Working Caregivers-The Invisible Employees Newsletter

Brought to you by ieadvocates (invisible employee advocates)

2025 is almost over and 2026 is almost here!

Thank you for being here!

As we wrap up another meaningful year, our final newsletter of 2025 is dedicated to the heart of our vision: a future where every workplace embraces caregiving as a strength, and no employee has to choose between their career and caring for a loved one. 

In this issue, we highlight how caregiving intersects with the holiday season and explore what we can learn about generosity, gratitude, and the shared commitment to care. We challenge ourselves, employers, and communities to reflect on our past efforts as well as what we might do in the coming year to help move the care economy forward. 

Thank you to the employers, caregiver advocates, and community organizations who are helping to build workplaces where caregivers can thrive, stay, grow, and contribute with confidence.

Whether you’re an employer, business manager, HR, or a working caregiver, this newsletter offers valuable insights along with win-win-win simple solutions to help implement meaningful change for organizations, employees who are caregivers, and their care recipients. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you.

Happy, healthy and peaceful holidays and a Happy New Year!

Selma & Zack

Table of Contents

• Working Caregivers-The Invisible Employees Newslet …

  • 2025 is almost over and 2026 is almost here!

  • Did you know? (Read our blog):

  • People and Companies In the spotlight:

  • Stories From Real Working Caregivers:

  • Recommended media content:

    • Caregiver's Holiday Toolkit: Tips for Thriving, No …

  • With gratitude, we share a book review:

    • Order Our Book Here

Did you know? (Read our blog):

End-of-Year Reflections 2025: Giving the Gift of Care (Blog 12/30/25)

As 2025 comes to a close, the holiday season is an ideal time to reflect on the crucial role that caregivers play in our families, workplaces, and communities. While this time of year is often filled with celebration and generosity, it can also present challenges for the millions of Americans who care for spouses or partners managing long-term conditions, aging parents, chronically ill loved ones, or children with special needs. 

Beyond the traditional wrapped packages, many caregivers provide gifts of their time, presence, and emotional support every day, often at the expense of their own well-being. This season is an opportunity to honor those contributions. Whether it’s doing something to lighten a caregiver’s load, a few hours of respite, or a heartfelt note, small gestures can make a significant difference. 

Read blog here

People and Companies In the spotlight:

A recap of 2025 podcast episodes with links:

Episodes 9 - 20 from the first half of 2025 can be found in our July 1st, 2025 newsletter.

Episode 21: Caring Out Loud: Rosanne Corcoran on Dementia, Daughterhood & Making Caregivers Visible Rosanne Corcoran is a powerhouse advocate, seasoned dementia caregiver, and host of the Daughterhood the Podcast.

Episode 22:  Care with Dignity: Fighting for Change with Filmmaker Susie Singer Carter Susie Singer Carter is a caregiving champion who recently produced a new docu-series No Country for Old People, a bold exposé on the failures in nursing home care and the urgent need for reform. Susie also produced an Oscar-qualified short film My Mom and the Girl and is a cohost of the acclaimed podcasts Love Conquers Alz .

Episode 23: Grief, Caregiving, and the Power of Connection – with Leslie Weirich Leslie Weirich is a grief advocate whose decades-long journey through caregiving and loss has shaped her mission to bring hope and understanding to others. She is author of the book The Gift of Grief She has been speaking on the topic of Mental Health, Suicide Prevention and Grief since 2017.

Episode 24: How AI Can Revolutionize Caregiving & Empower Families – With Breana Patel. Breana Patel is a serial entrepreneur, CEO, and visionary at the forefront of AI and healthcare innovation. As the founder of Owle AI, she is redefining care coordination by tackling one of the industry’s most pressing challenges—staff burnout and turnover—through intelligent automation

Episode 25: Caregiving, WOOP, and the Emotional Load: A Conversation with Dr. Joan Monin Dr. Joan Monin is from Yale University and she introduces us to a simple but powerful emotional regulation tool called WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan). Currently her research focuses on understanding how caregivers and care recipients support one another in the context of early stage dementia.

Episode 26: Navigating Millennial Caregiving with Dr. Rachael Piltch-Loeb Dr. Rachael Piltch-Loeb is author of The Millennial Caregiver, which explores the complex intersection of caregiving, career, and life as a member of the millennial generation. Rachael Piltch-Loeb is a professor and researcher in public health. She holds a MSPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a PhD from New York University.

