhm. 

[00:34:36] Alyssa Nutile Actively refusing to pay out certain types of like PTO based on like hours worked and things like that. So I just say all of that to point out that, like we’re not making up ramifications here for the workplace. Like these are actual things actually happening to people. And these are the egregious examples. These are not. The like discomfort that people feel like having some conversations because there’s a whole range of that too. This is just like the worst examples. Yeah, yeah. 

[00:35:09] Erica Stearns This is the red area. And there’s. 

[00:35:11] Alyssa Nutile Absolutely really. 

[00:35:12] Erica Stearns Wide gray area too. I feel like the other side of that is not everyone has the kind of protections that we’re talking about. Um, you know, whether you’re speaking to FMLA, not everyone is working in a large organization with more than 50 employees. So some of those protections just don’t even exist for caregivers in the workplace. For some of us, we used our PTO for maybe pregnancy challenges or that saved it up for that. And we didn’t expect a three month Nick. You stay. So some of us exhaust our PTO at the very beginning of this journey, and this conversation is just not even something we can have because we don’t have anything to leverage as far as time off or benefits or anything like that. So it’s so complex, it’s so layered. And to unpack this, you and I, Alyssa discussed how this was kind of like a pilot study to what needs to be a larger study on this issue, and these are things to think about as we encourage researchers to dive into this subject, not to just look at the numbers. While the numbers as far as the economy and, uh, income and benefits, those are strong. Those are very strong and very alarming and concerning. Let’s also take some time to dig into the emotional complexity of this as well. Loss of identity, loss of sense of control in self and loss of maybe a really skilled worker in the workforce that could really do wonders for the public, their ability to bring their talent into the community, to help others. You know, we’re talking about, you know, the potential of losing people like that. 

[00:36:52] Alyssa Nutile Totally kind of. On that note, I want to touch on one more thing, too, because this is kind of a downer conversation. And honestly, that’s because, like the state of caregiving and careers is kind of dower for caregivers. But I want to like highlight one little bright point, which is there is and I think this is true for both Erica and I. There is also this aspect of like, once you become a caregiver, there’s this opportunity for you to end up in a career that feels much more meaningful and aligned. Right. Like all of a sudden, maybe I’m just making stuff up. So, like, if this is your job, I’m sorry, but like, say you’re like a financial advisor before you become a caregiver and, like, you know, you’re doing all the money stuff and whatever, and then you have your kid and all of a sudden, like, it’s not that you don’t think that that’s important. It’s just like you get a real different perspective on your life. Right? And maybe you decide to go into a different career. Maybe you decide to go into like a medical career or like whatever could be anything. 

[00:37:53] Erica Stearns Or maybe you use your financial skills and you see a need within your community that you can apply past skills with your new skills as a caregiver. There is that aspect to you because that’s that’s part of being a caregiver. We do acquire all these new skills, and I don’t mean to cut you off, but when I went back to work with the public in a medical field that wasn’t necessarily aligned with the kind of medical stuff I was doing with my own kids, I felt very unfulfilled because I had all these new skills that I had just not using. That’s a valid pain to acknowledge that we experience too. 

[00:38:33] Alyssa Nutile Totally. And I think many of us that have been able to continue working or restart working have ended up in careers that now feel much more fulfilling, and some of it is just out of necessity. Right? Like if we are going to go to work and we have our kids, in our case, actually we both work from home, so we’re not technically leaving our kids at home, but leaving them in the hands of a nurse or someone else, another family member, whatever, to go do whatever we do for like hours a day. Like you want to make sure that that feels really meaningful to you in some ways, right? 

[00:39:07] Erica Stearns Yeah, well, that was the struggle I had. I mean, that was exactly what I experienced. 

[00:39:13] Alyssa Nutile Yeah, that’s not the case for every single caregiver, but it’s absolutely a thing that can happen and does happen. And we’ve heard multiple stories of that too. And that’s also just another reason that there should be more supports for caregivers to be able to restart their careers. Right? Because we do have all of these skills and all of these abilities that can be really, really meaningful to us and to our families and really meaningful for our community broadly. And we should be able to have the opportunity to use those. 

