The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – A Caregiver’s Companion: Spiritual Support for the Stressed-out Soul by Cynthia B. Stotlar

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

A Caregiver's Companion: Spiritual Support for the Stressed-out Soul by Cynthia B. Stotlar https://www.amazon.com/Caregivers-Companion-Spiritual-Support-Stressed-out/dp/1462712886 Cynthiastotlarhedbergbooks.com THE CHIPMUNK AND THE LEOPARD: The chipmunk makes friends with the Leopard, but refuses to lend him his cutlass to help him fashion a drum. The Leopard uses his claws to create his drum and sets in the sun to dry. Someone plays the drum and uses it to insult the Leopard.

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Because you're about to go on a moment. monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, Vost is Voss here from thecris Fos Show.com. Ladies in there, ladies, things that makes official, welcome to the big show. As always, Chris Foss shows family that loves you, but doesn't judge at least sounds harshly as the rest of your family, because we're a family that loves you in spite of maybe all your flaws and stuff, because we know you're here on the Chris Foss show listening so you can

learn more and be a better person. And, you know, maybe you're just listening for the last. But, you know, you're probably learning something as you go. Go to goodreads.com, Fortess, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortess, Chris Foss, Chris Foss, 1 on the Tick-Tockety, and all those crazy places on the internet. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today's featured author comes to us from Books to Lifemarkmarketing.com.com.

U.K. With expert publishing to strategic marketing, they help authors reach their audience and maximize their book's success. Timmy, a wonderful young lady on the show. We're going to be talking to her about her book called A Caregiver's Companion, Spiritual Support for the Stressed Out, February 25th, 2012 by Cynthia B. Stodler. We're going to get into with her and all of her details, as it were. Cynthia Stodler-Headberg was first. First a caregiver role that she had in her 20s, helping her grandmother as she struggled with terminal stomach cancer and her aunt who had cerebral palsy. They lived together in Georgia. She lived in Nashville, which was a four-hour drive and went down many weekends to help with errands and homework. She would run interference with the doctors as needed, and she was originally a medical technologist. She spoke medical and could help her understand her treatment options, and much was.

learned in that care. She ultimately, her aunt ultimately succumbed to ovarian cancer a few years later. In her 40s, she had cancer herself. She became more empathetic. And in her late 40s, she helped her parents' health as it started to fall and her husband as well. Give us, welcome the show. How are you? Doing good.

How are you? I am excellent. I am excellent. Sounds like you've had, you've been a caregiver for quite some time. Give us your dot-coms. Where do you want people to find you on the internet? Web? Basically, it's my name, Cynthia Stottler-Hedberg, Books.com. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your book?

The caregiver's companion is basically a lot of stress management tips and ways that you can help yourself. It's kind of on the concept of when you're on an airplane and they tell you to put on your mask before you help anybody else. If you're a caregiver, you get really stressed. out and you get tired. And you can't help your person if you're too tired to do that. And so you have to be sure that you take care of yourself as well as take care of your person or persons. And so it looks at a lot of different stress tips and a lot of different ways that you

can help your person that you're taking care of. Have a better last time so that they enjoy themselves and you enjoy being with them. and that it just becomes a better experience for both of you. And how do we define the caregiver? What's the definition of that that you take and use? I think a lot of people are caregiver roles. It depends on, I don't have a particular definition. It's just somebody who's helping take care of that particular individual.

It could be somebody who's given them rides to the hospital that's a friend. It could be a loved one who's doing 24-7 care. I ended up being the person for my grandmother who was coming down every other weekend to take care of her and be sure that she had the food that she needed and her house was clean and that all her errands were run. But we also had care set up from the local hospice to help take care of her during the week because I couldn't be there all the time. For my mom and dad, they lived with us for two years before they went into a nursing home situation. And so that was more 24-7.

And then for both my late husbands, obviously I lived with them. So that was 24-7. Yeah. Those husbands, they always want you to live with them 24-7. They do. They do. I don't know why, but they do. What is that about it?

