I spent much of my career leading teams, managing multimillion-dollar programs, making high-stakes decisions, and navigating the pressure that comes with executive leadership.
People often assume that once you’ve developed those skills, uncertainty becomes easier to manage. It doesn’t. In fact, one of the most difficult leadership challenges I ever faced had nothing to do with an executive session, a customer, or a business crisis.
It was my mom.
In the years leading up to her passing in early 2024, I found myself balancing executive responsibilities, family obligations, and the increasingly complicated reality of caring for an aging parent. As the oldest child and the only daughter, much of the caregiving responsibility naturally fell to me.
What made the situation especially difficult was that my relationship with my mother had been complicated long before her health began to decline.
As her needs increased, I found myself making difficult decisions about her care, safety, finances, and overall well-being. Decisions I genuinely believed were necessary to protect her.
Many of those decisions were met with resistance. Sometimes it was anger, criticism or complete rejection.
I felt trapped in an impossible cycle. If I stepped in, I was criticized. If I stepped back, I felt guilty.
If something went wrong, I questioned if I should have done it differently or whether I should have done more.
When I tried to share my experience with others, people would respond with well-intentioned words: “But she’s your mom.” “You’ll miss her when she’s gone.”
I understand what they meant, but I internalized something different.
Pressure. I felt pressured to sacrifice more, contribute more financially and ignore my own exhaustion.
I felt pressured to somehow override years of complex family dynamics because being a daughter meant I had to take on the responsibility to make everything simple for my mom.
The reality? Elder caregiving is rarely simple.
It’s not just managing appointments, medications, or doctor’s visits.
It’s navigating decades of family history. It’s managing family dynamics and opinions from everyone around you. It’s making really difficult decisions about care or independence when there are no good options. It’s trying to protect someone who resents the very protection you’re trying to provide.
But the biggest challenge of all, it’s learning to function in an environment where you have very little control.
When Your Parent Becomes a Wildcard
One of the concepts in our program, Awakening Performance, is clarity under pressure.
Pressure, reactivity and urgency all increase when uncertainty increases.
For those of us who still have our parents, caring for an aging parent whose behavior, health, decisions, or circumstances can change without warning is the ultimate uncertain situation.
Every day felt like a potential disruption.
I’d be startled wide awake in the middle of the night after a phone call informing me she had been rushed to the hospital.
I dealt with countless issues with medications, juggled financial challenges or some new crisis in medical or caregiving paperwork I’d never encountered before.
My mom would create a new crisis, get into a disagreement with a care provider or refuse to accept help or medical advice.
I found myself dropping the work priorities I had carefully orchestrated to deal with a situation that required immediate attention.
I could spend an entire morning focused, strategic, and operating at a high level and then one phone call would arrive and instantly consume every ounce of my mental bandwidth.
What surprised me most wasn’t handling the logistics. It was the accumulated cognitive load I carried.
I’ve spent years coaching my teams, teaching leaders and clients how to make decisions under pressure.
Yet I found myself second-guessing decisions involving my mother far more than decisions involving millions of dollars in business outcomes.
Why? Because business decisions have structure. I could get data, use frameworks and use my feedback loops.
Caregiving decisions often involve incomplete information, emotional history, competing priorities, and outcomes you can’t fully control.
The result is a unique form of decision fatigue that drains mental energy.
The Invisible Workforce Crisis
For years, I carried much of this privately. I showed up, delivered results, led teams and built strong client relationships.
Most people around me had no idea what I was handling behind the scenes.
Looking back, I wonder how many people I worked alongside carried similar burdens. It’s probably more than I realized
In most organizations, employees are quietly coordinating doctor appointments, managing medications, responding to emergencies, handling legal paperwork, arranging care, and making difficult decisions for aging parents.
Many never tell their employer about the additional burdens they’re managing in their personal life, mostly because they don’t want to jeopardize an opportunity, be viewed differently, or appear to be distracted.
They carry it silently until the stress begins to show up. Exhaustion. Burnout. Reduced engagement and possibly departure when it becomes too much.
Organizations spend enormous resources trying to understand turnover, engagement, and productivity challenges.
Meanwhile, caregiving for a sick family member is a big source of employee stress that often remains invisible.
The Question That Changed Everything
At one point during my caregiving journey, a consultant asked me a question that completely stopped me.
“What would it look like if you just didn’t do those things?”
The question sounds simple, but to me it wasn’t. I hadn’t even considered that as a possibility.
I felt responsible. After all, my mom gave me life and I believed it was my duty to carry the burden.
I had become conditioned to believe that if something needed to be done, I needed to be the one doing it.
I had never considered the idea that support, boundaries, delegation of tasks could exist. It just never really occurred to me.
That epiphany didn’t solve everything, but it changed how I viewed my role and my responsibilities.
I realized it’s okay to ask for help, and I wasn’t required to carry everything myself. An invisible weight I had put on my shoulders felt lighter by that simple realization.
Sometimes the most responsible thing to do is to build a sustainable path forward leaning on other people.
Why This Matters for Leaders
Caregiving isn’t just a personal issue.
It’s becoming increasingly common as our population ages.
You may find yourself splitting your cognitive energy between your work and caring for a family member. If it’s someone on your team, it could become a workforce issue and ultimately turn into a retention or performance issue because the load becomes too heavy for the employee.
Behind every employee badge, leadership title, and professional accomplishment may be someone carrying an invisible caregiving burden. Someone on your team, or your boss may be managing uncertainty and making difficult decisions about a loved one. They might be trying to perform their best at work while navigating emotionally complex situations at home.
Strong organizations aren’t built by pretending these realities don’t exist. They understand what people are carrying and create environments where they can continue to contribute without burning out in the process.
If my experience taught me anything, it’s this: You can be a capable executive, a strong leader, and an accomplished professional, but still feel completely overwhelmed when someone you love becomes a wildcard in your life.
It’s not a performance weakness. It’s being human and I believe we should talk about it more openly.
Caring for my mother taught me that clarity under pressure isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about finding the courage to make the best decision you can when there are no perfect options.
Check out the Does Everything Feel Urgent? The One Decision Rule episode on Spotify to help you regain control,