[00:39:42] Erica Stearns Yeah. And I think not all unexpected career changes are negative. You know, we’ve heard from many people who have actually gone on to have career changes, and it felt very transformative and very positive. And they were able to take their past experience and their current. And apply that in a new and extremely meaningful way for the community and themselves as a whole. One of the things we want to do in the future is maybe highlight some of those stories, so people can start getting some ideas of other opportunities that exist, or that you can create as a caregiver. 

[00:40:17] Alyssa Nutile Yes, absolutely. Let’s go through this real quick. We are going to talk briefly about what caregivers are doing right now to more or less be able to manage their careers while caregiving. And then we’re going to jump right into our list of solutions that we think caregivers need. And that should be implemented in a state and federal level, like soon, very soon, as soon as possible. If you follow us on Instagram, you’ve probably seen a post that, like, has dived into these solution options and we’re going to write a blog post about it. But we also want to like briefly touch on it here. Okay, so these are like the funny, sad answers that caregivers said for how they make it work. I’m just going to read some real quick. Caffeine. Lots of tears, survival mode anxiety and therapy for anxiety. Straight up chaos. Not very well. No sleep I don’t even know. Well. So this is all in response to a question of how do you guys do it? How do you make it work having a career while also caregiving? That was not every answer. I just wanted to read those out loud because there are a lot of people out there who are like, I don’t know how I’m doing it, I just have to. So if you are in that stage where you have a career and you’re trying to caregiver at the same time and you don’t feel like you’re doing it very well, you are not alone, friend. There are a lot of people out there who will feel exactly the same way. 

[00:41:39] Erica Stearns Mhm. Also you have a lot of people who reported just, you know, working part time or doing a lot like what our family did, where you go down to a single income family, uh, one partner works and the other becomes their full time caregiver. Again. These come down to like financial decisions that are not always easy to make. The other thing that we saw noted a lot was just working opposite shifts of their partner. You know, so maybe it’s a two income household where both parents are working and they’re just working opposite schedules of each other so that someone is always home. And then the one that we can talk about right now, but wasn’t always on the table for caregivers prior to the pandemic, is flexible remote work from home options? Following the pandemic, there was this unique thing that happened in the workforce in which a lot of us were able to go into remote work from home opportunities. So that’s a huge one. And that’s why it’s important to, uh, when it comes to this topic, not just revisit it once a decade, but really kind of have the opportunity to look at this every year. Because just like our typical workforce, these things are really important. Examine what things are happening in our society that are going to impact a caregiver’s ability to be in the workforce as well. 

[00:43:01] Alyssa Nutile Yes. One thing that we heard a lot that is very like nowhere requires this, right? Like it really just depends on who you end up with and where you get your job. But like we heard, a lot of people say like, oh, my employer is super accommodating and understanding now, so that’s how I can make it work. We also had a lot of people tell us we had to quit our job because our employer is not accommodating or understanding at all. So there is a certain amount of like, I don’t want to say getting lucky, but just it it really depends on who you work for, right? Because like some people are going to help you out and some people are going to make it harder. 

[00:43:41] Erica Stearns It does. And it’s also important to know that within those conversations, a lot of people who reported having an understanding, an accommodating employer, have already worked for the organization for many years. They had already, like, demonstrated their value and their worth to the company. But a lot of people said who were comedy and that was like, we can’t go anywhere else. But, you know, they wouldn’t probably be met with that same accommodation understanding as a brand new employee. And I think that’s absolutely true. Without having to do a lot of investigative research, I feel like I could say that’s probably accurate. 

[00:44:15] Alyssa Nutile As a woman who applied for several jobs and interviewed a couple of times while I was pregnant, including being paid to travel to interview from one of those jobs while I was pregnant. I can tell you that, like having something going on that makes people question during the hiring process. Any ounce of like your commitment to the job is pretty much guaranteed to not get you the job. Not always. 

