Our Parents and Elders Are Aging. How Are We Doing?

11 minutes ago

8 min read

Therapeutic reflections on changing relationships, caregiving, autonomy, and the emotions that come with watching people we love grow older.

Lately, I've been noticing this conversation come up more often in therapy. People are navigating changes with aging parents, grandparents, relatives, and other elders in their lives. Sometimes it's a new diagnosis, an unexpected hospitalization, or a shift in someone's ability to manage things independently. Other times, it's simply noticing that the people we've known for much of our lives are getting older.

I've been noticing it in my own life too. There are milestone birthdays to celebrate, stories to hear, and opportunities to spend time together. Alongside those moments, there are also changes in health, energy, and the ways people in our families and communities may need or offer support.

For many of us, the aging of our parents and elders is becoming a more present part of adulthood. Whether we're thinking about a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, mentor, chosen family member, or someone else who has been part of our lives, these changes can bring up a lot. Love, gratitude, worry, frustration, tenderness, grief, uncertainty, and sometimes feelings we don't quite know what to do with.

So, how are we doing with all of this?

When Relationships Begin to Change

One of the more complicated parts of watching parents and elders age is noticing how our relationships may begin to shift.

Maybe you're helping someone with things they once handled on their own. You're attending medical appointments, checking in more often, or having conversations about finances, housing, health, or future care. Perhaps you're noticing changes in someone's mobility, energy, memory, or ability to participate in activities they've always enjoyed.

Or maybe nothing significant has changed yet, but you're beginning to think about what the coming years might look like. These shifts can happen gradually or all at once. Sometimes they bring people closer together. Other times, they introduce new responsibilities, disagreements, or uncertainty about how to move forward.

You may find yourself navigating decisions with siblings or other loved ones, balancing your own responsibilities with growing care needs, or wondering when to offer help and when to step back. For some people, these changes mean becoming a primary caregiver. For others, they involve providing occasional support, staying connected from a distance, or simply adjusting to a relationship that looks different than it once did.

Not everyone becomes a caregiver, and not every aging person needs increasing assistance. But even the possibility of changing roles can affect how we experience our relationships and think about the future.

Caring While Respecting Autonomy

One of the tensions that can emerge is figuring out how to support someone while continuing to respect their independence.

You may notice something that concerns you. Perhaps an elder is having difficulty with a task, isn't following medical recommendations, or is making a decision you wouldn't make for yourself. Your instinct might be to step in, offer solutions, or try to prevent something from going wrong. But from their perspective, that same help might feel intrusive, frustrating, or like they're losing control over their own life.

Both experiences deserve consideration.

Supporting an aging loved one doesn't automatically mean becoming responsible for their decisions. And getting older doesn't mean someone loses the right to make choices about their own life. Sometimes it helps to shift from directing to collaborating. Rather than immediately offering a solution, we might ask how they're feeling about a particular change, whether they'd like help exploring options, or what kind of support would actually feel useful to them.

We can also be transparent about our own concerns without assuming those concerns should determine the outcome. Saying something like, "I'm worried about this, but I also want to understand how you're thinking about it," can create more room for conversation than simply telling someone what they need to do.

Of course, these conversations won't always be easy. There may be significant health concerns, questions about decision-making capacity, or situations where additional support and professional guidance are needed. But whenever possible, approaching these changes with curiosity and collaboration can help preserve dignity, autonomy, and connection.

Our History Comes With Us

We don't enter these conversations without a history. Our relationships with parents, relatives, and community elders have been shaped over years, sometimes decades, of experiences together. For some people, aging brings opportunities for closeness, deeper conversations, or a new appreciation for someone who has played an important role in their life. We may find ourselves asking more questions, listening to stories differently, or recognizing parts of a loved one's experience that we didn't fully understand before. For others, aging can bring up old family patterns, unresolved hurt, expectations, or complicated feelings about what we owe one another.

Maybe you've always been the responsible sibling or the person everyone expects to coordinate care. Perhaps you have a close relationship with the person you're supporting, or maybe your relationship has been distant, strained, or difficult. Some people find themselves providing care for someone who wasn't always able to care for them in the ways they needed. These histories don't disappear simply because someone is getting older or needs additional support.

Culture, family expectations, and community values also shape how we approach care. In some families, caring for elders is understood as a shared responsibility and an important expression of love and respect. In others, independence, privacy, and self-sufficiency may be emphasized. Sometimes these values exist alongside one another, creating tension about what care should look like and who should provide it.

There isn't one correct emotional response to an aging parent or elder. You can love someone and feel overwhelmed by their needs. You can want to help and still have limits. You can feel grateful for a relationship while also carrying grief, anger, or disappointment about parts of its history.

Care doesn't require us to pretend our relationships are simpler than they are.

Their Aging Can Make Us Notice Our Own

Something else can happen as the people around us get older. We start noticing time differently. Maybe you're realizing you're no longer one of the youngest adults in the family. Perhaps you're becoming more aware of changes in your own body, energy, or health. Or you're thinking differently about what you want to do with the time ahead of you.

