Act your age! Are adventures at 60 still okay when you're a woman and a carer?
Hell yes! Let's redefine adventure by pushing past age, gender, and caregiving boundaries (+ everyone should meet a seal and wish on a star, shouldn't they?)
A big hello to new and returning subscribers, and thank you for your fab comments on my first post. This week’s essay was prompted by a brief conversation on Notes with and about being cared for and being a carer. In the UK, one in five people are unpaid carers, and 73% of those don’t think of themselves, or call themselves, a carer. This is just my take on the carer-quandary and how, with a little bit of help from nature and a few mini-adventures, there’s a way to keep yourself sane. I know everyone’s circumstances are different, but hopefully this will resonate with someone, somewhere. Jane x
My finger hovers over the glowing green button on the screen. The words “Confirm your order” beckon, but I’m filled with fear of making the wrong decision. This feeling isn’t new; I have forced myself to press a whole kaleidoscope of coloured buttons over the years, yet it never gets any easier. I take a deep breath, count to five and click. “We can confirm your kayaking and wild camping adventure.”
Why is this such a big deal? It probably isn’t for most people - I get that - but as a carer, a woman, and hurtling towards sixty, it feels massive. Typically, carers aren’t known for being adventurous. Instead, I’ve heard us described as a ‘safe pair of hands’ (bleh) or ‘solid as a rock’ (groan). Yet, we are just ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances that we never wished for. We get frustrated, angry, and are even occasionally cruel to the people we love the most. Not saints at all. Perhaps that’s why I have always hated the term “carer” and the implications it carries.
It was five years before we realised I was my chronically ill husband’s carer. I would climb ladders to fix windows and security lights, remind him to take his medications, mow the lawn, cook meals, and carry just about anything from one place to another, and then back again. Doing all this stuff had become a part of my everyday life, a few more tasks to tick off my to-do list. But the idea of being a carer? That had seemed like a joke. Then my perception changed.
One Sunday morning, while my husband and I were pouring over the seemingly endless pages of a Personal Independence Payment claim form, question after question asked if he needed help with various tasks. With each question, my husband would answer “yes”. It was at that moment we realised something: I wasn’t just his go-to person or a master of multitasking. I was his carer. His 24/7, unpaid, live-in help.
“Okay, so what?” you may ask. “How does adventure fit into all this?” Well, here’s a thing - adventure, for me at least, was actually more important than you might think.
From a young age, I have been a sucker for adventures. As a tomboy growing up, I was the one with perpetual grazes on my knees and grass stains on my knickers. I loved nothing more than throwing myself onto the bare back of a pony as it galloped out of control across fields at top speed. If I could have crawled inside the pages of an Enid Blyton book and joined the Famous Five, I would have.
When I reached my late twenties, adventure became my whole life as I set off around the world with an open-ended ticket. I relished new experiences, getting into scrapes and falling for complete (sometimes dubious) strangers. It wasn’t until my visa and money ran out, and a particularly surly Australian immigration officer suggested it was time to go home, that I reluctantly obeyed. That was the end of my adventures for a while.
Years later, on the first night we met, my future husband told me he was likely to get cancer. It was a blind date, I was smitten, and in my drunken state, I thought, “nope, that won’t happen”. Little did I know he had already had cancer twice before. Fast forward three years, and his prediction came true. I watched as he prepared for a fourteen-hour operation to remove a cancerous tumour, and, in that moment, all the adventures, all the fun, all the laughter we were supposed to experience together disappeared.
Nobody expected him to recover, but together we were a formidable team. When he returned home, I nursed him around the clock. I changed his dressings, injected liquid food into his stomach, and stuck fentanyl patches onto his arm to take away the pain. Nothing, and I mean nothing, mattered more than ensuring he got better, and I was determined to make that happen at any cost. There was just one problem. Somewhere between the antiseptic wipes and the repeat prescriptions I had neglected to look after someone else, and that someone was me.
Ironically, it was my husband, still frail and mostly bedridden, that noticed the frazzled state I was in. He told me (I was going to say “suggested” but that wouldn’t have been entirely truthful) to take a break. “Go for a walk,” he said. “Think of it as time to recharge your batteries.” Despite my initial reluctance, those walks soon became my lifeline, leading me back to a gentler reality. One that wasn’t tainted by the smell of cancer, hospitals, or death.
Every evening, I would relive my childhood, scouring the local woods and fields for signs of badgers and owls. In a meadow overflowing with purple knapweed, roe deer would cautiously approach me, stamping their feet, their tongues licking the air in search of my scent. And, as darkness draped itself around my shoulders, signalling it was time to head home, pipistrelle bats would brush my cheeks, circled and swooping as they captured moths on the wing.
Were these walks adventures? They definitely were for me. During moments of heightened anxiety, they helped to slow my pulse and calm my racing heartbeat, and they made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck with pleasure instead of fear. As I bathed in the quiet solitude of dusk, with heightened senses and emotions laid bare, it was more than just a walk home; it was a journey back to stability.
That was seventeen years ago. Since then I’ve pretty much mastered the art of the carer’s adventure, whether it be dusk walks, wild swimming or sitting on a hill at 6 a.m. And, if you’re wondering about the kayaking trip, I can highly recommend it. I swam in Perrier-clear seas, met a seal, made wishes on shooting stars whilst snug in my bivvy bag beneath a cloudless sky, cooked a mean chilli over an open fire, and kayaked past towering cliffs while a peregrine falcon called from its hidden nest. It was exhilarating and exhausting in equal parts, but it was a physical rather than mental exhaustion, and that felt great.
So, what I'm trying to say is, whenever you come across a big, colourful button-of-opportunity, don't hesitate. Do yourself a favor and click on the bloody thing!
Isn’t it amazing how a sense of adventure is part of our identity and being, no matter what life throws at us it is the thing that brings us back to ourselves. There is no age limit on that! Thank you for your words.
Physical exhaustion weirdly gives us energy to refill us for the mental exhaustion - I know this, just need to practice it more - work in progress... Weirdly I practiced this religiously in palliative to end-of-life caring for my Dad, and in these calmer waters my head & body have gone PHEW, no need to do that as much now. Pivot pivot again and recalibrate the new caregiving context. As Bee said - Thank you - an inspiring read and Solidarity rules! Plus I've murdered and cried into all my pillows - they are flat pancakes now!