"The Hardest Decision You Ever Made Was the Right One" By Tessa Shahid

The Eleventh 'Letter from a Caregiver,' Winter Season 2025/26.

The ‘Letters from a Caregiver’ Collaboration series continues with this article, the eleventh letter of the Winter 2025/26 Season.

Letters from a Caregiver’ is a weekly article where a caregiver offers wisdom, compassion, and hope to their younger self. No one knows us as well as we know ourselves, and even then, we may second-guess ourselves. The choices, challenges and tragedies we’ve faced have forged us in more ways than anyone can understand; in ways we’re still trying to decipher!

Previous letters, this season:

1. The Winter Season of ‘Letters from a Caregiver.’ Life’s Tapestry: the nuances, choices, and caregiving despite the fear. By Victoria

2. ‘You Each Deserve Your Own Life’ By Jodi Sh. Doff

3. ‘Relearning Hope In A Time Of Darkeness’ By Victoria

4. ‘Having Compassion for Your Earlier Self’ By Anna Du Pen

5. “Grasshopper, you are the expert” By Sarah Coomber

6. ‘You Published Your Book! And Now What?’ By Cindy Martindale

7. ‘The Light We Carry’ By Victoria

8. ‘It’s Not Her, It’s The Disease’ By Kerri Forrest

9. ‘The Gift Of Self-Compassion For The Caregiver’, by Amy Brown

10. “When the Waves Keep Coming: Trust Yourself” by Anna De La Cruz

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Today’s letter is by Tessa Shahid, whom I met in 2025. I knew Tessa had had a long experience of caregiving, but I hadn’t appreciated just how long, complex and frankly traumatic, until I read her letter today.

My heart aches for the young Tessa, and I’m also impressed by the strength of her character that shines through in this letter. I can’t quite decide between saying “wise beyond her years” or “aged by all things caregiving”. I think both are true.

She says,

“You were a young woman carrying an impossible load with courage no one taught you to name. You deserved help long before you asked for it. You deserved compassion before you allowed yourself to rest. You deserved forgiveness the moment you acted, not years later, after the pain faded.”

I have more questions for her now, and I look forward to learning from her experiences.

I recommend listening to her podcast, if you haven’t already. Alternatively, read Tessa’s introduction to her publication: Start Here: Welcome to Between Now and Next

Author’s Bio: Tessa Shahid is a project leader, podcast host, youth mentor, and advocate for aging populations. She spent over 15 years navigating caregiving alongside major life milestones. Both of her parents have since passed, and the lessons from that season continue to shape her work. She hosts Between Now and Next, a podcast and Substack focused on caregiving, grief, and life transitions.

Dear Tessa,

It’s January 4th, 2026, approximately ten years after you decided to move your parents into a nursing home permanently.

I’m writing to you from years in the future, long after the day you wondered if you had just ruined everything.

You didn’t know it then, but that moment would stay with you, not as a scar, but as a turning point. One you would spend years trying to forgive yourself for.

I remember you clearly.

You were in your early twenties, just out of college. You were exhausted in ways no one could see. For over ten years, you had been a caregiver long before you had words for that responsibility, long before it quietly consumed your childhood, adolescence, and much of your young adulthood.

By the time you decided to place Mom and Dad in a nursing home, you were running on fumes.

You weren’t just tired. You were guilty, frustrated, scared, overwhelmed, and completely alone.

There was no family support to fall back on. Only a dwindling rotation of paid helpers, increasing care needs, and no real safety net. It was just you, trying to hold together a life that required far more than one person to sustain.

You had spent years doing the impossible.

From the outside, it may have looked sudden, but it wasn’t. You didn’t place your parents in a facility impulsively. It wasn’t careless. It wasn’t because you didn’t love them enough.

It came after years of caregiving that demanded everything you had.

Here’s what I remember about where they each were.

Mom had been in and out of nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities for nearly six years by that point. Each transition was disruptive. Each separation between your parents during medical crises was painful. They had been together for over fifty years, and as they aged, they struggled deeply when apart. Each return home came with anxiety, exhaustion, and fear that never quite went away.

She was bedridden after a failed knee replacement and a stroke. She was non-weight bearing on one side and partially paralyzed on the other. When she fell, slipped, or rolled out of bed, you had to call the fire department because you physically could not lift her. You were a daughter navigating emergencies meant for trained professionals.

Dad had been paralyzed from a stroke years earlier. Although medically stable, his mobility and independence continued to decline as he aged, made worse by his frail stature and a growing fear of falling. Watching him age inside a body that already demanded adaptation was its own quiet grief.

And through it all, you worked when you could and completed college classes online, sometimes inconsistently, sometimes barely keeping pace. You tried to keep a roof over everyone’s head. You tried to make sure they were safe. You tried to be steady when everything around you was unstable.

