Rhythmic Resilience: Caregiving Lessons from Musician Maritri Garrett | 005

Welcome to episode five of the Sharegiving Secret. It was a chance meeting that brought me into this fear of Maritri Garrett, a wonderfully talented musician and an even warmer, generous person. I want you to listen with joy to this true artist who faced the music in her own life, unexpectedly disrupting her global career as a performer to become a sandwich generation caregiver, first for her parents and then for her parentless nieces. I sat down via zoom with Maratri A few months ago to review her extraordinary entry into caregiving and how she did it. If caregiving descended on you like a thunderbolt, you'll find much harmony in listening to this uplifting, honest danger view. Maritri doesn't say it outright, but I find a lot of jazz and improv in the way she tells her story and in the way she lives her life. Don't get me wrong, there were lessons, and the biggest one being the ability to go with the flow and the disruptions from her life that she thought she was going to have. She absorbs them all and creates something new out of it, and just the way that a jazz composition might be made, I'd say that's the core of her share. Giving, generosity is her middle C. Join me now. Listen to Maritri.

Hi, Maritri, how are you today? Hi,

Deborah, I'm well. How you doing?

I'm good. Thanks.

Good.

Could you take a minute and tell me what you do for a living? What? What is your your main thing? My

real Yeah, so I am a musician full time, which means that I do a lot of different things. I do sound healing. I do. I play for yoga classes. I play at a hospital, for the emergency room and for recovery and in the lobby, so all over. So I do that as well. So it's music therapy, but I'm also really into sound healing right now, which is learning to use the balls and clearing chakras and all that sort of, you know, new agey sort of thing. But and I am helping raise my brother's three children. He passed away a couple years ago after a very long illness. And so that is what I do, in a nutshell.

Well, that's a complex day for you. And yes, to add family caregiving to all the other things yes is a lot. It could be a lot. So what I'm going to do now is to ask you a couple of questions and just answer whatever you feel comfortable answering me. So the first question is, what is your tip for family caregivers?

Self Care. You cannot take care of anybody else if you don't take care of yourself. When my mother got sick, rather really suddenly. I mean, she'd been in perfect health, and then she had a stroke, and then she was out within three months, it happened in October. She was gone in December, and one of my friends had recommended this amazing book by Twyla Tharp, just the art of taking care of your time and having a schedule and a regiment. And for me, that was the most helpful thing, because every day I would get up early, I would take care of the dog, I would take care of the house, go to the hospital, go to the gym, and then, you know, go to go to mask, go see my mother, and then, you know, just that whole thing. So every day it was sort of the same thing, because I needed to make sure that I was eating every day, that I was taking care of my health, the dog, my mental health, just sitting quietly and, well, going to Mass. I mean, I It's funny, because I was raised Catholic, and I believe in a whole host of other different things that, you know, from Judaism to to Buddhism to yoga to whatever. But what I found is that I needed this moment every day to just take and be still and just commune with God and see what the next thing was. But I also needed to exercise every day and drink water every day and get enough sleep and eat the right things, just so that I was able to take care of that. And then my brother got sick around the same time my mom did, and so I was taking care of the two of them. He has three small they were really small at the time. They were like, 225, and 11. So I had these little kids. And you know, I'm a musician. I've been in New York for all this time, and it's always just been me so learning how to take care of all of these different things. But like I said, just this, this, this book, was so helpful and so instrumental in in just reminding me that I needed a regiment for myself, and I needed to take out time for myself so that I was okay. Because if you're not okay, nobody's okay. Yeah. You

raised a lot of great points. I think it's wonderful that the suggestion came from an artist. We often think of artists as not being disciplined, but if you're a professional, you have a routine, and separating care into that would probably be very complex effort. So