The, you know, caregiver, a lot of people, I think more now than ever, are finding that, you know, they end up caring for their parents. You know, people are living longer. Yes. And, you know, they're developing, you know, different age-related issues, Alzheimer's, dementia, you know, poor voting choices. No, I'm just teasing. Anyway, I don't know what that means, folks. Just it's an open joke. It's read how you want.

You know, they watch, I don't know, I can't tell any more jokes on that. I'm done. All right. So, you know, a lot of people are finding themselves in this position. And sometimes it's affordability. You know, sometimes they don't have the money or maybe the family doesn't have the money to put them into the, these things or maybe they don't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid and all that's the that we ran them to with my mom and dad. They only had a set amount of money and we knew that

they would go through it awfully quick if they went directly into a nursing home kind of environment. And so kept them at our house as long as we could until they had more care needs than we could possibly provide for. Mom had Alzheimer's, and my father had diabetes and myasthenia gravis. And so it wasn't until they got to the point where we really couldn't provide care for them anymore at home that they went in. Because when you don't have a nursing home, skilled nursing was $12,000 a month. Yeah.

Assisted was eight. It's no joke. Yeah. So when you're looking at $20,000 a month, yeah to take care of your parents that's a big chunk of change yeah well they take a check i got plenty of check well they will if your bank account i'll do that but that's true that's my favorite joke well they take a check anytime i see some expensive i'm like well they take a check yeah it's a lot of money it is a lot of money uh yeah i mean most people don't have 20 grand laying

around every month and you know my sister when she went into uh care she you know it burns your money. These places are expensive. They're the most expensive apartments I've ever seen. Yes. For one bedroom apartment, that is a chunk of change. Yeah, I mean, five, six thousand, you know, more. You know, and it all depends, too, on, you know, how many people it takes to bathe them, change them.

You know, my sister, it's kind of, I mean, she's because she has MS, she's kind of like what you would call dead weight. So she can't hold herself up. It takes three people to bathe her. and shower her. That's why we end up eventually putting both mom and dad over into nursing room care because my father weighed 300 pounds. And once he got to the point where he could no longer walk and he could no longer take care of himself, my sin of Gravis is kind of like a mass.

It shuts down your ability to move your hands. And he couldn't walk. He couldn't feed himself. He couldn't body himself any of those things. And at 300 pounds, I couldn't do that for him. Yeah. So we ended up having to put him into skilled nursing. And mother, once her Alzheimer's got to the point where she needed around the clock care as well, we had to find care for her as well, too.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is just kind of a necessity, you know, it's, you know, when I had my dog, I always tell people, you know, they would be like, why are you caring for your dog, has cancer, just throwing the town, get it all over with, you know. it's too much of a burden on you. And I'm like, a burden on me. This dog carried me for the first 14, 10 years. And I have to, and it's my turn to carry her for the last one. Yeah, yeah.

You know, let's be honest, you know, your parents put up with all your, all your antics as a child and changing your diapers and, you know, letting you live. That was kind of a, that was kind of a thing where they were probably a couple times they were probably like, you know, I don't know about this one. maybe that was just my parents but uh much every parent and and so you know it's your turn that's kind of how I look at it this is the gig we take you for the first 18 you can take care of them for the last three to five yeah I mean this is

this is part of the gig you know you we're supposed to care for one another that's I think one thing that's lost but you know and it does get hard because a lot of a lot of people who are in their 50s and 60s, they have parents in their 80s, and they may still have kids at home. I mean, they may so have college kids if they started late. And so it becomes a real challenge for them to look at ways to stay sane and ways to stay

healthy themselves. And that's what the book's about is. It's just trying to look at ways that you can add health to yourself and add stress management techniques for yourself so that you don't end up sick. while you're taking care of somebody who needs you. And caregivers tend to get, I think they have a six times or 12 times higher chance of getting Alzheimer's and, and dementia and other things. Because the stress in their body of taking care of somebody who might have Alzheimer's or whatever, sometimes they die earlier and stuff. There's bad stats on it being a caregiver.