You were learning how to begin your own life while supporting two parents with profound disabilities. You were barely hanging on. And no one was coming to relieve you.

When the decision was finally made, it didn’t feel like relief.

It felt like you were letting them down.

You felt like you were giving up on them. Like you were putting them away. Like you were failing at the one role you had learned to define yourself by.

Your mother was angry. They both wanted to stay home, though your dad understood a little more. You weren’t sure they could fully see or understand your struggle. Their anger confirmed your worst fear: that you were a bad daughter.

You second-guessed yourself constantly, wondering if you should have tried harder, or if love meant giving everything until there was nothing left.

You worried about judgment.

From estranged family members who knew pieces of the story but stayed away. From church members and pastors who had never lived in a caregiving situation. From people who seemed to believe devotion should be limitless, but had never tested their own limits the way caregiving does, again and again.

But the harshest judgment didn’t come from them.

It came from you.

Internally, you were ruthless with yourself during that transition. You expected perfection from someone who had been surviving since childhood. You demanded strength from someone who had never been allowed to rest. You treated your need for stability as a moral flaw rather than a human one.

You didn’t yet understand that needing a break doesn’t make someone weak.

It makes them human.

I want you to know something you couldn’t see then.

You were choosing safety, proper support, and consistency of care for your parents. You needed help, relief, and reliable medical support as their health declined, and you needed space to establish your own foundation, education, career, and a stable place to land.

You had already carried responsibility alone for a decade. You had proven your devotion in countless quiet ways, through sleepless nights, repeated medical crises, and years of choosing the well-being of others over yourself.

Placing Mom and Dad in care was not abandonment.

It was an acknowledgement.

Acknowledgement that love does not override physical limits. Acknowledgement that one person cannot replace an entire support system. Acknowledgement that your own survival mattered too.

You didn’t make that decision because you didn’t care enough.

You made it because you cared deeply and were human.

It took time for the guilt to soften. It didn’t disappear overnight. It lingered, reshaped itself, and resurfaced at unexpected moments.

But slowly, something else emerged.

Perspective.

With distance, you began to see how unsustainable your life had become. How narrow your world had grown. How your nervous system has been locked in survival mode for years. How much had you given before you ever asked yourself what you needed?

You saw that your parents were safer, their needs better met. A care team didn’t erase your role. It allowed it to change.

You could be present without being consumed.

And perhaps most importantly, you began to understand that choosing support was not a failure of love. It was an act of responsibility.

I chose this topic and wrote this letter in the hope that these words feel like a warm hug.

You were not a bad daughter.

You were a young woman carrying an impossible load with courage no one taught you to name. You deserved help long before you asked for it. You deserved compassion before you allowed yourself to rest. You deserved forgiveness the moment you acted, not years later, after the pain faded.

That day in the car, the one you thought would haunt you forever, did follow you.

But not as punishment.

It followed you as proof that you were capable of making hard, grounded, loving decisions even when certainty was unavailable. That you could choose sustainability over martyrdom. That you could honor both your parents’ needs and your own humanity.

If I could sit beside you now, I wouldn’t try to change what you did.

I would like to thank you.

For surviving. For choosing stability. For trusting yourself when no one else could carry the weight with you.

Some decisions don’t ask to be justified.

They ask to be forgiven.

And this one finally has been.

Author’s Note

Caregiving is a deeply complicated experience.

I wish more people understood that when an active caregiver decides to transition a loved one into a community, whether that’s a nursing home, assisted living, or independent living, it is never a decision taken lightly.

Our healthcare system in the United States could and should be better. And still, these communities often provide a level of structure and support that caregivers, especially those doing it alone, simply cannot replace on their own, no matter how devoted they are.

Even after a transition, caregivers remain involved. You still advocate. You still check in. You still make sure your loved one is safe, treated with dignity, and not overlooked or taken advantage of. But sometimes, even that role is a lighter lift than what came before.

There is no single “right way” to be a caregiver.

There is only care given with love, empathy, understanding, compassion, dignity, and respect for your aging loved one, and for yourself.

The Closing Rapid Fire Questions from Victoria:

1. Courage to me is…

“Courage to me is being honest about who you are and how you feel. I’ve learned it makes life a little simpler.”

2. Thinking of someone you admire/respect (friend/colleague/well-known person), name three of their standout qualities/characteristics:

“I admire the audacity, tenacity, and work ethic of my Father.”

3. What’s one quote/movie/book that’s inspired you?

One of my favourite quotes is “Every day is a chance to begin again,” by Catherine Pulsifer.

Tessa’s prompt for discussion:

How have you managed the emotional impact of being a caregiver?

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