it just it requires some effort, and it was such an interesting thing, because my friend that recommended the book is he's not, he's an artist in his brain, I think, but he's really a banker and a writer. And as I start reading this, the the PROLOG to the book Twyla Tharp is talking about, well, you know, when I grew up in the North Hills of San Bernardino, and I was like, I I now am back in the North Hill. This is where I grew up. She went to the same ballet school that I went to, but back in the day, I had no idea, because she was old enough. She was older enough than I was, and I didn't really know who she was like back then. And you know now, of course, I know who she is, and it was so interesting. But she grew up around the corner for me. I mean, literally, we went to the same dance school, and then she moved to New York, and then I was then I was like, Well, I lived in New York, but as a musician, but I still also worked in the ballet world for a long time. So it was just interesting to read that and just see, okay, well, this, this is from somebody who came from this place, so let me just really take a good, hard look at it. And I think it's one of those things where you can apply it to every part of your life, including care, whether it's child care or elder care or self care. But I think just the routine of you know, maybe not every day. Maybe you don't go to the spa every day or get a massage every day, but once a week you set aside that time and take care of yourself so that you can get through the rest. And it was so helpful. That's

lovely, really lovely. I also wanted to ask you, what do you wish you had known before you started caregiving,

how how much it takes out of you and how challenging it is. I mean, I feel like I was really lucky. I watched my mother take care of my father. They made it to 50 years, which is pretty amazing. And just watching how my mother took care of my father, he he got West Nile, of all things. He went, I know in California, we don't even really have mosquitoes out here, but he went from golfing three times a week to barely being able to move. And so, you know, he was here. My mother was taking care of him, and she slept on the floor in another bedroom with him because he couldn't sleep in their bed because it was too high. And I was like, Okay, I see this. And then we started talking about alternative ways of taking care of him. I convinced them to get acupuncture. There was a really great Korean acupuncturist that lived here, an herbalist, and we went and I watched, like my father, wheel in and then walk out. It was incredible. It was absolutely incredible. And so but just just watching how she cared for him and all of the insurance stuff and dealing with that. And I was like, Okay, so when it's her time, I need to make sure that I'm ready for this, and then I'm in the right frame of mind and that I'm paying attention. And so that it was really helpful. And then with the addition of reading this and figuring out the whole scheduling piece, because at that point I was still, I still had my place in Brooklyn, so I was supporting that. And then I had to buy a car, because you can't live out here without a car. I suddenly had three kids, a dog, a cat, a house, and I was a musician. So I I started teaching at the kids school because I needed, I needed money, but I also needed to see where they were every day and where they were in their lives as human beings and what they were learning in school, and get to know their teachers and just sort of see what that community was like. So it was, you know, really long days. I mean, teaching is it's hard, it's a really difficult, it's difficult. And I think people don't give teachers near the credit that they should, because it's like, you're there eight hours a day with somebody else's children, and then you come home and you're with your own children and your house, and figuring that all out, but it all just sort of worked out. I mean, it seemed like a the reasonable progression from one thing to the other, and I just sort of learned as I went along, like I don't I'm really grateful for that, because just kind of jumping in, it's like, oh, okay, wait, I know how to sort of care take and figure that out, and now I have these new tools to make sure that I'm caretaking every day, but also taking care of myself. And then the kids need a certain kind of care. My brother needed a certain kind of care. So I don't even, I mean, I think every situation is different, so you just sort of figure it out as you go. But what I wish I had, what I wish I had known, is maybe to have a little bit more patience with myself, and to give myself a little bit more grace and realize, you know, this is not, this is not. Easy. It's not for the faint of heart, but is probably the most amazing thing you can do for someone at the end of their life, but also at the beginning of their life. So it's like I had those two things going, and then my brother, who's sort of in the middle, and just working through our family dynamic with him, because there were only, there were only two of us. So it was like my whole family was all of a sudden gone. And it's so funny. I was just, I was just talking about that with my niece this morning, so it was like they were all of a sudden gone. But then I had, you know her, who was? She's born on my mother's birthday. The middle one is born on my dad's birthday, and then the the other one is born the day after mine. So it's like, you know, we're all it's such an interesting time to be in house with them and watching them grow and bloom. So

yeah, it certainly changes your life, and in many ways for the better, but it has a huge challenge.

