Over and Over Again
On repetitive stress, resilience, and the particular endurance of spousal caregiving
It’s not the first time he forgets.
It’s the twentieth.
The question arrives again — the same one, in the same tone, with the same expectant look — and something in you has to decide, in real time, how to respond. Not with the weariness you feel. Not with the grief that has been accumulating quietly for months. With patience. With steadiness. With love, even though there is no one there to see it.
This is what caregiving for a spouse with dementia actually looks like. Not one hard moment. The same hard moment, repeated, without a finish line in sight.
Most resilience research focuses on acute stress — recovering from illness, rebuilding after disaster, returning to baseline after a crisis resolves. The assumption built into the model is that the stressor ends. That there is a before and an after, and resilience is what carries you from one to the other.
But what happens when the stressor doesn’t end?
When your spouse asks the same question twenty times in an afternoon? When they can no longer hold a conversation? When they forget what a fork is for, or a toothbrush, and you have to show them — gently, without making them feel ashamed — how to use the things that were once second nature?
Over and over again, the stress returns. The grief returns. And you are asked, over and over again, to find something in yourself that keeps going.
That is a different kind of resilience. One the research is only beginning to name.
A few things became clear to me over those years — not from a guidebook, but from the daily, grinding, loving practice of showing up inside a reality that kept shifting.
Flexibility matters more than strength. My relationship with Lee changed completely, in stages I didn’t choose and couldn’t control. I moved from wife to companion to caregiver responsible for everything. What carried me wasn’t the ability to hold things steady — the disease wouldn’t allow that — but the ability to release what had been and find what was still possible. To walk with him rather than ahead of him. To follow his pace, his logic, his reality, even when it no longer matched mine. I had to let go of the version of him that no longer existed, and adapt to the one that lived in that moment.
A diagnosis gives a name, but not a map. When Lee was diagnosed in 2022, the word Alzheimer’s gave shape to what had been formless and frightening. It named the thing. What it didn’t do was tell me how to live inside it. Most of the adaptation was mine to navigate — in real time, without a script, alongside a disease that doesn’t negotiate. The endless challenge of adapting, while still loving, and greiving, is all-consuming and requires all your strength.
Education matters. And so do people. Resources help. Frameworks help. Research helps. But at the end of most days, what made the actual difference was the people who stepped in — the friends who already knew, the professionals who saw Lee as a full person, the community I had to build slowly and deliberately because it didn’t arrive on its own. The ones who truly understood were irreplaceable. Not because they had answers, but because they were present. The showed up.
Find the small moments of connection, even as so much is being lost. This is still your partner. The disease takes so much — language, memory, the person you recognized — but it doesn’t take everything all at once. There are still moments. A familiar gesture. A response to a song. A look that tells you he knows you’re there, even when he can’t find your name. Those moments are not small. They are everything.
There are models and frameworks designed to support caregivers, and we need more of them — better funded, more widely available, more culturally attuned. The invisible workforce doing this work deserves far more recognition and infrastructure than it receives.
But at the end of the day, the weight of caregiving rests on the shoulders of the people living it. Quietly. Repeatedly. Without applause and without a finish line.
Please know - the repetition is not a sign that you are failing. It is a sign that you are still showing up, still finding it in yourself to answer the same question one more time, still choosing love in the form of steadiness when nothing about the situation is steady.
That is not ordinary endurance. That is real strength — the kind that doesn’t look like strength from the outside, because it is made of small, invisible acts performed over and over again, in the quiet of an ordinary afternoon.
Acknowledge the work.
Acknowledge the love.
Acknowledge the endurance.
Because what you are doing — what you did — is extraordinary. Even when it felt like the opposite of that.
What helped you find steadiness inside the repetition? I’d love to hear in the comments — the small things, the unexpected things, the things that kept you going when the twentieth question arrived.
If this would be of value to you to hear more about how I restored my sense of belonging after 4 years of caregiving, Subscribe to Vicki’s Newsletter, “The Tender Warrior.”
One of the best ways to assist in maintaining your resiliency is selecting a caregiver for your loved one. It helps create routines and frees you to focus on the long term. Receive the free download 7 Things to Look For in Choosing a Caregiver as my gift to you when you join my Substack mailing list. Get new articles straight to your inbox and never miss a post!
I write about ways to belong to yourself again in my weekly newsletter “The Tender Warrior.” Because— I truly had to be a warrior most days, but for the man who was the absolute love of my life.
Thank you for these resources. I turn to my journal daily to hold space for me while caring for my mom. She hasn’t been officially diagnosed but I see her memory and abilities slipping. I have tried to control outcomes and get ahead of the crisis, but that usually doesn’t work.
I’m currently interviewing another caregiver. I recognize the need for help but it’s often hard to find and keep.
Well said, Vicki. I recognise and resonate with what you've shared.
We create the familiarity, predictability for our loved one and yet that same repetition and monotony can flatten life like an overstimulated nerve. I agree it takes huge, in-the-moment strength to recalibrate and adapt our response to meet them where they are. Intentionality, rather than auto-respond, requires mindful presence and strength, too.
Thanks for sharing.