It’s been a couple of weeks without some fresh content. Sorry about that. There’ll be more where this comes from next week. I saw a commercial not that long ago that talked about a squeaking fan in a warehouse. The voiceover explained that a bearing needed to be repaired, because it was causing the fan to become unbalanced. “Unbalanced things break, and broken things cost money,” the voice went on to say. There’s something to be learned here for caregivers as well. I don’t mean this in a New Age kind of way, but everyone’s life, to the extent that it works for them, is in some sort of balance. You have your rest time, you have your stress, you have your highs and your lows. There isn’t too much of one thing or not enough of another. Of course, caregiving can throw that balance right off and cause the kind of stress that wrecks lives. Of course, here’s the difference. Unbalanced lives do “break” in a way, but the ways that they break aren’t usually fixable. Family rifts or health crises as a result of stress don’t get fixed the way that a fan or a motor would. I have heard more stories than I’d like to admit about caregivers predeceasing their parents or relatives because of stress. I have known caregivers to have heart attacks or strokes themselves from the strain. Those things can’t be fixed, and you really need to seek balance in your own life (by seeking help and knowing your limits!) before something happens that you can’t reverse.