Episode 27:  Paul Wynn is a Patient Advocacy Leader, Caregiving Advocate and an Author. Paul Wynn has been part of the caregiving community for more than a decade, both as a family caregiver and as a healthcare writer. He is a featured author in the new book, The Caregiver’s Advocate Vol. 2, where he shares his experience as a sandwich generation caregiver, balancing the needs of aging relatives and young children

Episode 28:  Why Employers Are Missing the Caregiving Crisis with Joseph B. Fuller. Joseph B. Fuller brings powerful insights, compelling research, and personal stories that shine a light on why caregiving is a business issue, not just a personal one. He is a Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School and a globally recognized expert on the future of work. He is the co-founder and co-director of Managing the Future of Work, a long-term research initiative at HBS, and the founder and co-head of Harvard’s multi-disciplinary Project on the Workforce. 

Episode 29: Aging, Workforce & Caregiving with Expert Robert Espinoza Robert Espinoza talks about the systemic gaps in the long-term care system, the challenges facing our care workforce, and the real-life impact of underfunding the care economy. He is a prominent advocate and thought leader in the fields of workforce, aging, and caregiving. He is a Distinguished Fellow and Senior Advisor at the National Academy of Social Insurance, where he leads efforts to build broad, nonpartisan support for a sustainable long-term care system that meets the needs of older adults, people with disabilities, and the care workforce.

Episode 30: The Future of Caregiving at Work with Wellthy’s Lindsay Jurist-Rosner Lindsay Jurist-Rosner is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wellthy, the market-leading care concierge company transforming how families navigate care for themselves and their loved ones. Two million people currently have access to Wellthy through major employers and health plans—including Best Buy, Cisco, Hilton, and Meta—and the company now employs more than 300 specialists supporting family caregivers every day. 

Episode 31: Growing Up Caregiving: The Invisible Journey of Youth Caregivers with Dr. Feylyn Lewis Dr. Lewis shares the emotional, physical, and invisible labor that young caregivers shoulder and how those early responsibilities shaped the advocate, scholar, and leader she is today. Her story is moving, courageous, and a call to action for all of us—employers, caregivers, and community members—to create a world where no caregiver feels alone. She is a Nashville native, Vanderbilt alumna, and former youth caregiver whose lived experience shaped her global career in research and advocacy.

Stories From Real Working Caregivers:

A recap of our 2025 Stories From Real Working Caregivers interviews with links:

Stories from the first half of 2025 can be found in our July 1st, 2025 newsletter.

Flexibility at work is an important benefit for caregivers. “One thing my employer had that was so useful for me was that they were very good about allowing people to take their vacation time in chunks. You didn't have to take a full day. And I used every bit of my vacation for doctor appointments for all of my older people and my son.” ~Carol Bradley Bursack

Being a caregiver does not mean you have to be perfect. “Sometimes I just need to say the things that don't feel socially appropriate. I need to say I'm having a really hard time, and I'm mad or I'm angry because I can't do this, or I'm not doing this right. And mostly, my anger and guilt and fear that I experienced as a caregiver were related to my feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy because I don't make any qualms about it.” ~ Natalie Elliott Handy

Juggling work and caregiving is difficult even if you are self-employed. “There was a lot going on, and we thought it would be easier for me. It's not. It's not even when you're self-employed. I can't say that it's easy. It was a little bit easier, just that I had a lot more freedom, to go to the appointments, to take the calls, and not be called out for, you know, are you present? Are you absent? However, I was absent due to my business. It was a whole different responsibility. I had a team of employees, and I was letting my business falter… So, there was some deficit in my work life.” ~ JJ Elliott Hill

Caregiving is not for everyone. “…you have to be a special person to be able to take care of someone who's sick… And I've told people, if someone asks you to be a caregiver and honestly you can't do it, please say no.” ~ Rosalind Marshall Jones

We need to advocate today to combat the steady rise of Parkinson’s disease. Unfortunately, we have approximately 1.3 million people diagnosed today with Parkinson's disease, but shockingly, and they did a research study on this, in just 15 years, there’s going to be about 25 million. And the jump from 1 million to 25 is really frightening. So that's why I advocate today…” ~ George Ackerman

