The Caregivers Podcast

Do you owe your parents the rest of your life? And what do you do when you love someone but can’t keep being their caregiver?

This week, Dr. Mark welcomes back family therapist Angela Caldwell for a direct conversation built from the questions behind our most shared episodes and the ones caregivers keep asking in support forums. Dr. Mark asks for her honest professional take on each one: what she’d advise, what she’s seen happen, and what’s likely if nothing changes. They cover what adult children owe aging parents, including parents who were abusive, and where that duty ends. They talk about siblings who won’t help, the resentment that grows when you give out of obligation, breaking a promise to never “put them in a home,” and how to balance a sick parent against your marriage and your kids.

Angela also shares her own experience. While her family cared for her father-in-law in California, she learned that the resentment she felt toward him was really about how his care facility was treating him. Later the family made the hard choice to sell his house so they could pay for better care. And she passes on the advice mountain guides gave her on climbs with her father: never look at the top of the mountain.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Support Our Guest:
▶️ https://www.angelacaldwell.com/
▶️ https://youtube.com/@angelacaldwell 
▶️ https://caldwellfamilyinstitute.com/

Connect With Us:
▶️ https://linktr.ee/thecaregiverspodcast

Buy Us a Coffee:
▶️ https://buymeacoffee.com/thecaregiverspodcast

Subscribe to The Caregivers Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. If you find these conversations helpful, please leave a review or share this episode with a fellow caregiver.
🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fLSHPA7ZHbOpvrmcbfcd5?si=2a71d7c4e2e9427c
🔊 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-caregivers-podcast/id1842203665

Your mother has sent money to a man she's never met. You ask to see her phone, and she puts it away. What do you do? And if she hands it over, are you ready for what else you might find? Here's how to protect an aging parent from scams without taking over their life.

This week, Dr. Mark covers how deepfake and voice-cloning scams work, how to check a parent's phone without invading their privacy, and how to spot subscription creep. He also weighs monitoring apps against taking the phone away, and ends with a practical safety plan you can start this week.

In 2025, people aged 60 and older reported more than $7.7 billion in losses to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Centre.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Where to Report Fraud:
🇨🇦  Canada
▶️ Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre: https://reportcyberandfraud.canada.ca/
📞 1-888-495-8501
▶️ Also report to your local police (non-emergency line)

🇺🇸  United States
▶️ Federal Trade Commission: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov
📞 1-877-382-4357
▶️ FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3): https://www.ic3.gov
▶️ National Elder Fraud Hotline: https://www.justice.gov/stopelderfraud
📞 1-833-FRAUD-11 (1-833-372-8311)

If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.
 
Connect With Us:
▶️ https://linktr.ee/thecaregiverspodcast
Buy Us a Coffee:
▶️ https://buymeacoffee.com/thecaregiverspodcast

Subscribe to The Caregivers Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. If you find these conversations helpful, please leave a review or share this episode with a fellow caregiver.
🔊 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-caregivers-podcast/id1842203665
🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fLSHPA7ZHbOpvrmcbfcd5?si=2a71d7c4e2e9427c 

For a caregiver, grief doesn’t always start when someone dies. It can start months or even years earlier, while you’re still doing everything you can for the person you love. Then they die, and everything changes again.

In Episode 56 of The Caregivers Podcast, Dr. Mark welcomes back hospice nurse and end-of-life educator Les Harp, known online as That Hospice Guy. Les was the primary caregiver for two wives, Cassie and Sonia, and lost both of them to cancer. He talks about caregiver grief from both sides of the bedside: anticipatory grief, the relief and guilt that so often follow a death, and the silence that comes when the caregiving suddenly stops. He also explains why grief isn’t something you “get over,” and how he found a way to build a life with love and joy in it again.

Click here to watch on YouTube.

Connect With Us:
▶️ https://linktr.ee/thecaregiverspodcast

Buy Us a Coffee:
▶️ https://buymeacoffee.com/thecaregiverspodcast

Subscribe to The Caregivers Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. If you find these conversations helpful, please leave a review or share this episode with a fellow caregiver.

🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fLSHPA7ZHbOpvrmcbfcd5?si=2a71d7c4e2e9427c
🔊 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-caregivers-podcast/id1842203665

How do you know when keeping a parent at home is asking more than you can give? And what if you promised you’d never move them into a care facility?

In this episode, Dr. Mark welcomes back Senior Living Advisor Janice Martin. Together they walk through the move into care, from recognizing it’s time to what happens after you go home. They follow a model family as care needs grow, and they track the costs at every stage: in-home care, assisted living, memory care, and the hidden add-ons families don’t see coming. The numbers are eye-opening.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Connect With Us:
▶️ https://linktr.ee/thecaregiverspodcast
Buy us a Coffee:
▶️ https://buymeacoffee.com/thecaregiverspodcast

Subscribe to The Caregivers Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. If you find these conversations helpful, please leave a review or share this episode with a fellow caregiver.
🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fLSHPA7ZHbOpvrmcbfcd5?si=2a71d7c4e2e9427c
🔊 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-caregivers-podcast/id1842203665

This week, Dr. Mark Ropeleski sits down with hospice nurse, author, and creator behind Broken and Brave Health, Tiffany Lin Smith. Known for saying the quiet parts about caregiving out loud on TikTok, Tiffany joins Dr. Mark to unpack the unvarnished realities of modern healthcare, the overwhelming demands placed on family caregivers, and why true survival requires self-preservation over performative self-care.

