The strange kind of love – Reflections on caregiving
Last week I posted something on social media about caregiving.
They don’t tell you that caregiving is a strange kind of love. You watch your loved one fade like the setting sun — while you are supposed to shine like sunrise. It is also love in the purest form.
I didn’t expect the wave that followed. Now I feel that the moment is ripe to deepen the conversation with clarity and hopefully some grace, for I clearly touched a nerve in many different ways.
Many replied with quiet tears: “Me too.”
Others, with concern: “But what about your own life, are you ok?’’
And a few, with sharp practicality: “It’s a waste of time, energy, money.”
Those who are living it
For those who are living it. You don’t need me to explain this kind of love. You’re living it. You’ve learned that time bends — that a single hour can feel like a year when the person you care for no longer knows your name, or repeats the same question twelve times before breakfast.
You’ve felt that pang — the one where love is still strong, but recognition is gone. And yet, you carry on. You show up. You hold the line between memory and forgetting.
I see you. And more importantly — you are not invisible to your loved one and others who give care.
My mum no longer remembers my name — she calls me Mummy, the same way I’ve always called her. It’s her strange, beautiful gift to me.
If she ever calls me by name, especially at night, we know something’s wrong. My name has become a signal — not of recognition, but of pain. A quiet plea for help.
For those who fear it
Some asked: “What about your dreams?”
“Isn’t this a kind of death sentence?”
I understand where that comes from. It can be hard to watch someone devote their life to a role that demands so much and gives back so little in tangible terms.
And yes — it’s hard. It can feel like a slow erasure of the self. But that doesn’t mean it’s a dead end.
Caregiving didn’t kill my dreams.
If anything, it lit a fire under them. Gave them purpose. Clarity.
It stripped away the noise — all the distractions, the vanity goals, the borrowed ambitions I once mistook for my own.
In caring for someone else so completely, I finally saw what I was meant to fight for. This wasn’t an excuse to give up — it was my liberty card. Not the kind we wave when we want out, but the kind we earn when we finally understand what matters.
For some of us, caregiving isn’t the death of our lives — it’s the rediscovery of what matters. It’s a different kind of becoming. A quieter kind. A harder kind. But not lesser.
For those who call it a waste of time, I guess money and emotions too!
I won’t argue. I simply offer this: Not all value is transactional. Not all time has to earn. And not all love must be proven with profit.
Some things are sacred — not because they are easy, but because they strip us down to our essence and ask us: Who are you, when no one claps?
That’s what caregiving does.
It’s not just about caring for someone else — it strips you bare and shows you who you really are. It reveals the self.
And to put it in terms that might land better: adulthood is a scam.
Maybe love won’t scam you — not the real kind — but life will.
You will be scammed. By duty, by capitalism, by expectations dressed up as dreams.
I’ve simply chosen my scam.
Caregiving is the one I picked with my eyes open.
You get to choose yours too.
For those of us who will stay.
I don’t romanticise caregiving. I know the toll. The isolation. The fury. The bone-deep fatigue. But I also know the quiet, searing beauty of being someone’s anchor when they are lost to themselves.
Caregiving isn’t for everyone. It shouldn’t have to be. But for those of us who walk this path — by choice or by circumstance — let it be known:
This is not a waste.
This is not weakness.
This is love — strange, costly, inconvenient, and transformative.
Last word.
If you’re caregiving, or considering it, or afraid of what it might make of you — welcome. There’s room here for your story. Your fear. Your grit. Your grief. Your uneven strength.
We don’t have to agree on everything.
But we can choose to hold space — for each other, and for the versions of ourselves we’re still becoming.
Because in the end, that’s what caregiving teaches us:
How to hold.
Even when it hurts.
Even when it fades.
Even when it’s never returned.
And maybe, in this fractured world, that’s the most radical thing left to do.
If you’re walking this caregiving path too — or just want to connect — I’d love to hear from you.
You can leave a comment below or reach me via the contact page.
Muthoni Thangwa 