Devoted daughter seeks help when caring for moms
Miriam Sabir reveals how Holladay, a Utah nursing home, helps her deal with the care of her aging mother, Connie.
In her late 20s, when she worked in fashion in New York City, Nicole’s nurse felt she was at the top of the world. She got promotions with fashion brands and had a corner office and her own assistant.
It was 2011. A month after her promotion, her mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
“It was very challenging,” said the nurse who lives in Brooklyn. “When I was going through so much at work, I felt like my mother didn’t have enough space to support her emotionally.”
The nurse said her choice is clear if it is painful. She packed the office and became a full-time caregiver for her mother.
But in the end, her mother’s diagnosis did not stop her nurse’s career – it caused something new. The 43-year-old nurse is a media strategist in the field of health and wellness.
Family caregivers often give up on their careers or pull back from work to support their loved ones. That transition can have a major impact on caregivers’ financial and purpose, but some caregivers are called to continue their caregiving jobs, such as health aides, advocates, and storytellers. Even caregivers who have left the workforce for several years have found that they have acquired the skills worthy of their new resume.
Phyllis Stewart Piers, Vice President of Stanford Employee Support Programs and Services, is all essential skills in caregiving, including problem solving, research, time management, prioritization, negotiation, negotiating, adaptability and empathy. Diane Ty, managing director of Milken Institute Future of Aging, added patience, compassion, communication skills, projects and crisis management to the list.
“We believe they should be the skill you proudly put on your LinkedIn profile on your resume,” Ty said.
Ty noted that some caregivers may be hesitant to be open about caregiving experiences in the workplace, fearing that they will be taken over for promotions and other advancements. However, some employers feel that transparency is more praiseworthy than the resume gap. “Why do you make them guess?” said Tatyana Zlotsky, CEO of A Place for Mom.
For 12 years she cared for her mother, nurses found part-time and freelance jobs, shared caregivers’ stories on social media, and provided a millennium face to caregivers’ stories. At the time, she said she didn’t see her age in the role of caregiver.
The nurse continued to harness its fashion roots by dressing in bold colours and parading red lipstick and nail polish. In her blog and social media posts, the nurse highlighted the need for caregivers to take care of themselves.
“When we are caring for our loved ones, we don’t have to lose ourselves or our identity.
In the end, she wrote “incorrectly” and stated that creating content “has become a career… by chance.”
Why don’t we talk about senior care?
While parenting responsibility is widely understood and sometimes better supported in the workplace, senior care still has a long way to go, Zlotsky said. She helped care for her grandparents for over 20 years since her family moved from Moscow to the United States.
“No one cares about your 85-year-old grandmother being sick,” Zlotsky said. But she said caring for older people requires time and energy, and America needs to talk about it.
With children, there are expected milestones that provide care relief, such as when children go to school. However, when caring for older people, Thailand said, “it can often be a sudden, episode, and it can be a long-term period.” So something similar to the parental leave policy doesn’t always work for senior caregivers, Zlotsky said.
Like all caregiving, the burden drops overwhelmingly on women. According to a recent nursing report from AARP, 61% of the 63 million caregivers in the United States are women, and female caregivers report some of the worst effects of caregiving, including physical and emotional tension, loneliness and financial difficulties. Additionally, female caregivers are more likely to provide constant care than male counterparts.
Employers should want to keep caregivers as long as possible, Thailand said. By supporting them, employers can prevent expensive turnover costs and build trust among workers.
Zlotsky has seen the same story unfold over and over again. A woman quits her job to care for her children, returns to chapter 2 in her career, and within a few years she leaves again to look after her older parents. According to the second match of caregiving, Zlotsky says it comes with many of the same challenges as parents, but with less resources and awareness, and often more guilt.
“It just can’t fall on a woman,” Zlotsky said. “I’m crushing my daughter, so I can’t fall alone.”
Living experience is worth more than a degree for some employers
Sarah Kirch Gaffney was 25 years old when she became caregiver for her husband Stephen Gaffney, who was diagnosed with terminal brain tumors in 2009. He passed away five years later, and she failed to take a clear path to her grieving single mother.
She was in the middle of nursing school. It was a career path I never imagined before his diagnosis.
“To be honest, you know, doctors do a lot, but in reality it’s the nurses who make that difference every day,” Gaffney said.
But “It was really tough to juggle full-time nursing schools with toddlers and slowly fading husbands,” she said. After he passed away, her heart was no longer in nursing school. She caught her eye at the Maine branch of the American Brain Injury Association.
They were looking for someone with a master’s degree in social work, Gaffney said. She holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and environmental studies. She decided to apply anyway and realized that her living experience was enough to land her a gig.
ADP’s recent reports have emerged as a strong indicator of employee success compared to other more traditional qualifications, such as degrees and industry experience. A 2025 survey of over 1,000 employers by employment platform Testgorilla found that over half of employers rule out degree requirements, with 85% using skill-based employment, and 72% agreeing to improve better employment decisions and organizational outcomes, taking into account the overall candidates, including skills, personality and cultural integrity.
Gaffney’s job was part-time, providing flexible hours and the ability to work from home. This was rare in 2015. Most importantly, Gaffney discovers that the work is very meaningful and advocates for families like families who minimize resources while making painful diagnoses.
“I think it helps people feel a little more comfortable,” she said. “I’m not someone who has 45 different letters after the end of my name, but I have a lot of experience through it and knowing it is really valuable to many caregivers.”
Gaffney, 41, still works for the association and often promotes caregiver support groups. She remarried in 2017 and had a second husband since then and two more daughters.
She is once again caring for her spouse, with her second husband fighting the longtime Covid. It felt like a “non-stop battle or flight” to her, she said.
Understanding employers makes the difference in being able to stay in the workforce, not in the workforce.
Madeline Mitchell’s role in covering women and caregiving economy at USA Today is supported by partnership with extremely and Journalism Funding Partner. Funders do not provide editor input.
You reach Madeline with memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ x.
