The Hidden Cost of Caregiving: How My Mother’s Dementia Almost Broke Me

By Jennifer Walsh
Published: January 5, 2026 • 12 min read

There’s a photograph on my desk from my mother’s 70th birthday. She’s laughing, surrounded by family, wearing the red dress she always saved for special occasions. Her eyes are sharp and full of life.

I keep it there to remember who she was. Because the woman who lives in the memory care facility now—the one who sometimes calls me by her sister’s name, who can’t remember my children exist, who occasionally screams at shadows—that woman feels like someone else entirely.

My mother has Alzheimer’s disease. And for four years, I was her primary caregiver.

Those years nearly killed me.

The Slow Disappearing

It started small, the way these things always do.

She’d repeat stories she’d just told. She’d forget where she put her keys. She’d call me twice in one day, having no memory of the first call.

“It’s just age,” I told myself. “Everyone forgets things.”

Then she got lost driving to the grocery store—a route she’d taken thousands of times. Then she forgot to pay her electric bill for three months. Then she left the stove on overnight.

The diagnosis came when she was 72: early-stage Alzheimer’s, progressing faster than average.

“You’ll want to start thinking about care options,” the neurologist said, as if he were recommending a vacation destination and not discussing the slow erasure of my mother’s mind.

Becoming a Caregiver

I never made a conscious decision to become my mother’s primary caregiver. It just… happened.

My brother lived across the country. My father had passed years ago. I worked from home and lived twenty minutes away. It made sense—at first.

I started going over a few times a week. Then daily. Then I was managing her medications, her appointments, her finances, her meals. I was helping her shower when she forgot how. I was checking that she hadn’t wandered off in the middle of the night.

My own life started shrinking.

What I gave up:

• My job (I went part-time, then quit entirely)
• My friendships (I was too exhausted to maintain them)
• My marriage (my husband became a single parent to our kids while I cared for my mom)
• My health (I gained 40 pounds, stopped exercising, stopped sleeping)
• My identity (I stopped being Jennifer and became only “Mom’s caregiver”)

I told myself I was being a good daughter. I told myself this was temporary. I told myself I could handle it.

I was lying.

The Invisible Toll

Here’s what nobody tells you about caregiving:

It’s lonely. So profoundly, devastatingly lonely. You’re watching someone you love disappear, and there’s no one to talk to who really understands. Your friends can’t relate. Your family doesn’t see what you see. You’re alone in the trenches.

It’s grief without death. My mother was still alive, but the person she’d been was gone. I was mourning someone who still breathed, still sat across from me, still sometimes called me “sweetie.” The grief had no name and no end.

It’s relentless. There are no sick days. No vacation. The disease doesn’t pause because you’re exhausted. Every morning, you wake up and do it again.

It changes you. I became someone I didn’t recognize. Impatient. Resentful. Angry—at my mother, at the disease, at the universe for putting us here.

The Breaking Point

Year three was when I broke.

My mother had started having episodes—paranoid delusions where she believed people were trying to hurt her. She’d become aggressive, hitting and scratching when I tried to help her. She stopped sleeping through the night, and so did I.

I was running on caffeine and desperation. I’d lost 25 pounds because I’d forgotten to eat. My husband and I were barely speaking. My kids—11 and 14—were parenting themselves because I had nothing left for them.

One night, after a particularly brutal episode where my mother screamed at me for two hours, convinced I was an intruder, I sat in my car in her driveway and thought about driving it into a tree.

Not because I wanted to die, exactly. But because I wanted to stop. I wanted someone to force me to rest. I wanted an out.

That thought scared me enough to finally ask for help.

Making the Impossible Decision

Moving my mother into memory care was the hardest decision of my life.

She didn’t understand why. On bad days, she accused me of abandoning her. On worse days, she begged me to take her home. I would drive away from visits and cry so hard I couldn’t see the road.

But the truth I had to face: I was no longer capable of providing the care she needed. Her disease had progressed beyond what one person could manage. And if I didn’t stop, the disease wasn’t just going to take her—it was going to take me too.

The guilt doesn’t go away. I still question whether I did the right thing. I still feel like I should be able to do more. But I’ve also learned that guilt is not the same as truth. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is admit your limits.

Recovery: Learning to Be a Person Again

After my mother moved into memory care, I had to rebuild a self.

Therapy: I found a therapist who specialized in caregiver trauma. We worked through the grief, the guilt, the identity loss. She helped me understand that I wasn’t a bad daughter—I was a burnt-out human being who’d given everything she had.

Medical care: I finally went to my own doctor. My blood pressure was dangerously high. I was pre-diabetic. My body had been screaming for attention while I ignored it. I started medication, started walking, started sleeping again.

Reconnection: Slowly, painfully, I reconnected with my husband and kids. My daughter told me, months later, that she’d been afraid she was losing me. That broke my heart—but it also motivated me to keep recovering.

Setting boundaries: I visit my mom twice a week now. I’ve made peace with the fact that more frequent visits don’t actually help her—she forgets within minutes that I was there. What matters is the quality of the time, not the quantity.

What I Wish I’d Known

If you’re caring for someone with dementia—or any serious illness—please hear this:

You cannot do it alone. I know you think you can. I thought so too. You can’t. Accept help. Hire help. Demand help from family. You are one human being, and this job requires an army.

Caregiver burnout is real. It’s not weakness. It’s not failure. It’s the predictable result of an impossible, unsustainable situation. If you’re burnt out, you’re not a bad caregiver—you’re someone who’s been running a marathon with no finish line.

Your needs matter too. You are not just a caregiver. You are a person with your own health, relationships, and dreams. You do not have to sacrifice everything. The person you’re caring for would not want you to destroy yourself for them.

Residential care is not abandonment. Placing a loved one in professional care doesn’t mean you’ve failed them. It means you’ve recognized that they need more support than one person can provide.

Get support before you break. Don’t wait until you’re fantasizing about car accidents. Join a caregiver support group. See a therapist. Take respite care. The system isn’t designed to help you—you have to fight for yourself.

Where We Are Now

My mother doesn’t know who I am anymore.

Some visits, she thinks I’m her sister. Some visits, she thinks I’m a nice nurse. Some visits, she doesn’t acknowledge me at all.

I grieve that. I’ll always grieve that.

But here’s what I’ve learned: love isn’t about recognition. I can hold her hand and play her favorite music and tell her stories about our family, even if she doesn’t remember any of it. My love for her doesn’t require her memory.

And I’ve learned something else too: I matter. My health matters. My family matters. The years I have left matter.

My mother gave me everything she had when I was young. Honoring her now doesn’t mean destroying myself. It means living the full, healthy life she would have wanted for me.

That’s what I’m trying to do.

Jennifer Walsh is a writer and caregiver advocate living in Minneapolis. She speaks openly about caregiver burnout in hopes that other caregivers will seek help before reaching the breaking point.