"When the Waves Keep Coming: Trust yourself" by Anna De La Cruz

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

Hello, dear Friends! If you’re new to Carer Mentor, you can learn more about me by reading Who Started Carer Mentor and Why?

The ‘Letters from a Caregiver’ Collaboration series continues with this article, the tenth 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

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Friends, let’s take a deep breath together and exhale.

I hope you’re managing to navigate the start of the year without too much struggle, but I know it’s difficult with everything happening in the world and at home.

I knew January could be tough, which is why I’ve been publishing articles that I hope can offer some inspiration and enablers for 2026:

• #11 This Caregiver’s Music: ‘A backbone of music to stabilise this year.’

• “Meet Your Habenula: Your Motivation ‘Kill Switch’. The Tiny Brain Circuit With a Big Impact.”

• “Working With Your Habenula as a Caregiver”, including 30 starter ideas that we can use to soften the habenula’s impact.

I’ll also be evolving the Community Hub to support more in-depth discussion

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When you’re being pulled in multiple directions, and your inner chatter gets louder, it’s easy to lose confidence in yourself and your choices.

I’m grateful to Anna for sharing this letter with us today, because it brought home to me how much I need to make the most of here and now. Not the ‘carpe diem’ approach, but to reconcile with all that’s here: good, bad, ugly, fear, angst and everything in between.

As Anna says, in this present moment ‘Trust yourself’

Wise words coming from a wise lady, whom I met in my early days on this platform. You’ll see from her letter and her publication “GenXandwich” that she somehow manages to juggle multiple responsibilities, including her social impact and gender equity work.

When you read her articles, I assure you you’ll be inspired by how she articulates the challenges of care and caregiving in the US and by her personal essays about how life is messy and beautiful, exhausting and wonderful. Here are a couple I’ve shared previously:

• Is Care Migration the Next Frontier? Or another bandaid for our broken care system?

• Taking Care on the Road. It’s not a vacation, it’s a trip: 2025 edition

Thank you, Anna De La Cruz , for this letter and for all your advocacy. I appreciate you and our connection.

Many thanks to Anna’s husband Alejandro De La Cruz for these photos that capture his beautiful family. [Checkout his article “I think these are the best photos I took in 2025. This is how I’m trying to process the year.”]

Author’s Bio: Anna De La Cruz is a mom of three, daughter to parents with dementia, and sister and guardian to a brother with Down Syndrome. She has spent her career working in philanthropy, social impact and gender equity worldwide, with a focus on Latin America. Her personal experiences with caregiving over the last decade have fueled her passion to build community and awareness around the needs of caregivers, and shed light on solutions to the care crisis in the US and globally.

When the Waves Keep Coming: Trust yourself

Written to Anna of early 2019, from Anna in January 2026.

Dear Anna,

For just a moment, take a deep breath and channel the salty ocean breeze you were basking in just a few weeks ago. Remember the feeling of the warm sand on your feet and the giggles of your boys digging and wading and treasure-finding. The sound of the waves crashing and the taste of açai and the awe of watching humpback whales breach before your eyes.

That recent family trip to Maui for your 40th birthday was such a beautiful reprieve from a daily life that has been rapidly consumed by the chaos of multigenerational caregiving. It was so good. So needed. So well deserved. I hope you can let it continue to fuel you.

On your birthday eve, even with piña coladas in paradise, it’s true that you were still overcome by the raw tenderness of entering a new decade, and the sadness that comes with the accelerating perception of time passing. You felt grateful for the ways you’ve been fortunate in life, and how far you’ve come. But you also wonder what you’re still missing in midlife, what you sacrificed, and how you’ll manage with all the caregiving responsibilities you now hold. And I can tell you that this pre-birthday ritual will continue into your future, my dear. But on that island far away you were free to sit with and feel those feelings, surrounded by your family and beauty and temporarily without obligations.

Travel has always been one of the greatest joys of your life, as well as an escape. From that first father/daughter trip to Mexico when you cried the plane ride home, and almost every trip since. These days you know that you can (and will) still receive calls from mom’s assisted living facility to report her latest non-compliance, or get texts about forms needing signed for your brother or get a message that your dad is navigating another health setback. Being truly off the grid is hardly possible anymore, but boarding a plane allows you to pretend, doesn’t it?

Mentally and emotionally, it is how you have allowed yourself to step away from the struggles of everyday life and become immersed in all that is unfamiliar and new. To be present in places where you don’t see to-do lists everywhere you look, where your worth is not linked to productivity -- and besides, productivity is measured not in tasks completed, but in how much you smiled and felt joy. Travel is when you become your most curious, creative and free. Any life becomes possible.

