Hi everyone.
I'm Holly Robinson, pete actor, author, advocate, do it All mom, and I'm also a caregiver. And this is care Walks, a podcast from iHeartRadio and Voltaian Arthritis Pain Gel. It's a show for family caregivers who give everything to everyone and need to make time for.
Themselves through movement.
Every episode is designed for you to walk as you listen, So just think of me and my guests as your weekly walking buddies. We'll discover a community ourselves and maybe even alleviate some joint pain due to arthritis in the process as we walk together and connect to the best parts of being a caregiver. So glad you could join us for another episode of care Walks. You know what I love most about our time together. It makes me feel like we're building a community, a community of family caregivers.
And with each walk we take together and each conversation we have, it makes me feel a little less alone. All right now, just a reminder. Right now you're listening to the full version of this episode, but if you don't have time for a full walk today, then go check out our bridged version of this same episode. It's like cliff notes for podcasts. Okay, In today's episode, we're going to be digging into the shifting dynamics when adult
children become caregivers for their parents. Now, this is something I know a lot about, as I was a caregiver for many years for my dad, and I'm not going to lie, it's a very unsettling change to that relationship. We love our parents, but it can be really strange when all of a sudden, they're no longer the ones taking care of us, and we are the ones taking care of them. We're setting the rules, and we're the
ones who are awake at night worried about how they're doing. Now, as a parent myself, I can see the other side of the coin how those changes in the relationship can also really be challenging for parents who need care. I am looking forward to speaking with today's guest on this topic. Not only is she an actor, advocate, and podcaster, but she is also a family caregiver who took care of her father when he suffered from a heart attack. I'm
talking about my friend Jenny Garth. I've known Jenny for many years and I'm looking forward to connecting with her and comparing our experiences of caring for our parents. Yes, it's challenging, for sure, but there's also something really special about being a caregiver to a parent as their adult child. It gives you a whole new opportunity to get to know them, and I'm really interested to hear Jenny talk about how it may have shaped her life and relationship
with her father in really positive ways. I also know that Jenny has struggled with joint pain, as so many of us caregivers do, so I'm going to ask her about her own relationship with movement and how she keeps active with osteoarthritis. Before we get to our conversation with Jenny, let's get moving and start our walk with intent, an intention of gratitude. We sometimes forget to express gratitude to even the simplest gifts in our lives. There's a lot
to appreciate about where we are in this moment. Show gratitude for your body on this walk and all that is doing to keep you moving forward. Think about how the parts of your body must work in harmony for you to do the amazing things you do every day. It's not always easy, I know, but your body shows up for you. Use today as a reminder to share that strength, appreciate your movement, and consider how you can connect with someone who might need that little nudge to
find that gratitude today too. We can only be as strong as the connections we make, whether that is sharing a beautiful memory or deepening your connection with yourself. Give thanks for the important connections in your life as you settle into the rhythm of your walk. I'm going to keep talking and share with you my conversation with our
guests Jenny Garth, and together will widen our community of caregivers. Today, I have the pleasure of talking to not only a great friend of mine, but also a magnificent actress, fellow podcaster and caregiver, Jenny Garth. Like me, Jenny cared for her father for many years, and she has recently spoken out about living with osteoarthritis. Jenny, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, Holly, I'm so glad to see you too. This is an awesome way to have some girl time catch up.
I know.
I just follow you on the Instagram. I see all your work. I saw the whales in Vancouver. Oh my god.
Oh well, I follow you as well, And that's social media use for good.
It keeps us in contact with each other. Yes, exactly.
This program is really designed to support caregivers. Share a little bit with us about your journey as a caregiver.
Well, it started off really young. I was about thirty when my father suffered his first massive heart attack. We lived in Illinois on farm. Everything was perfect and idyllic, and my dad was, you know, this big strong man. All of a sudden he was, you know, incapacitated, and having a heart attack back then, all those years ago, was a lot different than having a heart attack now. So it was much more invasive and disruptive to life
and so much harder to come back from. So that really changed my life as a young girl, uprooted our family. We had to move to Arizona for a drier climate for him, leave some siblings behind. It was really a pretty traumatic experience.