Together, they confront systemic issues ranging from nurse burnout and bureaucratic charting overload to corporate healthcare priorities, the trillion-dollar unpaid care economy, and the dangerous assumption that families automatically know how to provide complex medical care. Tiffany also shares practical guidance on setting boundaries to protect relationships, holding honest end-of-life and goals-of-care conversations, managing sibling friction, and reclaiming your identity both during caregiving and after it ends.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Subscribe to The Caregivers Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. If you find these conversations helpful, please leave a review or share this episode with a fellow caregiver.

🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fLSHPA7ZHbOpvrmcbfcd5?si=2a71d7c4e2e9427c
🔊 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-caregivers-podcast/id1842203665

When someone you love receives a cancer diagnosis, life shifts in an instant - and the waiting can feel endless. This week, Dr. Mark sits down with Charlotte Bayala, who has cared for her husband through thyroid cancer for nearly 14 years.

Charlotte shares the raw, unspoken realities of family caregiving: the sudden thrust into medical procedures without training, navigating severe scan anxiety ("scansiety"), and why standard advice around "self-care" often fails overwhelmed caregivers. Together, they explore the essential shift from self-care to self-preservation, practical daily grounding rituals through breathwork, maintaining identity and humor, and what it truly takes to protect your connection with your partner through long-term uncertainty.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Subscribe to The Caregivers Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. If you find these conversations helpful, please leave a review or share this episode with a fellow caregiver.

🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fLSHPA7ZHbOpvrmcbfcd5?si=2a71d7c4e2e9427c
🔊 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-caregivers-podcast/id1842203665

Can a caregiver heal while still caregiving? What does recovery look like when daily responsibilities may continue for years?

This week, Dr. Mark is rejoined by trauma-informed coach Greg Fougere to explore the deeper layers of caregiver burnout, nervous system survival mode, and self-abandonment. Together, they discuss why high competence can become a trap, why having free time often fails to bring rest, and how self-curiosity serves as the foundation for staying connected to yourself without letting caregiving consume your identity.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Connect With Us:
▶️ https://linktr.ee/thecaregiverspodcast

Subscribe to The Caregivers Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. If you find these conversations helpful, please leave a review or share this episode with a fellow caregiver.

🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fLSHPA7ZHbOpvrmcbfcd5?si=2a71d7c4e2e9427c
🔊 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-caregivers-podcast/id1842203665

Can you deeply love someone and still hate being their caregiver? In this episode of The Caregiver's Podcast, Dr. Mark welcomes back Elaine K. Sanchez - author, speaker, and founder of CaregiverHelp.com- to tackle the hardest, most unspoken emotional realities of caregiving: resentment, exhaustion, family friction, and compassion fatigue.

About Our Guest:
Elaine K. Sanchez is an author, speaker, and co-founder of caregiverhelp.com, an online caregiver support program. Her keynotes and workshops are based on her unflinchingly honest and surprisingly funny book, “Letters from Madelyn, Chronicles of a Caregiver.”

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Connect With Us:
▶️ https://linktr.ee/thecaregiverspodcast

Buy Us a Coffee:
▶️ https://buymeacoffee.com/thecaregiverspodcast

Subscribe to The Caregivers Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. If you find these conversations helpful, please leave a review or share this episode with a fellow caregiver.

🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fLSHPA7ZHbOpvrmcbfcd5?si=2a71d7c4e2e9427c
🔊 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-caregivers-podcast/id1842203665

Caring for an aging parent rarely brings adult siblings together the way we imagine. When one sibling carries the daily burden while another steps back - or swoops in at the last minute demanding an equal voice - resentment, grief, and exhaustion quickly take over.

This week, Dr. Mark is joined by Fern Schumer Chapman, author of Brothers, Sisters, Strangers, for an unflinching conversation about sibling dynamics during parental decline. Together, they explore why caregiving revives childhood roles, why the opposite of estrangement isn’t reconciliation but peace, and how family caregivers can set clear guardrails to protect their own well-being.

Guest Resources: Fern Schumer Chapman: Author of Brothers, Sisters, Strangers: Sibling Estrangement and the Road to Reconciliation

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Connect With Us:
▶️ https://linktr.ee/thecaregiverspodcast
Buy Us a Coffee:
▶️ https://buymeacoffee.com/thecaregiverspodcast

Subscribe to The Caregivers Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. If you find these conversations helpful, please leave a review or share this episode with a fellow caregiver.

🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fLSHPA7ZHbOpvrmcbfcd5?si=2a71d7c4e2e9427c
🔊 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-caregivers-podcast/id1842203665

In Episode 49 of The Caregivers Podcast, host Dr. Mark Ropeleski sits down with eating disorder specialists and Hungry for Connection authors Vanessa Scaringi and Kathryn Garland. Together, they explore why disordered eating and emotional eating in caregivers are rarely issues of willpower or discipline, but rather signals of survival mode, unmet emotional needs, and deep attachment dynamics.

Resources Mentioned:
▶️National Alliance for Eating Disorders: https://www.allianceforeatingdisorders.com/
▶️Project HEAL: https://www.theprojectheal.org/
▶️National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA): https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Connect With Us:
▶️ https://linktr.ee/thecaregiverspodcast
Buy Us A Coffee:
▶️ https://buymeacoffee.com/thecaregiverspodcast

Subscribe to The Caregivers Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. If you find these conversations helpful, please leave a review or share this episode with a fellow caregiver.

🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fLSHPA7ZHbOpvrmcbfcd5?si=2a71d7c4e2e9427c
🔊 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-caregivers-podcast/id1842203665