Watching another generation age can bring our own mortality into sharper focus. We may begin thinking about our future care needs, the relationships we want to nurture, or the ways we'd like to spend our time. We might also become more interested in preserving family stories, traditions, memories, and connections with people whose experiences have shaped our own.

For some, these realizations bring anxiety or sadness. For others, they create clarity. We may feel less interested in meeting everyone else's expectations, more comfortable setting boundaries, or more intentional about what matters to us. These reflections aren't necessarily negative. Aging can also bring greater confidence, freedom, appreciation, and a different relationship with ourselves and the people around us.

And sometimes, seeing our parents and elders age reminds us that we're all moving through different stages of the same human experience.

Making Space for What This Brings Up

There can be a lot of pressure to approach aging and caregiving with patience, gratitude, and strength. We may feel that because someone we love is experiencing a health concern or significant life change, our own emotions should take a back seat.

But the emotional experience of supporting someone through aging can be complicated.

You might feel worried about their health, frustrated by their choices, guilty about not doing more, or exhausted by responsibilities you didn't anticipate. You might also experience joy, humor, closeness, appreciation, and moments of connection that feel especially meaningful.

Sometimes there's grief even before a loss has happened.

We often call this anticipatory grief, the emotional experience of recognizing that a relationship, a person's abilities, or life as we've known it may change. It can show up as sadness, worry, irritability, tenderness, or a desire to hold on more tightly. For some people, it involves grieving changes that have already happened while also feeling uncertain about what may come next.

And not everyone experiences it in the same way.

It can be helpful to acknowledge these emotions without judging them or feeling pressure to resolve them immediately. Talking with someone outside the family, recognizing when you need support, and making space for joy alongside difficult conversations can all be part of navigating this experience.

We can also remind ourselves that we won't always know the right thing to say or do. Sometimes we're learning how to navigate these changes at the same time as the people we care about.

Care Doesn't Have to Belong to One Person

When we talk about supporting aging parents and elders, it's easy to focus on what an individual family member should do. But caregiving is also shaped by the resources, relationships, and systems around us.

Access to healthcare, paid leave, transportation, affordable housing, disability services, financial stability, and community support can all affect what care is possible. So can distance between loved ones, family structures, and the availability of people who are willing and able to help.

Some people have siblings, relatives, friends, or community members who can share responsibilities. Others are navigating care from a distance, managing strained relationships, or providing support without much help. And sometimes, even when several people are available, the responsibility falls disproportionately on one person.

This is where we can begin thinking about care as something that extends beyond a single relationship.

Rather than assuming one person should manage everything, we can explore what support already exists and where additional care may be needed. That might involve sharing transportation or appointments, coordinating meals, checking in regularly, helping someone access community resources, or creating opportunities for caregivers to take a break.

It also means including the person receiving care in these conversations. What support do they actually want? What decisions are important for them to continue making? What relationships and community connections matter to them?

Care can be collaborative without requiring everyone to contribute in the same way. People have different capacities, resources, relationships, and limits.

Care in community doesn't mean everyone has to do everything. It means recognizing that care is relational and that none of us should automatically be expected to carry it all alone.

We're All Navigating Change

There isn't a perfect way to navigate our parents and elders getting older.

Some relationships will become closer. Others may remain complicated. Some families and communities will face significant caregiving responsibilities, while others may experience aging primarily through changing conversations, priorities, and awareness of time.

We can celebrate milestones and still worry about what comes next. We can respect someone's independence while feeling concerned about their safety. We can care deeply and still need boundaries, rest, and support.

And this brings us back to the question we started with: How are we doing?

Not just how we're managing appointments, responsibilities, family conversations, or plans for the future, but how we're actually experiencing these changes ourselves.

Are we making room for our own feelings? Do we have people we can lean on? Are we finding opportunities to connect with our loved ones outside of conversations about health and care? Are we allowing ourselves to acknowledge that some of this is difficult, even when we're grateful to have these people in our lives?

We don't have to have everything figured out to ask ourselves these questions. And we don't have to wait until we're overwhelmed to recognize that we might need care, too.

As we make room for the changing needs of our parents and elders, we can also make room for ourselves.

When You Need More Support

You don't have to navigate changing family relationships, caregiving stress, grief, or uncertainty on your own. At TCC, our therapists support individuals, couples, and families navigating life transitions, chronic illness, changing family dynamics, grief, boundaries, and the emotional experiences that can come with caring for someone we love. We understand the systemic nuances that impact care, for others and ourselves: the historical ones, and the practical every day ones. If this is something you need, reach out to us.

TCC Therapy

A Helpful Resource: Caregiver Support Consulting

For those seeking more practical guidance and advice around caregiving decisions, resources, and next steps, Kendra F. Dunlap, LMFT, also offers caregiver support consulting.