Then.
This was a few years later. My mom was having to work and continued to like do what she needed to do to keep the household going, and so I would fill in for her. And that was when I was already living out in la and acting. But I would take breaks so that I could go back and take care of my dad. I think what's so great about our conversations that we both had to be caregivers
at a young age. My dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease when I was just eighteen, headed to college, so many new things in my life, and really considered just not going.
To college so that I could take care of my dad. What do you think the biggest adjustment is that you had to make as a young caregiver.
I mean just the sacrifice that you have to make to be there for someone on that level. It's if you know, it's an all encompassing sacrifice. So when you are actually taking care of someone like that, you're one hundred percent responsible for another grown, adult human being. It's not you know this when you have a baby and you kind of like ease your way into being a mother.
This as a young girl was like, okay, wow, I'm going to jump in and do this the best I know how, And it was a lot I think that it had a lot of, you know, impact on just every aspect.
Of my life.
Yeah, I mean becoming a caregiver for a parent. You mentioned, you know, when you have a baby, it's a different thing, You're completely different dynamic. But when you're when it's your dad. You know, what were the biggest shifts in your relationship with your dad when you became his caregiver.
Well, the shifts had already, unfortunately started to happen as he went through his health problems associated with cardiovascular disease and all the things that came with that. He was my you know, this big, strong hero to me and there was nothing he couldn't do. And then when he got sick, that just changed and I saw him on such a vulnerable level, and it was so hard to
watch your hero, your dad, decline like that. You know, a lot of it came from his own self doubt of his own self worth, how he felt as a man and as the provider for our family, and all of those shifts that happened, and then being dependent on other people was very, very difficult for him.
So it made it.
Kind of frictious sometimes when you know, he didn't want to be taken care of and somebody had to take care of him, had to help him up and down into the bathroom and to bathe and all the things that you have to do. From that point forward, as a young girl, something inside of you switches and you become uber responsible for you feel like everything.
I would say that's the biggest dynamic that shift for me was just going from being just the daughter and looking up to my daddy, my big, strong daddy, and then now being responsible for his care and and like you said, you know, we just didn't have a lot of information back then about health and wellness, and we didn't have you know, Google, and we didn't have all.
These search podcasts.
We didn't have podcasts. We didn't have anybody to talk to about this. We just we just white knuckled it, right, We just you just pushed through. And I will say that one of the best things about being a caregiver was going through sort of this evolution of emotions about my dad. And we had an interesting relationship like many
people do with their fathers many daughters. But there were a lot of things that we hadn't said to each other and dealt with my dad a lot of baggage, and so I found that we had opportunity to have a lot of talks because we spent time together. Did you find it hard to set boundaries as a caregiver and connect, you know, you want to try to be there and talk and connect with your dad but you also, you know, you're sort of in charge. That was an interesting dynamic for me.
Yeah, it's weird to be in charge of your parent and they don't like it either, so it makes us super challenging. When I would go and take care of my dad on my own, it was just me and him, and we're both very very quiet people, like we are the kind of people that don't need to talk just
for the sake of talking. Our energy is enough for each other, and we would just go on drives a lot and be in silence and just really enjoy that connection, that unsaid bond that we had, which was something that I miss because there aren't a lot of people in the world that I can just hang out with and not talk to special. Yeah, so we got to spend a lot of really quality time together, and jeez, I'm so grateful for that.
You know, like many caregivers, did you go through like an evolution of emotions throughout your experience as a caregiver and what or who were the strongest support systems for you and your family?
