The daunting challenge of family caregiving.

Illustration by Eric Collins / ecol-art.com

“When I meet with families for the first time, I always remember the helplessness I felt as a new caregiver,” writes Linda Beall, the author of “A Clear Small Voice,” the Reflections essay in the September issue of AJN.

Beall, now a hospice nurse, is referring to the confusion she felt while caring for her mother during the week after her initial hospitalization with metastatic cancer:

I recall helping her into the car at the time of her discharge. She had difficulty taking even a few steps. Huge staples laddered down the front of her body from sternum to pelvis. She had a drain to be emptied. I had a handful of prescriptions that I took to the pharmacy, not really knowing what the meds were.

Beall was not yet a nurse at that point. In fact, she didn’t graduate from nursing school until age 47. What spurred her to consider beginning a nursing career far later in life than most?

A clear small voice, easily missed.

In this engaging essay, she describes the experience of caring for her dying mother, and how, in the midst of the all the ordinary tasks, she had a kind of small essential realization—the kind we mostly don’t know how to listen for or trust.

One day—and I remember distinctly that all I was doing was setting up her pills and preparing a few bites of food that I hoped she’d eat—a clear small voice inside me said, “You could do this for other people.”

“A Clear Small Voice” is free to read. It’s also the first Reflections essay to be read as a podcast. We’ll be doing this every month from now on. This month’s is read by AJN managing editor Amy Collins. You can listen to it or download it here.