[00:44:39] Erica Stearns Oh, it’s true though it’s true. I think that’s something unique that women face pretty frequently. You don’t just have to be a caregiver of a medically complex or disabled child to experience exactly what you just described. So. 

[00:44:53] Alyssa Nutile And then we’ve got one last thing here. And it’s it’s sort of an in-between thing. Right. So paid caregiving as in caregivers being paid to care for their own child. So I think we should consider that it’s own career, right. Like it does a career in the medical field. Like taking care of your own child is its own career option. The availability, as we’ll discuss again for those programs for paid caregiving varies wildly. The actual amount of pay that you get for some of these paid caregiving programs varies extremely wildly, like oftentimes in some states, like you’ll be making barely above minimum wage to take care of your own child in oftentimes what is like highly specialized medical treatment. 

[00:45:42] Erica Stearns Doing the same tasks that a nurse would get paid double the amount. 

[00:45:46] Alyssa Nutile Or quadruple maybe up to like $40 an hour or four, and you’ll get paid ten. So it’s not a perfect solution. It has been, from what we can tell, though, a solution that has more or less kept a lot of families out of poverty. 

[00:46:03] Erica Stearns Absolutely. 

[00:46:04] Alyssa Nutile All right. Let’s talk about systemic solutions. On that note, paid caregiving in every state, or at least having the option to be a paid caregiver that is fairly compensated in every state. When we asked what would be most helpful for families by far, I think having the option to be a paid caregiver was our number one. And then the second option that people would find most helpful to either stabilize their income or be able to, like, go back to a career is not just home health nursing, right? But like high quality home health nursing with a nurse that you can trust and an organization that’s easy to work with. Again, that’s a topic that we’ll dive into in much more depth in another episode, because it’s just so much to get into right now. But, I mean, I think Eric and I can both say that, like, having that option is the only reason that either of us are able to continue our careers for the most part, like having additional trained help in our household to help take care of our kids. 

[00:47:04] Erica Stearns Yeah, definitely. 

[00:47:05] Alyssa Nutile I do want to touch real quick on the we talked earlier about like the stigma aspect of just asking for help and like using public resources generally. So I didn’t come home from the hospital was home health nursing for Gemma. I didn’t know that was even an option to have until she was hospitalized a couple times when she was like around a year old. Some of the nurses at the hospital were like, you should really look into home health nursing. And then I had our early intervention therapists, a couple of them, when Gemma was sick. Again, be like, you need help, like you really need help and you deserve help and you should look into help. And I was like, I don’t know, it’s my kid. I don’t know if I should do that. Um, I obviously came around to the fact that, like, yeah, of course I need help. And of course she deserves help too, right? Like, I again, I wasn’t capable of being the best caregiver for her when I had to stay up for 48 hours straight and my husband had to go to work. And, like, we didn’t have any backup here, like, that was bad for me and it was bad for her. But, um, the stigma part. So you need like a sign off basically from, like your PSP or a doctor or whatever when they’re doing the signing up with a nurse agency thing. And I tried to start that with a doctor’s office. And so I went and I took Gemma, and she’s about 18 months old now. And I asked about nursing care. And the doctor goes, oh, do you feel like that’s the thing that you need Jambos PCP. 

[00:48:25] Erica Stearns Oh my gosh. 

[00:48:26] Alyssa Nutile They literally said that to me. And I was like, yeah, but after that I didn’t even bother with him. I just called up the nursing agency and they were like, we can take care of all of that. And then they got the referral that way because I was like, I can’t even handle this man right now. And it was a man. It was an older man that said that to me. 

[00:48:43] Erica Stearns So that was the first response that you got when you finally asked for help. 

[00:48:48] Alyssa Nutile That was the first response. 

[00:48:50] Erica Stearns That’s that’s a lot. 