For me, back then, with my dad, I had my mom to talk to. I have my siblings. Now with my mom, I have my siblings to talk to about it, to sort of share stories and the ups and downs
of it and the frustrations of it. And I feel like that's so important to have somebody or more than one person that you can just talk to and kind of vent with yes and let go of all that responsibility for a minute, know how valuable you are, and pat yourself on the back, Like give yourself that accolades, give yourself that acknowledgment of how much you're doing, how
much is on your plate. They always say, when the oxygen mask comes out of the ceiling on the airplane, put it on yourself first, and then put it on someone else because of you. If you don't take care of yourself like we've talked about, you really aren't going to be able to take care of anyone else. That burnout is so real, and if you don't address it, I feel like it's just a disaster waiting to happen because you can't handle it all on your own.
It's so so true. How was watching your father's health challenges? How did that change how you think about your own physical.
Health seeing him struggle? It didn't really affect me at that young age, but when I did turn thirty, I started taking things much more seriously because that was my dad was thirty seven when he had his first massive heart attack, and so I was like, I'm gonna get ahead of this. I'm thirty, I'm ahead of him by seven years. I'm really gonna like look into it. So I started to really dial in on my own healthcare
and like being my own advocate. And I felt like I was ahead of the curve at the time, you know, like being thirty, because oftentimes you wait too long until you've already got a problem, or you're starting to feel, you know, ill, or you notice something's not right. It's imperative, in my opinion, to take the bull by the horns and get in there and take care of yourself before something goes wrong.
Isn't that interesting?
I did the same thing, Jenny, when my dad he was diagnosed with Parkinson's at a very young age, young on set Parkinson's and in his forties. And when I turned the age that my dad was when he was diagnosed, which was around forty six forty seven, I was watching for tremors. I was I went to a neurologist and I, you know, I said, is there anything I can do to get ahead of this, and and they were like, relax, Holly, you know you can't. That's not the way this goes.
You.
You know, definitely take care of yourself. But but isn't that interesting when you when you're the age that your your parent was when they got a diagnosis or or a health crisis happened, how you you sort of go inward and go okay, and let me start looking at my own health and wellness.
And maybe maybe that's, you know, a gift, that's one of the gifts of it is that if this hadn't happened with my dad, I wouldn't have been so conscious of my health and been so proactive in it, and I could be in the same boat that he was, you know, who knows. And that continues as you get older because you just you want to stay healthy for as long as you can. I just started to eat much more healthy. I've always been a healthy eater, always
been vegetarian. And also knowing your family history, like researching your actual lineage and your biological parents and their parents and how what is passed down in a generation after generation of your family, because some families are more prone to cardiovascular disease. Some families are more prone to cancer and you can kind of see the pattern before it
becomes a problem. And then from your family knowledge, going to the doctor and getting baseline of your own health like what is your blood pressure, what is your cholesterol, what is your BMI, and talking to your doctor and forming a relationship with them, letting them know like, these are my genetic my family predispositions to an illness, and these are the things I like to keep an eye on and be really targeted at looking at.
Yeah, being really proactive with your own health is so key. And again, we went through caregiving situations with our dads pre Internet, pre Google.
So we we're the real MVPs. That's what I'm saying. I'm claiming that. Oh my gosh.
More from my conversation with Jenny Garth. After a brief commercial break, and now back to my conversation with Jenny Garth. I want to talk a little bit about joint pain. You recently shared that you are dealing with osteo arthritis and I would love to know what did the road to your OA diagnosis look like.
Well, it was full of denial.
Let's start with that, because who wants to say, oh, I have joined pain. I feel like I might have arthritis. Like for me, that was like something that old people had to deal with, and I was just not ready to cross that bridge or just acknowledge it. And the fact is, it's not an old people's disease quote unquote.
You can have osteoarthritis or forms of arthritis. You can have joint pain at any age, and it's just specific to who you are, your genetic makeup, and what your lifestyle is like and the foods that you're eating, so it all contributes to it. But for me, I've always had bad hips. Like it's a family thing, like both my parents had hip replacements, and I knew it was coming.
I don't even think I've ever shared this with anyone, but in two thousand and twenty, right after the hospitals open back up, I underwent a hip replacement because I thought, I'm young, I want to I know this is coming. I'm having a lot of discomfort and my quality of life is diminishing. I couldn't hike with my dogs, I couldn't play golf, I couldn't sit comfortably all the things. And so I got ahead of that and did the hip replace and recovered beautifully. I was like up and
going almost instantly. Wow, Yeah, that was it. I was only forty six five seven eight something like.