It wears you out. You don't get as much sleep as you need. You're more stressed than you should be on a regular basis. And it just, it takes a toll on you. And so the book is designed to try to help you look at ways that you can re-invigorate yourself and re-energize yourself and stay physically and mentally healthy while you're taking care of other people. And so that's what it's about. One of the key things, and correct me if I'm wrong, or if you want to talk about this, is, you know, we've, we've had people talk about this before, is you've got to put on your, your oxygen mask first. You know, the plain analogy.

You can't help others if, well, you're out of oxygen. And so you've got to make sure you've got sleep. You've got sleep is like the most important thing. If I don't get seven, at least seven, but I need really eight. But if I don't get at least seven, you know, I can tell that I'm off. I can tell that I'm not functioning right. If I've got less than six, I don't even drive anymore. I just go take a nap.

I know I just I can feel that I'm just off my clock and if you do two or three days of that then I'm really a mess and struggling but uh hard to do um like my husband was on morphine every two hours wow the last couple of weeks that he was alive and so we had to look at ways that we could do that so it wasn't just one person having to wake up every two hours all night long to do that um and because when you've got somebody who needs morphine every two hours, that means either one person gets no sleep or people take turns with that. And so you do need to, one of the themes of the book is that you do need to ask for help and that it's okay to ask for help and that people will help you. A lot of times people will just say, let me know if you need help. People don't like asking for help. And so you do need to remember that it's okay to ask for help.

And that to say, I would really appreciate it if you could do this. Could you drive him to a chemo session? Or could you pick him up from a chemo session? Or could you, when you're getting groceries, could you pick these three things up for me? So that you can get a little bit of relief here, there, and somewhere else. I was lucky because I do go to church and I have a really good support group at church. and they were willing to make some meals for us and drop things off and do things like that. But some people don't have that.

And so you do need to look at, who do you have that you could ask? Yeah. And sometimes, I don't know, sometimes people feel isolated or they think I'm the only one who can do this. You know, asking probably other family members to pitch in. Sometimes they won't. You've got that sort of drama and stuff. Talk to us about, I mean, how to navigate that. There's a thing on the internet called Caring Bridge and you can set your person up and you can see who would support you and you can put what you need and see who would volunteer to help take care of this need or that need and that can be really helpful.

The other thing you can do is just call a family meeting and say, here's what we've got going on. Who's willing to jump in and help? and is somebody willing to just do groceries? You know, maybe they're scared of being with the person or they're uncomfortable being with the person, but maybe they could pick up groceries for you. You know, you're paying for it, but they could pick them up. Some grocery stores, since COVID,

one of the nice things that has happened is that grocery stores are much more okay with having you order online and drop them off for you or order online and you can go pick them up so that you don't have to spend an hour. inside the grocery store, you can just order online and then swing by and pick them up. Yeah, because that's what's important, making sure that they're taking care of. They've got food, water, shelter, and Doritos. Yeah.

I got a joke in there. Whatever they can eat. You know, sometimes on chemo, the only thing that you can eat is applesau because that's, it takes good coming up as it goes down. So, I'm a cancer survivor. I mean, applesauce is good, but. Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, it's interesting to look at little things that you can do that can help you lessen the burden on yourself and then things that you can do to make a task more fun for the person who's got cancer or who's got Alzheimer's. I mean, mom thought when she was in hospice, she made this comment one night that got us thinking and were able to work with it.

She said, I don't know who invited me on this cruise, but I'm so not having a good time. And so what we realized was that she thought her hospice room was a cruise ship cabin. And so we decided to put up posters of cruises and have lays. And the nurses helped us with it. And my dad started talking to her about where they'd been on cruises. And so her last couple of weeks in hospice care, she thought she was on a cruise. She already had Alzheimer's so she wasn't all together with it But at least she thought she was on a cruise

And so she thought she was having a good time That might be a thing to do My sister has really bad to mention Maybe if we just painted a room like it was the Like it was a cruise ship And then we put some in the window to make it look like she's on the ocean And we just Yeah

You know, so There are times when you just go with whatever's going on in their brain if they've got Alzheimer's or dementia. You don't try to get them back to reality. You just go with where they are. Yeah, because that just confuses them more. I think we had to chat with this with someone else yesterday on the show where my sister used to call me every week from her care center and a dementia with MS.