Yes,

I mean the other so,

yeah, I think you just really have to just commit to it and do it. And people like, oh my god, well, how are you doing it? And it's like, I don't even really think about it. There's, there's no alternative. There are things that have to get done. I am the only person left that can do them. So what other What other choice do I have? I still want to make music. I still need to work. So for me, it wasn't really a choice. It was this is what I have to do in order to hold everything together and make it work. And I think once I committed to that, everything just sort of fell into place, and it became a lot easier than it was in the beginning. I mean, I, you know, every day I'd be like, what is what am I doing? What? Not quite like, not quite as nice as that. I mean, I had many moments where I was like, What the what is happening? Right? What am I doing? But I You live and learn. Hopefully,

you are such a creative person that I imagine there's a well there that most of us don't necessarily have. So it's wonderful to hear how you did it, and even if you don't know exactly how you did it, that there are tools that are right within you that make it much easier to take care of things if you have some grace within yourself,

yes, yes. And I do think it is all about grace and laughter. Because, I mean, some days it's just things get so ridiculous that you just, you have to laugh, right? And you have to, you have to figure out how to how to enjoy the good times, even when you're in the depths of the deepest sorrow that you've ever experienced like there's such a balance. And I think sometimes we forget about the joy, right? I mean, sitting in the hospital room with my dad as he was transitioning was one of the saddest and happiest times in my life, because I had had a chance to really we said everything to each other. I mean, we were like that anyway, with my mother was different, because we always had sort of a challenging relationship, until I got older, and then when my dad passed, we had this moment of really understanding each other as adult women, which I'm so grateful for that. I'm so grateful for that. You know, it was like five years of just really understanding her, and I was so sad when she left, because there were so many things I wanted to do with her, with that understanding, and we didn't, you know, there were so many things we just didn't get to do, but it's okay. I mean, we we again, said everything we needed to say, we did everything we needed to do, needed to do, and there were some extra things that were just fun and we were able to do them. Yeah,

so it's kind of a mixed blessing to have that time. It's for the worst of reasons, maybe, but yes, it propels people to have that communion that they wouldn't have had otherwise. So 100%

100% and communion is a that's a really good word. We don't often get to be in communion with people because we're so busy doing other things, but when you're caretaking, you're also devoting that care to that person, and you just have to remember that they are a person, that they need care, and that they're going through a transition themselves, right? Because I think sometimes we're just we're just mad. We're like, oh my god, this is too much. I'm tired, but I just thought about, oh, how must they feel lying in this bed completely helpless. This was not in the plan. And suddenly here we are, and they don't want to depend on their children, but they need us. And so there's that shift too. You know, that's something I wish I had known just to figure out how to make that shift a little bit easier for both of us, but you live and learn. I think. It's like being a parent. You look back, I look back on my childhood, you know, I thought my parents knew everything, and I'm like, they had no idea they were flying by the seat of their pants. Just like I am just trying to figure it out, just trying to figure out to the end of the day, how to make things work or but they look very smooth, right? And I'm like, Yeah, I don't, I don't make it look that smooth. I'm not that good at this, but I'm figuring it out. So,

yeah, well, I'm sure, I'm sure that you have the children look wonderful when I see them on Facebook, and clearly they they love you, and you've done, done a wonderful job and stepped up where they really needed to. So that must feel pretty good inside.

Yeah, sometimes I look at them and I'm like, wow, look at these little these little people, these little beings that I've, I've known and had a chance to help shape and and learn from what my parents did, and add to where we are in the world, and what I know of the world, which is very different. You know, my mother wanted a home and children, and she worked every day, and my dad worked every day, and they had this very nuclear family. And I'm like, Okay, I'm just gonna go everywhere. I never had kids because I thought that I would have been a terrible mother, because I was focused on being a musician. And some of the women that I saw as musicians, I was like, I don't want to do this to any child. This is terrible. This is awful. This is really bad. And then I started looking around, going, Okay, some of these parents who are not musicians are terrible parents. Like, I could do a better job than this, right? And, and I've, I've done my best, you know, good, bad, ugly, indifferent, whatever I've done my best, and that's all I can do. But it's it is definitely learning every single day. So

I want to thank you for this. This has been much more than I expected of coming, being so forthcoming. So I really appreciate this interview and and,

no, if there's anything I can do to help you promote anything that you're doing your books, I'm here for that. So

much. Maria tree, of course, by the rest of the afternoon,

what a pleasure. Thank you so much.