That, right, right.
But it was interesting because from that I felt like I was a little bit even more in touch with my body, especially my joints, because that major hip join is a big deal.
And I had felt like.
The stiffening of my knees a little and you know, when you wake up, your hands are kind of sore when you bend them around, and you know, you're like, wait, what is this feeling? Like, what is why am I hurting? You know all the time. So just listening to my body and listening to how my body healed from the hip replacement and how my body sort of compensated for the redistribution of weight during all of that, it had
a major impact on the rest of my body. So it was during that time that I started to notice that the signs of arthritis were coming.
You mentioned products that you users are anything that you're doing or products that you're using specifically that have really help with your OA joint pain.
Well, there's over the counter voltairean arthritis pain gel is something that you can rub on and get relief with that. I use it, My siblings all use it, and then people come out of the woodwork like, oh Voltaire And I use Voltairean too, because it's like it really does help. Because there's nothing that they can do at this point to cure arthritis. I don't believe, or to make it completely go away, so treating it at this juncture is what we can do.
My daughter.
I still have my almost sixteen year old at home with me, and so I'm continuing to drive her around Los Angeles like an uber driver constantly, which is hard, like driving and sitting in it like that physician in traffic for hours upon hours.
Sometimes it's you can get stiff.
So getting up and getting out of the car and moving around is really important because driving is one of the hardest things on me.
Yes, I have five dogs.
I'm constantly bending and lifting and taking care of them and playing, and you know, I just want to stay really active. And also, Holly, oh my god, I'm so excited that I'm going to be a grandma someday.
Not yet. Wait, I thought you were going to break some news to me.
I wasn't ready.
H No, no, no, I'm not ready either.
But I'm really looking forward to that, and I want to be super like active, and I want to stay like, you know, tip top shape, not just for me and my dogs anymore, my husband, but for my grandkids someday.
Yes.
Absolutely.
I mean I'm fifty seven now and a lot of my friends are becoming grandparents and and I'm like, wait, what, You're the same age as me, How is that possible? But then you know, I'm like, I got twenty my twins are twenty four, Jenny, I'm like, it's going to happen at some point.
So I'm very.
Much like you in that I want to stay active. I want to stay healthy.
I want to.
Stay moving, realizing the importance of exercise and movement the whole package, the whole like physical, mental, emotional, all the well beings that go on with a person, like all the parts of me that I need to keep well, that's my goal.
You got your daughter still home and still there, And does she ever work out with you or move with you or hike with you or is it just you and the dogs? She just wants to ride to a party.
Pretty much?
That one.
Yeah, no, unless it's like a TikTok dance that she's trying to get me to do no. But my older daughter, I have a twenty five year old and a nineteen year old. They're both in New York right now, so I go visit them and we walk like so much. There's a funny story when when I was visiting my daughter's one time, I was experiencing some hormonal flux. Let's just say this was not that long ago.
I'm feeling you, uh huh.
And it was a hot, sweaty day and they wanted to go on a city bike ride. So I was like, yeah, let's do it. They've got our city bikes. And all of a sudden, I don't know how it happened. We were in Brooklyn. They had me ride the bike over the bridge, over the whole and I was just drenched, had to toe like dripping sweat, and they were laughing so hard, and I was like, I'm good, keep going, We're fine, like not going to acknowledge the fact that I was like, oh what, yeah, Oh my gosh. They
come home like, so I go there. I'm very active with them. And then they come back here and we're just like, let's go to the beach, let's fly a kite.
Let's go on a hike. Let's do this. So yeah, very I love going. We're good at that.
My daughter just has been living in Brooklyn for a while now, and I drive a that bridge and have never attempted to ride a bike over it. So you get major props then now I won't, but you get major props for me.
I think that's pretty amazing this one.