And she would, you know, sing me happy birthday. And first I would push back and try and keep her reality. And I'd be like, Delana, it's not my birthday. And then that would make her very upset. and she could she would get confused why she was had it wrong she would feel bad and I'm like you know how to feel bad Elaine it's just I'm just letting you know and then I realized that I need to play along and that was better for her and so I started saying you know when she would call me every week say it's your birthday I'd be like oh thanks for remembering I really appreciate that made her happy there was no confusion

and and I just played along and so you're just that older I'm kind of wiser I mean you know you know I'm equipped to do these things, but this is why it's important with people like you that are educating people, writing books about them, talking about them. What's the hardest thing that you've found in all your years of caretaking and journeying through life? What's the hardest thing that you found that you've maybe learned to overcome? Maybe things that maybe people don't see coming at them when they start the caretaker role that they should try and, you know, master fairly quickly or something. For me, I think the hardest part was just realizing and being aware that death was

going to be there and that you needed to prepare for that. And you can't be 100% prepared, but to know that it is coming to go ahead and make as good of preparations ahead of time as you can. When my first husband passed away, we just we had not gotten ourselves, our heads around the fact that he was really going to die. Even though the doctors had told us he was terminal, we had just not, the kids and I had not gotten our ducks in a row and our brains ready for that. And we hadn't done some of the basic stuff that we needed to do.

When my second husband got diagnosed his terminal, I put every plan in motion for for everything that we could do ahead of time. We did ahead of time. And so when it actually happened, and it did come out of the blue, they weren't expecting him to pass away. When he did pass away, he caught the flu on top of all the cancer stuff

and just went like that. But we had everything ready. And so we knew what to do. We already had it planned. Everything was taken care of. And you didn't panic. You didn't have that. Oh, goodness, this is going to, it didn't rock our world, even though we weren't ready for it

right that second and didn't know it was about to happen. It didn't rock our world. And so having all that stuff pre done and my kids give me a hard time because I've already got everything done for me. And they're like, why are you doing that? I'm like, well, because I just don't, I just don't want you to have to deal with this. Yeah. It's a nice thing to pass on.

I guess it's a lot of work, but it's a nice thing to pass on by having. having that work done because, you know, a lot of times, you know, it's hard enough. I mean, you're going through grief, your loss, the pain, the shock, the awe. I mean, it just kind of, it could be hard. And so, yeah, having those things planned out and stuff, you know, I, I've had a hard time losing my dogs over the years. I've lost three dogs now. It is hard.

It is hard. And the first two, you know, I had a lot of issues with grief. I felt that things were taken from me that were. mine, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, since then, I adopted stoicism and momentum moray, which means, you know, I think a quote from Marcus Aurelius is, this isn't the meaning, but basically death smiles at us, all we can do is smile back. And so you've got to be prepared for the inevitable.

When you last time I checked, was it Jimmy Hendrix who says no one gets out of your life? No, they don't. You know, your time's going to come. And, you know, preparing for that, and I think sometimes looking that dragon in the mouth, instead of being in denial and trying to ignore it, I think looking at that dragon, and then you can prepare better. Like, well, my father was, you know, we knew the end was coming. We didn't know where it was. He was having strokes and heart attacks and complications and in and out of hospitals. And any of the time was going to come.