[00:48:51] Alyssa Nutile Yeah. That was like about six months after he told me that I should see someone because I was ranking very high on the postpartum depression survey that they gave to you. 

[00:49:01] Erica Stearns Season one for your mental health. But don’t get actual, you know, let me just make you feel ashamed for asking for the physical help and. 

[00:49:11] Alyssa Nutile Support that, you know, like those are not connected at all anyway. 

[00:49:15] Erica Stearns Well, and with that said, when you talk about stigma, I also want to acknowledge that in order to get home health nursing for a lot of people, child has to be eligible for Medicaid. Mhm. 

[00:49:27] Alyssa Nutile On that note, most states do have Medicaid waivers of some kind for children with medical complexities. The process by which you actually get those waivers, though, depends on the way the state rolls it out, depends on the state’s funding, depends on whether or not there’s a waitlist due to lack of funding. It depends on all kinds of things that can make it very complicated. A lot of times it depends on whether or not families know that their kid can get a medicaid waiver. You would think that would be a thank. That, like your medical providers or the social worker that talks to you in the NICU would like help you figure out, but that’s actually not always true. 

[00:50:04] Erica Stearns Very often that is not the case. Just I want to put that out there. 

[00:50:09] Alyssa Nutile Exactly. And then again, our social worker in the NICU did help us sign up for Medicaid. She didn’t tell us what that would mean for us though, other than just like, okay, now you have another insurance. Like, she didn’t explain to us at all the ways in which Medicaid provides a lot of things other than just like backup insurance, you know, or primary insurance. So there’s that aspect. Also, if we’re coming back to like the sort of FMLA issues caregivers need access to extended paid leave. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that that is not a state or federal requirement anywhere in any state. 

[00:50:46] Erica Stearns Oh, I actually do think that my state is doing something about that now. Okay. Here soon. So that’s exciting for those of us in Illinois. 

[00:50:55] Alyssa Nutile Keep us updated. 

[00:50:56] Erica Stearns I definitely will. 

[00:50:58] Alyssa Nutile There are some private companies that obviously like offer extended paid leave for all kinds of family hardships. Usually that’s just very dependent on the company that you work for, and there’s not a whole lot of systemic stuff making that accessible to most of us elsewhere. There should be less stigma, and we need more flexible employment options like as caregivers. Also, I think just access to training and education that would let more caregivers be able to get into some of those fields. For example, you said your husband, Randy, has a lot of like, skilled labor kind of experience. That’s not necessarily a skill that lends itself particularly well to like, uh, work from home stuff. 

[00:51:40] Erica Stearns Carpentry and veterinary medicine. While it has benefited us personally in our home and for our animals. It’s not something you can easily do for others and get paid for it from the home. Right? So he’s not a veterinarian. I just want to make sure that just. 

[00:51:56] Alyssa Nutile Kind of in that too. When our kids get a little older and we’re talking about education, the educations that they deserve to receive, the educations that are available for them to receive, actually having high quality education for them, either easily accessible in our home or I’m just going to say it like worthwhile even taking them out of their home. Right? Because we’ve heard of conversations, you know, school districts, there’s all kinds of rules about what they technically have to provide for children with disabilities. As far as special education goes, the way that gets implemented. It’s just incredibly varied. And there will be school districts that, like, have one classroom, like in the entire district for special education. And at the end of the day, it might just end up with your kid. Kind of like sitting in the classroom around other kids all day. And like, that’s the extent of their education that they receive. Some places it’s very thorough. They have a lot of aides, they have a lot of therapists. It just varies so widely, and there’s a lot less accountability for that process than I think most of us would hope or even understand. 

