Op-Ed: The Unspoken Thoughts of Caregivers

For long-term caregivers—those tending to a loved one with chronic illness, dementia, disability, or terminal decline—there exists a private realm of emotional conflict we don’t dare admit, not even to ourselves. We are supposed to be strong, patient, and endlessly selfless. But what happens when, for a fleeting moment, we aren’t?
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What happens when we find ourselves wondering—just for a second—if we are truly up to the task? When we fantasize, in the most shameful corners of our minds, about what it would be like if it ended sooner rather than later—perhaps even imagining that as a kind of compassionate release for both caregiver and loved one. Not because we don’t love the person we’re caring for, but because the weight is relentless, and we are so very, very tired.

​Another unspoken source of guilt and shame is resentment: the feeling we harbor for a loved one we may not feel compelled to make these sacrifices for—either because they have treated us poorly in the past or because they don’t recognize and appreciate our efforts now. These feelings, like the darker thoughts, may flare for only a moment, but they can sting for days.

​Am I a terrible person for thinking that? How could I let such a thought enter my mind? The shame compounds. The silence thickens. And we go back to doing what we always do: everything. Without complaint. Without pause.

​But here’s the truth no one tells us: having those thoughts does not make you a bad caregiver. It makes you human.

​Caregiving is an act of radical love—but also one of immense loss. We lose sleep, time, careers, relationships, personal wealth, and identity. We watch someone we love disappear inch by inch, or suffer in ways we can’t fix. And the emotional cost isn’t linear—it’s cyclical and sneaky. One day you feel strong and centered. The next, you’re cracked open by exhaustion or grief. It is not weakness to feel that. It is evidence you’re still feeling at all.

​Our culture frames caregiving as sainthood—angelic patience, limitless sacrifice, quiet devotion. But real caregivers are not saints. They are people.

​​Flawed, fatigued, and too often forgotten by the very systems and communities that should support them.

​And still, they continue. That’s the remarkable part. We have those thoughts—those unspeakable, shameful thoughts—and yet we get up the next day and do it again. Not because it’s easy, or because we’ve silenced our doubts, but because love, when paired with integrity, becomes a form of endurance like no other.

​I​t’s time we talk about this—not to dwell in despair, but to liberate each other from the myth that to be a good caregiver means to never waver, that we are only worthy if we are endlessly strong.

​If you’ve had those fleeting thoughts, you are not alone. And you are not a monster. You are a person doing something profoundly difficult with extraordinary grace—in a fully human way, flaws included.

​Let’s stop punishing ourselves for being human. The fact that we carry on despite the doubt, the weariness, the internal conflict—that’s what makes caregiving heroic. Not the absence of dark thoughts, but our choice to rise above them, again and again.

​​And here’s the counterintuitive twist: shame loses its power when it is spoken out loud. It is like excising a toxin that would otherwise poison you. Naming it, even in a whisper, transforms it from a secret into a shared truth—and in that moment, its hold over you begins to dissolve.