“Welcome to the sandwich generation,” a friend ruefully announced a few years ago as I described the overwhelming task of juggling young kids, a career and caregiving for aging family members simultaneously. I’d never heard the term before, but I felt a jolt of instant recognition. There was a name for what I was experiencing! I was even more surprised to learn that roughly 23% of American adults identify as part of the sandwich generation.
Honestly, I didn’t see this stage of life coming. When my husband and I moved from Europe back home to Seattle in 2017, I was a freshly minted novelist celebrating my first book launch. We had an infant and a toddler. We relocated to be closer to family, excited for my husband’s parents to help us navigate family life amidst our growing careers and those wonderful yet exhausting early parenting years.
Unfortunately, that is not what happened. My brilliant physicist father-in-law was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and my mother-in-law suffered increasingly debilitating health issues. They were not in a position to help anyone.
“I think this only goes one way now,” my husband said quietly one Sunday afternoon as we drove away from their house after helping with a list of tasks they could no longer do. “They need our help, not the other way around.”
I’ve spent almost a decade now in this sandwich stage of life. I’ve juggled potty training and tantrums and my burgeoning writing career, publishing eight novels in nine years. I’ve fielded confusing phone calls about long-term care insurance, assisted after multiple surgeries, and learned to trim my mother-in-law’s prized rose bushes to her exact specifications. The learning curve has been steep, the list of new challenges seemingly endless. It’s been exhausting and exasperating and yet at times also heartbreakingly sweet. The hardest part has been trying to hang onto my sense of self.
Everywhere I look, I see fellow sandwich generation moms struggling. So many people depend on us, needing our time, our attention, our organization, our compassion and care. Our days are a balancing act of some combination of career, marriage, parenting, caregiving, and the never-ending list of tasks necessary to run not one but sometimes two or more modern households. There is little time left over for ourselves in the midst of it all.
“I just don’t know who I am anymore,” a former interior designer mom friend confessed over coffee one morning. “I’m trying to remember apart from all these responsibilities, all these roles I have to play. What’s left of me?”
I hear the same question over and over. What’s left of me? I resonate with this question so much that I chose to explore it in my new novel, A Sprinkle of Sweet Serendipity. My main character, Emmie, is a struggling chocolate maker who is caring for her young son Gus and her ailing mother, as well as running her family’s failing candy store in their small Pacific Northwest coastal town. Like many of us, Emmie is trying to find time for a haircut, a new bra, and even more importantly, a chance to reclaim a little piece of her own happiness again.
I identify with Emmie’s journey. So many of us in the sandwich generation are trying to rediscover our sense of self, embrace joy and reignite that spark in our lives. But how do we do it? Over the years I’ve gleaned some tidbits of wisdom that have helped me greatly. Here are my favorite three.
Be honest about the hard.
There is nothing tidy or easy about raising kids or walking with loved ones through the unfamiliar terrain of aging. It’s complex, bittersweet, heartbreaking, and exhausting. Often I have been tempted to try to minimize the mental and emotional strain, feeling shame that I can’t be stronger or more capable, but that minimizes my true experience of the complexities and internal cost of this stage of life. When we let ourselves truly be honest about the hard, we can find solidarity, support and the resources we need.
Remember we CAN’T have it all…at least not all at once.
A wise working mom friend told me when I was pregnant with our first child, “You CAN do it all. You just can’t do it all at once. Be realistic about what you can healthily handle.”
I’ve learned that no matter how capable and efficient I am, there are simply not enough hours in the day to do everything. I need help! And I’m not alone.
Let’s gently set realistic expectations, then figure out how to get the support we need. What would help you breathe a little easier, create a little more margin in your day? If finances are tight, consider swapping child care with friends for a much-needed break, or meal prep for a few hours once a month to stockpile some freezer meals for busy weeks. I’ve tried all of these methods. Each one created a little more margin in my life, and that feels priceless!
Lean into the little joys.
When I had my son, a mom of older kids gave me a great piece of wisdom. She told me “Do at least one thing that gives you joy every day, something just for you.” During those early days of infanthood and breastfeeding, sometimes reading a magazine for ten minutes was all I could manage, but it still felt like a delightful, tiny pleasure. The impact was bigger than just those ten minutes. I still follow her advice.
What is one thing that makes you feel more like you, that gives you joy? Give yourself permission to do those things regularly. Right now I garden. Caring for my tomatoes and dahlias calms my whole nervous system and gives me the reserves to handle the rest of my day. Whatever gives you joy, lean into it as much as you can. Nurture yourself like you nurture others. The benefits are tremendous.
I can’t sugarcoat the grueling mental and emotional load that we moms carry daily, nor can I wave a magic wand and make it go away, but I hope that the simple truths I’ve learned over the years will help you survive, and hopefully thrive, as a mom in the sandwich generation.
Rachel Linden is a novelist and international aid worker whose adventures in more than fifty countries around the world provide excellent grist for her writing. She is the author of A Sprinkle of Sweet Serendipity (available May 19), The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake, Recipe for a Charmed Life, The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie (now a Hallmark Channel Film), and several other novels. Currently, Rachel lives with her family on a sweet little island in the Pacific Northwest, where she enjoys creating stories about strong women facing big challenges, food, travel, and second chances at love – all with a touch of whimsy and a happy, hopeful ending.