[00:53:09] Erica Stearns I agree with that said, some other important solutions or options for caregivers that I want to touch on are things like Social Security. That is one public benefit. There’s also things like Snap or in some states it’s called link. So those are supplemental income for nutrition. It is not an easy or practical option for many people. And it is also really a lifeboat for many others. Social security unfortunately, the eligibility requirements have not been updated in nearly 50 years, so that becomes a major barrier for a lot of families who could really benefit not just from the income the Social Security could provide, but also the fact that when a child is deemed disabled through the Social Security Administration, if they even receive a penny from Social Security, they automatically qualify for Medicaid. So it can work hand in hand and like helping open up access and eligibility for disabled kids to, you know, have public benefits to kind of provide some relief for the parents on the costs of the insurance and the medical bills and the medications, the nutrition and the therapies, etc.. 

[00:54:27] Alyssa Nutile And provide access for the kids to get like higher quality, all of those things. Right? Like then you don’t have to get like the really crappy Medicaid diapers. Maybe they’re not crappy in your state. In Pennsylvania, where I am. All the diapers available are very crappy, which means that we have to buy our own diapers. It’s just stuff like that, you know, like things that are going to, like, go directly towards your child, like, that’s the stuff that we’re talking about from Social Security, because I think and I can say for experience, you’re not getting a lot of money from this. 

[00:54:58] Erica Stearns You’re not getting a lot of money, but it has definitely helped. So we’ve talked about these things that can really help caregivers. But what do we do as caregivers to move the needle on the barriers that exist in accessing these solutions, these helpful supports I was in we’ve talked about this before. We’re constantly going to come back to it. Advocacy is a form of self-care. When we think about what we can do as a community. It all comes back to advocating, to organizing together, to really creating in the united front around these issues and acknowledging that some of our peers in this community are not going to be able to carry the same amount of advocacy weight as others, they may not be able to. They may be too early on to understand even the needs to advocate for. 

[00:55:51] Alyssa Nutile This comes back to the caregiver continuum that we’ve talked about too, right? Like depending on where you are and depending on what amount of your needs are met, you may not have any extra time or energy or money or whatever to be able to do any sort of like broad advocacy outside of just like making sure your kid stays alive. So when we talk about like, building groups and coalitions and whatever part of the reason that we need so many different people in the caregiver community is because different parts of that community are going to be able to do different things at different times. And I’m sure all of us are going to be crossing the borders of like being able to do more or being able to do less, being able to do nothing at all. And that’s okay. Like we’re here to support each other and work together despite all of that. 

[00:56:35] Erica Stearns And at the end of the day, just engaging in these conversations about these issues, the simple act of filling out the poll or their survey or sending us a message about your own experience, it may not feel like the definition of advocacy that we often see waved around, but it is a step in advocacy. And really, I want to thank all of you for participating. Almost 500 of you were actively advocating with us as we were having these conversations, and I don’t even think as caregivers that we acknowledge sharing our story, getting vulnerable, having these difficult conversations about the challenges we face. That is an act of advocacy. And I just really think we need to celebrate that. 

[00:57:22] Alyssa Nutile Yeah. And on that note, we are in the process of developing a more comprehensive survey, just kind of about the state of like caregiving and careers. And we asked if you guys would be interested in taking that. We had around 200 people who were like, yeah, send it right now. So we’re thinking really carefully about how exactly we want to roll that out and what kind of questions we want to ask and like how we want to format it. So it’s coming. But I want to be clear that, like having the data in the first place is a huge part of doing the advocacy work. Like Erica just said, like we have to have the data to be able to take to people who don’t live the same life that we live for, particularly when we’re talking about like governmental institutions and representatives and stuff like that. Because fair or not, they like numbers. 

[00:58:12] Erica Stearns They need the numbers. We have to have the number to demonstrate the need. 

[00:58:16] Alyssa Nutile They like the numbers. Yeah. Also like many large like medical research institutions really, really, really like to have numbers. And that could be a really useful way to get bigger legislative processes going, like when you have large medical institutions behind you. So just the like, Erica, start again the process of sharing your story and helping us get data, helping us collate data, all of that. And again, not just us, we have at least one other organization who’s working on a similar project, and we’re going to share their survey if they do another 1 in 2024. Also with you. That’s huge. That’s huge. 

