Introducing: Four-Week Peer-Led Containers
If you've ever felt awkward introducing yourself over and over again in front of random strangers on online caregiver calls, this is for you!
When I was a caregiver for my mom, it was a struggle to find peer-led support groups for caregivers. I know there were caregiver groups out there, both in person and online, but it took a lot of courage to sign up…
If there was availability and it wasn’t sold out.
If the timings lined up with my schedule.
If I felt like sharing the trauma of my caregiving journey to complete strangers.
If I felt like being judged by the therapist hosting the call.
I didn’t want to have to reintroduce myself each and every time to a bunch of random people over and over again. It’s exhausting to share my caregiving story. That’s why sharing it with a group of friends helped. We didn’t need to rehash our caregiver origin story because we were meeting with the same people over and over again in a safe, self-contained group.
That’s what I’d like to see: more safe, peer-led containers in which to share our experiences to people who get it. If not in the same exact way, than people who at least understand the base level of what we’re talking about: caregiving.
That’s why I’m proposing this: For the month of June, I’d like to create a trial of what I’d like to do more longterm. A container for people to come together with the same group of strangers-turned-not-strangers where we can talk about our caregiving journey…and beyond. We’ll already have something to talk about (caregiving) and we can dive deeper into topics or themes that are present or that we’ve wanted to talk about but haven’t yet.
If you’re interested in something like this*, please let me know! I’m estimating this will be for four weeks on Sundays or Mondays in June 2025.
Please share this with anyone who may be interested!
Madeline Wahl is a recent graduate with an MLitt in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow in Scotland. She is a writer, solo traveler, and millennial caregiver to her mom, who recently passed from terminal cancer. Her writing has appeared on Reader's Digest, HuffPost, Red Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others. She is working on her first novel in YA Fantasy and her first nonfiction book proposal on millennial caregiving.
*This is not intended to be therapy nor is it a replacement for therapy. This is an open space for talking about our own personal experiences with caregiving and sharing those experiences with other caregivers.