I want to know, though, Jenny, what are some of your favorite self care practices? What just makes you feel like you love yourself?
Being outside, being in nature, Like you know, just putting down the work and going outside and having some good fresh air is one of my favorite things to do. I've also become addicted to my bathtub.
Yes, and I'm so.
I'm very conscious of the environment. So I will never fill my bathup like I like a quarter tub full of water. I will punish myself and only have like parts of myself in the hot water.
Because I don't want to.
I feel like it's so excessive to like fill a giant tub of water.
Oh my gosh, no, no, don't wait. Can I just have a my mom fashion moment? This is the one thing about me that I am the opposite. It's not even. I'm not even. It's just I'm so forgetful that I leave the water running. And anytime my family knows that I'm drawing a bath, they all stand in the bathroom because I'll go off and do nineteen other things. And whether it's just a couple drops of oil or turning off the lights, lighting a candle, I think that's a really good moment of self.
Care, doesn't require a whole lot of other stuff.
Yeah, I am. I'm a meditator too. I love to sit quietly. It sort of grounds me back to my true nature of just being quiet. I will light some incense before I go to bed. And also, you know, it's so easy to watch the news before you go to sleep or watch something on TV before you go to sleep, But I try to remember to turn the TV off and just be in like silence and let my body sort of calm down the way it's rhythmically supposed to and have a good night's sleep. So sleep is the most important thing.
And just getting back to what we were talking about with caregiving for our moms, eventually, what do you think you would do differently when and if you're in that position?
M I mean, I would somewhat know what I'm doing, somewhat know how to keep another person alive like that. That was, like you said before, I was just winging it when I was younger. But now all the experience of being a mom and I will be much better at it and also more patient just a little bit.
I'm more grounded now as a person. And you know, every decade represents something wonderful and new, and I've just turned fifty and I'm really excited to see what that brings like for me as far as like how it changes me. But I think I'm just less reactive now, more patient, more able to set aside my own whatever and just focus on someone else and their well being.
And then I'm also able to sort of categorize things a little bit better now and say, this is my block of time that I'm going to be, you know, really focusing on taking care of my mom or my kids or whatever it is, and then I'm going to carve out half an hour and for a bath for myself, you know, Like there's I'm going to be able to take care of everybody a little bit better, including myself.
Yeah, So I would throw in that there, ask for help, ask for help, ask for help, do it all. You can't do it all, and then you don't want to look up ten years later.
Build your schedule.
Yeah, like I have, Like a thing that I learned from a therapist was a seven day week, Like look at your month in seven day increments and make sure you're feeling like if your life is a pie chart, right, and here's the part where you're taking care of someone else. Here's your work, here's your roman life, here's your social life, here's your self care life. Make sure your pie is really as balanced as you can. When you're divvying up
your time and your energy. It's really important to have that balance as much as you can.
It is so important. And Jenny, I really appreciate this conversation. It's been so awesome talking to you. I feel like we see each other and we've worked together, we've done things, we see each other in passing. But this is like the longest conversation we've ever had and it's the best one. And I hope that everyone listening, well we'll take something from this. And I really appreciate you joining me for care walk, So thank you. Jenny Garth, happy, so happy
to do it. Great to see you you too. I want to thank Jenny Garth again for being my guest today.
Really enjoyed our conversation.
We talked about the parent child dynamic, how she saw her dad as such a strong figure as a child, the importance of balance in your life when you're a caregiver, and some of Jenny's favorite self care practices.
She loves her baths, so.
Do I, meditation and being in nature. Well that's it for today's episode. Thanks again to Jenny for joining me. Don't forget to tune in next week when we talk all about nutrition and joint pain with doctor Monica agerwach Care Walks is produced by iHeartRadio in partnership with voltairean Arthritis Pain Gel and hosted by me Holly Robinson Pete. Our executive producer is Molly Sosha. Our head engineer is
Matt Stillough. This episode was written and produced by Sierra Kaiser, with special thanks to our partners at GSK Platform, GSK, Weber, Shandwick and Edelman.