Employers who fail to support their working caregivers will lose them. “..where the rubber meets the road is when somebody actually has a care emergency. And if those HR leaders don't support those people, that trust bond is broken forever, and you can't fix it. If one of those people is one of your high performers, they're going to find another job, and you've lost them.” ~ Paul Sullivan 

It's important for caregivers to know the employee benefits available to them.  I think it's very important for people to understand the benefits available. And again, every company is different, every workplace is different, but you know … Family Medical Leave Act. I think it's really important to understand that. And maybe you're not, well, don't talk to your boss, but you can talk to HR about when I can take this? Am I going to be punished for taking a week off work? Cause my mother's dying. I mean, I wish I'd taken advantage of that more…” ~ Nancy Poland

An important component of self-care is having boundaries. “So, you have to be flexible. You've got to be able to stand your ground and have boundaries… I know entrepreneurs that have none. A client will call at 10 p.m. and say, I need this report. No, I'm not going to answer the phone. And I'm going to have my coffee in the morning before I return that call because without those boundaries, you can just end up in a huge health issue where you're stressed all the time.” ~ Pam Ostrowski

 Showing appreciation for working caregivers helps to create a care culture. “… The way they [employers] could change the culture is by just really being appreciative of the people showing up to work. …thank you for showing up because caregivers are dependable. They're probably the most dependable people on this planet because that's the reason why they ended up with the caregiver title to begin with, right?  They care, and they're showing up when they need to show up. And I find that they're going to show up for their family, and they want to show up in every aspect of their lives. They want to show up at work as well.” ~ Ashley Haruna

Caregiving can be overwhelming, both during and after the journey. “…I always say I felt like I was in a laundry machine where I was being tumbled around, no control, couldn't get my bearings, no control of my life. I was always asking about mom, what was going to happen next? And then when she did pass, and I was done with my caregiving journey, I felt like I was let out, and I could finally start to see clearly what had just happened and what that caregiving experience was all about. It was a lot. It was very, very overwhelming. As I mentioned, no resources. That is what led me to start HeroGeneration.” ~ Nicole aBeckett

 Overcoming the guilt of self-care can be especially difficult for a youth caregiver. “…when I was caregiving, I always put my uncle, my nana, my brother, my mom, before me. And no child should have to do that, especially as a 10-year-old…I used to wake up early in the morning, cooking for my nana, cooking for my uncle, and sometimes my little brother and even myself. And at times, I fed my uncle first, then I went towards my nana, then I went towards my brother. …I'm always putting myself last, and I shouldn't have to do that, you know? A child should never have to put themselves last, especially at a young age like that.” ~ Omarion Calloway  

Recommended media content:

PODCAST

Outside the Therapy Room Podcast with host Ivonne Hammoud, is a Registered Social Worker (RSW) and owner of a therapy practice in Waterloo, Ontario. In this, Episode 52 - Caregiving Through the Holidays: Managing Grief & Burnout with Stephanie Muskat, Ivonne sits down with Stephanie Muskat, a therapist who specializes in caregiver mental health, to unpack the complex layers of supporting a loved one with dementia,  Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), or other health challenges during the holiday season.

 VIDEOS

Caregiver's Holiday Toolkit: Tips for Thriving, Not Just Surviving by Caregiver Resource Center OC. Holidays can be particularly challenging for caregivers due to increased demands, social isolation, and emotional strain. Caregivers often face a conflict between fulfilling their caregiving responsibilities and participating in holiday festivities, leading to feelings of stress, guilt, and even resentment. During this livestream, the CRCOC will be providing some tips on how to cope with these feelings and ways in which you can de-stress this holiday season.

BOOKS

As a year end gift to you as our readers, here is a quick and easy list of books that you can browse as valuable resources. CaringBridge is a no-cost, 501(c)(3) nonprofit health platform that surrounds family caregivers with support while they care for a loved one on a health journey.

With gratitude, we share a book review:

We want to thank Demetri who took the time to read our book and provide a thoughtful review!

A very helpful, informative guide to one of the most important roles families play. As someone not as familiar with caregiving, after reading I felt much more prepared and had strategies to start right away.

Order your copy of Working Caregivers-The Invisible Employees book here. If you want to order a quantity of books for your leadership team and employees, contact us directly about discount pricing.

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