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The Invisible impact caregiving takes on your relationship
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Alison Smith
No one prepares you for how much a diagnosis can affect your relationship. Between appointments, sleepless nights, paperwork, and the emotional weight of advocating for your child, it's easy to loose sight of each other.
When you’re in the thick of it, it’s hard to imagine that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Twenty years of marriage have given Corey and I plenty of "you can't make this stuff up" moments, as well as some beautiful, joyful and inspiring ones.
There was a season where we were living the absolute grit and grind of daily survival. It was a blur of Corey working nights, I was essentially "living" in the hospital, and navigating a level of sleep deprivation that makes you question your own sanity. With three young children, and the crushing stress of the hospital environment weighing on us, it felt like we were constantly on the edge. Our strategy became one of survival: divide and conquer. We had to be a tag team just to make it through the next 24 hours.
But survival is just the first step. To keep our marriage alive, we had to be intentional. We learned that we had to communicate every single day—no matter how exhausted we were. We made sure to carve out that space to decompress, creating a safe harbour where we could share our fears, our worries, and our concerns without judgment. We realized that marriage is a choice you make every single day. We had to make it a priority, grounded in gratitude for one another. Most importantly, we learned the golden rule of our partnership: we couldn't both give up at the same time.
In our latest episode, Hard Stuff Corey and I pull back the curtain on that time. We share the raw, honest truth about how we processed that trauma and found our way back to each other.
Click here to read Episode 1 Hard Stuff Show Notes
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