My mum turned 90 recently.
Quite an achievement.
We celebrated twice.
The first lunch was with her identical twin sister and two of my cousins. It was lovely, but also a reminder of how much life can change.
You see, Mum has vascular dementia and her sister has Alzheimer’s.
At one point during lunch, my cousins looked at me and said:
“How do you cope with it being just you? There are three of us and we find it hard.”
The comment stayed with me for a few days.
Then came birthday lunch number two.
This time with my son and daughter-in-law.
A slightly more bougie affair. 🍾
Before we left to collect Mum, my son and I were sitting in the garden with a coffee.
Then he said something I wasn’t expecting.
“Mum, all you talk about is Grandma. You need something else in your life. It can’t all be about her.”
And that hit hard.
Really hard.
Not because he was being unkind.
Not because he didn’t understand.
But because somewhere deep down I knew there was some truth in it.
The strange thing is, I have plenty going on in my life.
I work full time in a demanding role.
I have friends.
I travel.
I have trips planned.
I have interests, projects and ambitions.
But as I started thinking about what he’d said, I noticed something.
Even when I was talking about my plans, my travels and my future, somehow the conversation kept circling back to Mum.
The logistics.
The worry.
The planning.
The “what ifs”.
Everything seemed to lead back there.
And that’s when I realised something.
Responsibility rarely arrives all at once.
It creeps.
A little more here.
A little more there.
One extra phone call.
One extra appointment.
One extra thing to think about before you book a trip or make a plan.
Until one day you realise it’s occupying far more space in your life than you ever intended.
One phrase kept coming back to me:
“Put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others.”
We’ve all heard it.
Most of us nod wisely when someone else says it.
Far fewer of us are good at actually doing it.
Because caring feels important.
Necessary.
The right thing to do.
And it is.
But somewhere along the way, I’d allowed the authentic version of me to start fading into the background.
Not intentionally.
Not dramatically.
Just gradually.
I was still a daughter, a mother, a friend, a colleague and an employee.
But I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention to simply being me.
That realisation surprised me.
More than Mum’s diagnosis.
More than my son’s comment.
Because I hadn’t noticed it happening.
I’ve even found myself deliberately avoiding talking about Mum in some friendship groups. Not because I’m ashamed of the situation, but because I wanted somewhere in my life that wasn’t entirely defined by it.
Somewhere uncontaminated by appointments, worries and deterioration.
A place where I could simply be myself.
So what changed?
Honestly, not very much overnight.
Life doesn’t work like that.
Mum still needs support.
The responsibilities haven’t disappeared.
But I have become more aware.
More conscious of where my attention goes.
More intentional about protecting small parts of my day that belong to me.
Because caring for someone else is important.
But disappearing yourself in the process helps nobody.
Not them.
And certainly not you.
Sometimes the biggest changes don’t come from doing something differently.
They come from noticing what’s been happening all along.
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