Enjoying some time free of stress is the want of all people who care for loved ones full time. Don’t believe for one moment that finding some time for yourself is the least of your concerns. If you don’t look after your health with purpose one small injury, or stressful hurt, sits upon all the others that have come before. They don’t go away, they build up little by little.

You become more resilient little by little too. In fact you won’t even notice how you cope ever so slowly with more and more, until one day the damn breaks and you hit the wall. It is really best to take just a few small steps to improving your health and building upon them. I had to lift my son many times a day. It was easy in the beginning, after all he was born 3 months premature. By the time he got to school I had become just a little bit stronger day after day. Lifting him was quite doable still. Fortunately I knew I could easily hurt my back as he continued to grow so I began weight training to strengthen my back, and being particularly careful.

By the time he was 16 I was strong indeed. I had no problem lifting him. Alas the stress got me before the bad back injury could and I found myself incapacitated after breast cancer surgery. It was physically impossible for me to try to lift him for several months. I won’t go into how I got around that and the help I needed here. Interestingly when I was able to resume my role I found he was way too heavy for me to even contemplate trying to lift. He hadn’t gotten bigger, I had lost the years of strength training I had been putting in by lifting him each and every day. 

Just as I had gained lots of strength so very slowly without noticing it, so do you gain more and more ability to hold stress within. That stress held within might not show up to everyone around you, but it is there, working it’s way through your immune system, the cells in your body, and your heart. Take the biggest tip I can give and address your stress early. Find ways to laugh and enjoy your life and as I always say, see a Counselor when you need to, and even if you don’t think you do.