18 Quotes about Caregiving to Suit Every Caregiver Mood
Caregivers are often equal parts exhausted and overwhelmed. They also carry about a lot of big feelings and are often in sore need of inspiration. Here is a collection of quotes to help caregivers get through the day with whatever comes their way.
If you feel worried:
Do not burden to-day with the cares of tomorrow. Dragging the future into the present, is one chief cause of spiritual weakness. Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its troubles, but it empties it of its strength.
Reverend George Seaton Bowes in “In Prospect of Sunday”
If you need a dose of positivity:
Every storm runs out of rain, just like every dark night turns into day.
Gary Allan
If you need a reminder about why your work matters:
I think I have learned that the best way to lift one’s self up is to help someone else.
Booker T. Washington in his December 1908 speech
If you need to remember you are a team:
Take the I out of illness, add W and E, and you have wellness.
Charles Roppel, then Head of the Mental Health Promotion Branch of the California Department of Mental Health
If you are dealing with the unknown:
Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
James Baldwin in his essay “As Much Truth As One Can Bear”
If you need courage:
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the say saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’
Mary Anne Radmacher
If you want to feel good about doing good:
It takes courage for a man to listen to his own goodness and act on it. Do we dare to be ourselves? That is the question that counts. Let us dare!
Pablo Casals
If you feel burdened or overwhelmed:
Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength - carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time.
Corrie Ten Boom
If you need some encouragement:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops - at all -
Emily Dickinson
If you feel unseen:
People with nothing to declare carry the most.
Jonathan Safran Foer in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
If you are searching for meaning:
Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.
Clive Barker in Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War
If you want something that is not a platitude to say to the person you care for:
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
Rumi
If you sacrifice yourself to care for others:
Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to our true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many other lives we touch.
Parker Palmer in Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
If you need a positive mantra:
Taking care of myself doesn’t mean ‘me first.’ It means ‘me, too.’
L.R. Knost
If you want to rest but feel you can’t:
Just because you take breaks doesn’t mean you’re broken.
Curtis Tyrone Jones
If you need a laugh:
I am an unlikely guardian. A month ago I thought the Medicare doughnut hole was a breakfast speaial for seniors. I am a care inflictor.
George Hodgman in Bettyville
If you want to be reminded, you’re not the only caregiver who has felt this way:
I keep telling myself ‘I got this.’ But, I have to be honest with you. I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Berkana Vuno
If you need to be reminded of why it all matters:
Caregiving often calls us to lean into love we didn’t know was possible.
Tia Walker in The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love
Special thanks to QuoteInvestigator.com for helping verify sources for as many quotes as possible.
Did you know? November is National Family Caregivers Month. #CaregiverAnd
About the Writer: TJ Condon is a caregiver and award-winning author of Some Assembly Required: A True Story of Love and Organ Transplants, a funny book about everything going wrong.
