- I'm Adrienne and I am a member of the sandwich generation.
I'm smack dab in the middle,
between taking care of my daughter, who is three years old,
and my mom, who is eighty years old.
My mom has been diagnosed with moderate
Alzheimer's and Dementia.
You don't have to go anywhere.
You're home now.
- You sure?
- [Adrienne] Yes, I'm positive.
To add to that, I'm a single mother by choice.
- Hi guys! I got cookies.
- [Adrienne] But that means that
I'm doing everything on my own.
It is extremely difficult trying to navigate
those two worlds.
When I get to the point where I feel like
I literally cannot take it anymore.
There's like this this constant level of agitation
that I'm always feeling.
I try to shift my energy.
I'm so grateful for my daughter.
She is literally the light of my life.
I love you.
- I love you.
- [Adrienne] I also think about my mom,
she's eighty years old, she's still here,
and I need to be grateful for that.
But it is hard, to say the very least.
It is hard.
I literally have no idea why I just snapped at my mother.
All she did was come in here and ask me,
was a jean jacket mine?
And I said yes.
And she was looking for a place to put it,
and I was saying, you know, she could just hang it up
right where I hang my stuff that I need to just run and get
when I'm running out the house.
And she couldn't find it, and for some reason,
I just got so upset.
I have no idea why.
Because my cup is, like,
running over.
I have to shift myself away from the negative
and into the positive.
I meditate.
Me, and my daughter, meditate.
When we go to bed she always asks me,
"Mommy, can we med-tate?"
That's also very important to shift the energy.
- Mommy, I wanna meditated.
- (laughs) You want to meditate?
- Uh-huh
- Which one do you want to do?
- I want to do The Blue Water.
- How are you feeling right now?
- Sad.
- Why are you feeling sad?
- I don't know.
- Aw. Come baby.
All right sweetheart, we're going to listen
to the blue water, okay.
Do you think it'll make you feel better?
- Uh-huh
- You tell me how you feel
after we listen to the blue water, okay?
- Okay.
- I love you.
- I love you too.
- [Adrienne] Another thing that I do when I feel like
I can't deal with things anymore,
I try to start decluttering.
So when my mom was diagnosed a few years ago,
I literally had to move all the stuff out of my house,
into her house, cause I had to come live with her.
But that brings a lot of clutter.
I've been working on removing things
to get like nice open, and airy spaces
so the flow of energy can be front and center.
- Hi everybody!
- [Daughter] Hi Mommy! [Adrienne] Baby!
- [Adrienne] I also remain grateful for my friends.
If I'm at work two hours away
and my mom isn't answering the phone,
I can usually like throw out a bat signal.
Thanks so much Jenea for taking my mom,
I appriciate it.
- No problem, any time.
- [Adrienne] All right, see you guys later. Have fun ma.
- I love you.
- [Adrienne] Love you too.
Several times, she's actually left the house
without keys, without money.
I still to this day have no idea where she went.
So when she comes back and she can't get in,
I can like call up a friend
who doesn't live too far and ask them
if they can just please like take her home
or hang out with her until I get there.
So I have amazing friends.
- (singing) Up a hill, down came the rain
and washed the spider out.
- [Adrienne] And part of my accepting what this is
like this new situation,
I need to work on understanding
that this is who she is right now,
and that is okay.
I need to be okay with it and not so worried about it.
I really have to come to a place where I'm comfortable
acknowledging the fact that I have to change
certain things about the way I'm operating.
I think that goes a long way.
That's a first step.
And then, like, I got my hair done.
Like, what?
I did something for myself.
I got on lipstick, like, you know what I mean?
It's okay, like, I can, I can do things for myself.
I can like step outside of this situation
and not let me, not let it control me.
(laughing)
This is so ridiculous.
Oh God!
So, I don't, it's a work in progress but I'm trying.
(upbeat music)