And so I took the time to sit down with him, photograph him, talk to him about his life. as much as I could. He was starting to repeat stuff with dementia, and so you just get the same story every day. And that was fine. I'd just play along and see if there's anything new. But cleared the decks, made sure there wasn't any sort of,

you know, things he may have had with me or I had with him. And so that when the time came that he did pass, I felt like everything had been put into place. I mean, I still grieved. I still whatever. But I wasn't, you know, I think living in that day,

denial where you're just like, no, I don't ever come. And then when it comes, I mean, that's what gives you that shock. Yeah, it really knocks your feet out from under you. Um, if you haven't thought through that and you haven't gone through that. I do funerals for people. And two weeks ago, I did a funeral for a 95 year old gentleman. And he had pre-planned everything for his kids. Wow. And so his two daughters, um, basically they just had to put his plan in motion and it was a beautiful funeral he had done an excellent job of getting everything together and it had everything planned for them and they didn't have to do anything but kind of sit back and relax um because it was done and the fact that he had taken that time to do that

I mean when you're 95 you do know it's coming at some point pretty soon what so you got on 95 years if you play it right maybe some berries and fruits I thought that was just really thoughtful of him to have done that. And so I think when you do have somebody, you are caregiving for someone and you realize that it has the potential to be fatal. To go ahead and talk to them like you did with your dad, to go ahead and talk to them about, well, what would they like? Do they have special things that they'd like to have? Or the particular things that they would want to go ahead and have that conversation, it sounds more. but it's a nice way to be sure that you do what it is that they want and that you honor that.

Yeah, I mean, it is morbid. That's the one thing I hate about it. It's such a hard discussion like, hey, we're going to throw parties after you're dead. Yeah. But my son's already talked about it. You know, one of my sons and I've already talked about, you know, what to do. And so I think it's a good conversation to have. Yeah.

It's just, I mean, it's uncomfortable, but it, you know, it beats, you know, not knowing. You know, my mom has got a one of those, she's got a folder, so if she's hospitalized or, you know, all the stuff I need to know to maintain and yada, yada, yada, it's all there. And, you know, it's good to have that sort of data so that people can do, people can, you know, you can, you know, then they can just focus on celebrating your life and, and all that sort of good stuff. And some doctors are comfortable having that conversation with your patient and you and some are not. my late husband my first late husband's doctor was not comfortable having that conversation and so I think that's one reason we were not prepared and my second late husband his doctor was really up front about this is what's going to happen here's kind of the process that we're going through and here's where things are and but she was also really good about saying what do you want to

do you know what do you want to accomplish your last year and and when he would tell her about kind of what some of his bucket list items were she helped make it happen and so she would get him beefed up on his steroids and his and his chemo and stuff so that we could go take a trip and knock something off his bucket list and have some fun and he had a wonderful last year And so I think if you do have a good doctor who is open to helping you have a good last year, you can. Well, that can definitely help. So tell us about some of the offerings you have on your website. What do you do for people?

How can they enlist your help? On the website, it's got information about the book. I'm also an artist, as you can kind of see behind me. It's got some of the art that I have. One of the things that I do to honor my late husband's is my second late husband was very strong Christian, and I've taken over the program where at church we send out cards for our folks that are sick and whatnot, and so I send like little handwritten cards and things that are hand-painted and send those out to people to try to honor his memory. And so on the website, it's got information about art, it's got the information about the book,

that's already out. It's got information about the book that's coming out. And then I am a grief coach. If somebody wants to talk to me about grief, I'm happy to chat with them. And one of things that I encourage people to do if their person passes away is to get help. There's some good grief programs out there. Grief share is a Christian-run program that a lot of churches offer. And I encourage people to look into that and the church nearest them. You can just put, you can go look but grief share and put in your zip code and find an offering near you. And then I know I did one-on-one co-counseling and so you can look for counselors in your area that provide grief counseling and grief coaching.

It's tough when you lose somebody. Just like even losing your dog, it's hard. Try losing a husband of 25 years or 30 years or 40 years. It's really hard. Yeah. Yeah, because you have to start over and train a new one. Yeah. A lot of us don't even start over.