[00:58:56] Erica Stearns We’re committed to sharing any opportunity for advocacy, any opportunity for research that you guys can be involved in because these issues are really important to us. And I’m like we said, you may be in a place where all you can do is answer a poll, or you might find yourself in a place where you have 5 to 10 minutes to spare to take a survey, or you have a night once a month to be involved in a research advisory committee. Whatever it is, you should acknowledge that on top of everything else you’re juggling, that’s huge and we commend you for it. And we thank you for being a part of this with us. 

[00:59:29] Alyssa Nutile And before we sign off, let’s talk about the situation that’s happening in Indiana really quick, because we’ve talked about just now a lot of like smaller advocacy things that you can do if you want, like bigger capital advocacy work. There are also lots of opportunities to do that. There’s a big one right now in Indiana. I’ll let Erica explain the situation real quick. 

[00:59:53] Erica Stearns Well, I was that this whole conversation is happening. At a really important time because currently our friends, our peers in Indiana, are facing a rather scary change that has developed pretty quickly. Indiana currently has a paid caregiver program. Um, unfortunately, caregivers started reporting does last week that they were getting notifications that their caregiving was going to end and that, uh, several families, in fact, I know of families who have left Illinois to move to Indiana so that they could be paid caregivers to kind of help, you know, alleviate this issue of loss of income, loss of career. And currently, our friends in that state are being told that they may lose that program. So there are a lot of caregivers who are rallying together. They’re mobilizing, organizing. They are going to be at the state House on Monday, and we’ve posted a link at our stories. We’re going I put it in a highlight called something. 

[01:01:00] Alyssa Nutile We don’t know yet, maybe just Indiana. 

[01:01:03] Erica Stearns Yeah, we’ll have it available for you guys. If you’re listening to this, check out our Instagram, our stories highlights. It’ll be somewhere on there. Definitely check that out. If you’re in Indiana, this could drastically impact you and some of these decisions surrounding caregiving. I also want to thank everyone who reported this. You know, it definitely takes a community to learn from. And and your voice just sending us a message and saying, hey, this very important thing is on the line. That helps us to be able to help you guys. So thank you for sharing that with us. 

[01:01:36] Alyssa Nutile Even in that there’s like there’s a lot of wrong, as you know. So we had some people message us who are like, we are going to be there Monday. We’re getting on the steps, we’re bringing our signs, we’re having our like designing our slogans. We’re doing all of that. And then we had other people message us who was like, I’m so sad I can’t be there. But hey, could you share this link? And also I’m going to write a letter and call my representative. Can you share the link for that too? So there’s multiple tiers of this one. Just like telling as many people as you can, even if you can’t go to events to get other people who might be available to go to those events. And if you can’t do that, you can again, write your representative, call your representative, call your state representatives. Also, call your local representatives to put pressure on them to call the state people that they are in contact with. There’s all these like little ladders, you know, like leading up to, like holding a picket sign and like, stomping around in Indiana in the freezing cold. Because while that sounds awesome, I would love to be there. It’s also not accessible for everyone, right? For the same reasons that, like, we don’t have careers because like, who’s going to stay home and watch your kid? 

[01:02:43] Erica Stearns Exactly. Sign the petition to there’s a petition and available that we have in our stories as well. 

[01:02:49] Alyssa Nutile All right, Erica, we covered so much today. 

[01:02:52] Erica Stearns Yeah, we’ve covered so much and yeah, not enough. Oh. 

[01:02:56] Alyssa Nutile Yeah. 

[01:02:57] Erica Stearns With that said, this is a conversation we will be revisiting. We’re going to hit different pieces of it, different aspects, different angles, because I want to change things when it comes to this. 

[01:03:06] Alyssa Nutile All right Erica I think we’re done for today. 

[01:03:10] Erica Stearns Yeah. May the force of a good audiobook and caffeine be with y’all caregivers. Take care your. 

[01:03:18] Alyssa Nutile Bye