I know it feels impossible, but I wonder if you can channel a little bit of that feeling now. You are back home in the throws of life with a five year old, a toddler, and both parents navigating dementia diagnoses. You’ve finally found a rhythm with two children, which was harder than you expected. You’re barely holding the weight of managing your difficult mother’s needs - everything from her health to finances and living arrangements. The pain of witnessing your dad’s declining health is heavy on your heart. The learning curve of taking over guardianship responsibilities for your brother with Down Syndrome is steep. It is so, so much. You’ve taken on more than your share, and you are somehow keeping it together.

And now you’ve been thrown another tremendous curveball - a positive pregnancy test. Unplanned. Holy sh-t.

I know, you really don’t know if you can do it. You’re already feeling completely maxed out with two children and two adults dependent upon you. While there was part of you that hadn’t explicitly closed the door to having more children, you certainly had not proactively made the decision to have another. A third pregnancy at 40? Another postpartum era ahead?

I know you don’t not want another, in fact it is exciting when you allow it to be, but it also feels like it could break you. And yet, your heart skips at the thought of possibly having a daughter. You are romanticized by the idea of a bigger family around the table, louder dinners and holidays, and another sibling for your two boys.

You’re also wondering, what if it is a third boy? And are you terrible for even caring? Will a third child change your relationship with your other children, or break your marriage? You just truly do not know how you will do it. Or how you could choose not to. And admitting that ambivalence is also terrifying and brings you shame- but know that there is nothing to be ashamed of, love. Your feelings are valid and human, even if they are rarely shared out loud.

Even before this news, despite it being clear to everyone on the outside how much care you’re giving already, you still have felt guilt and judgement that you’re never doing enough. There is always a list of things that mom needs, the feeling you should see your brother more. You’re still stung by the scolding your uncle felt entitled to lay on you for not doing more to help him with a task for your mom that he offered to take on - even while you juggled the rest of your mother’s needs. It was hurtful, but you know deep down that he was coming from a place of privilege, of having never been a primary caregiver, and that he was wrong.

Now, fresh with the news of an unexpected pregnancy, like so many others I could try to reassure you by saying that “one day you won’t be able to imagine it any other way.” But even if that’s true, I know it’s not helpful to you to hear that. The truth is that there is more than one possible path, and it’s ok for you to be unsure which one to take. It’s also ok for you to trust yourself and honor the process of weighing all your options. It’s ok for you to do what’s best for you and your family.

So Anna, perhaps let yourself drift back to that peaceful island feeling for a moment. Can you block out the noise, the external (and internal) judgements, and just listen to your heart? What if you ignored the shoulds, and channeled what brought you peace and joy? If you accepted the things that are hard but freeing for you: that it is okay not to do it all, to hold boundaries and to ask for help?

But dear Anna, seven years on - which feels like both a blink and a lifetime - from the eve of your 47th birthday, let me tell you that you can trust yourself. I can tell you that it will be ok, even though I know it doesn’t feel that way now (and that’s also ok). Don’t get me wrong - things will, in fact, get much harder. There are some intense years coming - a global pandemic, loss and grief, even more volatile moments in sandwich caregiving. But they will reinforce how resilient and capable you are, and perhaps even help you see what is most important to you. Your capacity to love will not be divided, it will expand.

You will survive this beautiful but incredibly challenging chapter of your life, with no regrets, and with so much to continue to be grateful for with each year that you have the privilege of completing.

With so much love and compassion,

Anna

P.S. - Spoiler alert - You’ll endure countless people telling you that it will definitely be another boy so “get ready.” But you will get your little girl and she will complete your family in ways you couldn’t have imagined. There is magic and hardship and so many adventures to come and your family of five will be your greatest comfort and gift through it all.

Link to articles by Anna:

Why So Many Women are Opting out of Motherhood

Entangled and Estranged

The Closing Rapid Fire Questions from Victoria:

1. ‘Courage to me is standing up for what or who you believe in, even when it’s the hardest and scariest choice.’

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

I think about my late father David, whose generosity, critical thinking, and compassion made him a natural leader and beloved by just about everyone he encountered.

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

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer is an indigenous scientist who asks if we can learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine our values. Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Serviceberries offer a model “based upon reciprocity, rather than accumulation, where wealth and security come from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.” This way of thinking offers so much value when thinking about the “economic failures” of caregiving. I might have to write a newsletter about that!

A prompt for comment discussion:

How have you managed caregiver ambivalence and the associated guilt?

Do you have regular ‘outs’ from the pressures of caregiving?

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