That's true. That training can take decades. The jokes, people. The jokes, don't write me. I know. It is just, but it is hard. I mean, when you knew somebody that you've been married to for 25, 30 years, it's like getting torn into. Yeah.

Yeah. And then they start investigating whether you were the one to kill them. Wait, is that just me? No. Not when they die cancer. That's true. That's true. It's kind of a half joke there.

We should be careful. Yeah. But no, I mean, all jokes aside, I mean, this is a serious thing. And it is mortality. I mean, we need to take it with a little bit of grain of humor and realize that this is life, you know. It is. And you do think you look for the humor in what's going on around you. I mean, like when mom said that she didn't know who had invited her on this cruise,

but she wasn't having a good time, we rolled with that. Yeah. And my dad was a hoot. He had a really good sense of humor, and we tried to make his life as fun as we could. He was diabetic, but the nurses were good about the fact that he loved to go get a Rubin and a beer. And so once a week, they would let his blood sugar go sky high with a Rubin and a beer, and then they would just pump him full insulin when he got back home. Hey, man.

If you're going out, go out on top, baby. You know, so. Do what you love. We would talk to the nurses ahead of time and tell them, you know, that we were going to take him for his ribbon and his beer and to prepare him for when he got back. Put that insulin shot for when he comes back from here. So you'll need to, you'll need to pump people. Yeah, you'll need that insulin shot. I used to know people that they would do that.

They're like, I want to go to McDonald's, but it's bad for me because I have diabetes. But I'm just going to take an insulin shot and eat the Big Mac. And I'm like, you know, I'm not really sure this is the way you're supposed to be doing this. It's not. It's not. You're 83. And three, fuck it. Go out on top.

Pretty much nothing works. You might as well, I have just a little bit of fun. And if a Rubin in a person that doesn't, then, you know, hey. Yeah. If you get a good Rubin, too. Yeah. I'm hungry on the podcast. Yeah.

We have a wonderful restaurant here in town that does great Rubin's. Oh, do you? You're killing me, man. I've got to go find a Rumen place now. I've got to go find a Rumen Savage place. I'm in Utah. They don't make Rumen here. I mean, I'm not.

I mean, I'm not. I think I know a place that does, but yeah, now you've given me Ruben. I'm sorry, but now you're going to want one. No, it's cool. I'm probably just hungry. I probably need a protein shake or something. Anything more we need to know about you, what you do,

the book, your services before we go out? I just want people to know that if they're either in a caregiving mode, or they know somebody who is, the book's less than $10. It's not going to break you. It's not going to go on Amazon or go to Barnes & Noble and get the book. It will help. There you go. The book has a lot.

It's biblically sound, and it's also got a lot of good tips about how to stay sane and to stay in good health while you're doing caregiving. And so it's a good book for you. A good book. good book read and be involved and all that good stuff so that you can do all the things well thank you very much for coming the show we really appreciate it and giving us your insight Cynthia you're welcome and I love all the artwork behind you that's in the video people get a chance watch the YouTube video you got all this beautiful art is that your painting some of it is mine like the one right behind me is mine and the one right up there is my grandmother oh there you go go what a beautiful collection of flowers thank you yeah we were both flower girls. Oh.

All right. Well, thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate, Cynthia. Give us your dot coms as we go out.

Cynthia Statlerheadbergbooks. com. And I'm on Instagram. I'm on Facebook. You can find me. Thank you very much for coming to show. Cynthia. Thanks for us for tuning in.

For the show to your family, friends and relatives. They'll have to come over there and I'll doorbell ditch your house. I'll ring the doorbell and run off. Just like we used to do as kids.

Not your house, Cynthia. the audiences. Okay. My girlfriend's not working right in this second, so you'd have to know. That next thing is why you never respond when I do it. So people are like, we'll see you on the ring, Chris. Yeah.

Just to further share your family, friends, and relatives, go to goodreads.com, 4.Sch, Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, Fortess, Chris Foss, 1 on the TikTok. And all those crazy places to the internet. Be good at each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys. Next time.

Bye all. So in the fun