The Well-Tended Life
The Well-Tended Life
Episode 73: Tending to Love & Loss: A Bru-tiful Journey with Katie Prentiss
This episode is a reminder: tending to others is sacred work—but so is tending to yourself. 🌿✨
In this episode of The Well-Tended Life podcast, I sit down with Katie Prentiss, an actor, filmmaker, and former full-time caregiver, to talk about the hard, heart-stretching, and unexpectedly transformative journey of caregiving.
Katie shares her deeply personal experience of caring for her mother, who was diagnosed with early-onset dementia, while simultaneously raising young children and navigating the complexities of her own future health risks. We dive into the raw realities of balancing personal growth with the selfless act of tending to another, how grief and resilience intertwine, and the unexpected gifts found in this challenging season.
Katie also introduces her upcoming feature film, Wake Up, Maggie—a project born from her own story—and how you can be part of bringing it to life.
Here are just a few heart taps from this episode:
1️⃣ Caregiving puts us into survival mode—even when we choose it. It’s normal to feel resentful, lost, or like you have nothing to show for it. But this unwinding grief is part of the journey.
2️⃣ Caregiving is the ultimate “bru-tiful” experience—both brutal and beautiful. Be compassionate with yourself. It may be one of the hardest walks you ever take.
3️⃣ Stay grateful, even in the storm. Not everyone gets the honor of walking a loved one home. Let it break your heart wide open.
4️⃣ Look for small joys and small ways to tend to yourself. You cannot pour from an empty cup—nourish your body, mind, and heart for the road ahead.
5️⃣ Love lingers beyond the goodbye. Even when the caregiving journey ends, the love remains, woven into your life in ways you never expected.
Have you ever felt the weight of caregiving—both the burden and the beauty of it?
💛 Take a deep breath, grab a cozy spot, and hit play. This conversation is for every caregiver, past, present, present, and future.
Connect with Katie Prentiss here to:
🎬 Learn about her feature film, Wake Up, Maggie
📸 Follow Katie’s creative journey
🎭 Watch her award-winning short film, Front Porches
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The Well-Tended Life podcast with Host, Keri Wilt:
Hey friends, welcome to The Well-Tended Life podcast! What is a well-tended life? Well, let me start by telling you what it is not. A well-tended life is not a set it and forget it life, nor is it a perfect life. It is though, a life that is worked on every day in the sunshine and through the storms.
And the truth is what worked in our life gardens last year may not work in the next. That's why. Here at the Well Tinted Life Podcast, we're interviewing people who have grown and bloomed true in a variety of seasons and who are willing to share their well tinted wisdom and reed blocking advice with us.
Listen in!
Episode begins...
Keri Wilt, Host: Hello everyone. And welcome to The Well-Tended Life podcast. I'm your host Keri Wilt, a speaker, writer, and heart cultivator who is on a mission to help you and me grow through any season. Today's episode is inspired by this quote from my great-great grandmother's famous book, The Secret Garden that says, "Sometimes when I open my eyes, I don't believe I'm awake".
Y'all, I feel this quote on so many levels and I wonder if you are too at home. Like some days I feel like I'm walking around in a foggy haze and others I'm pinching myself at the blessed life I get to lead. But recently as I've entered the empty nesting and parental caretaking stage of life while still trying to grow things in my business and here at The Well-Tended Life.
Y'all, staying awake and present and open while trying to juggle it all has been a real challenge. Today's special guest, Katie Prentiss, knows the struggle firsthand. And I just can't wait to see what well-tended wisdom she has to share with us today. So, let's dig in.
Welcome Katie.
Guest, Katie Prentiss: Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Wow, that intro is so good. It's like making me think so much already. I love it.
Keri: Well, this is a road you've walked. But before we even really get into that, why don't you give everybody just like a brief introduction of who Katie is.
Katie: Yeah. My name is Katie Prentiss. I am an actor, filmmaker, photographer, mother.
I would say that my life has taken a huge pivot in midlife, and I always go back to what Glennon Doyle says, the brutal parts of life that are brutal and beautiful at the same time. And I think that this is what happens if we can walk through those. Brutal moments, we can still see beauty on the other side.
And so that's a little bit about me and how I've landed where I am today.
Keri: Well, you have had a caretaker journey of your own. Yeah. As a mother of four. Having to caretake your mother. Can you take us back to that time? And what did that look like for you?
Katie: Absolutely. So, my mom was diagnosed with early onset dementia, it's a type called FTD, frontotemporal dementia. My mom was 62 when she got her diagnosis and, it's clear now looking back that she probably had this in her 50s. So, my siblings and I were scrambling when we first realized something was going on with mom.
And for a couple of years, my sister took my mom in and they all live in Georgia at the time and still do now. My siblings and dad. And so my sister took her in for a couple of years. All of us had young kids. My sister's younger than me. My kids were in elementary and preschool at this time. And one just starting, well, not even starting middle school yet.
And toward the end, as my mom progressed, my sister and her family were feeling at their wits end and caring for mom and we're feeling like they needed to explore putting her in a home and I was living in Portland. I'm I am in Portland, Oregon, and I felt like I can't I need mom to be close to me. I can't stomach the thought of her being in a home in Georgia and how little I would be able to see her. And I thought I'll do better in person. I'll do better having her near. And so, we, we made the decision to move mom out to Oregon and she lived in Oregon, her final two years of her life. So, we were caring for her and her late stages of dementia.
Yeah, all while running my own business and parenting our four children. So yeah, it was a wild journey for sure. And that, and we lost mom about eight years ago, so I have the advantage of being able to process with some distance in that time and, wade through the grief in a different way.
So, anyway, it's, it was definitely a journey, and I know, it too. So I'm sorry.
Definitely do there's all these roles in life that you know are going to happen, right? You're, you're going to graduate from high school, you're going to probably get married or your kids are going to go off, someday they're not going to stay in your house.
But for some reason, this stage of parenting parents and caretaking was never on my radar. I'm telling people, I'm like, they need to go back and add a chapter to like what to expect when you're expecting. Yeah. I thought I would get to this age of like empty nesting. I just took my college and I was like, this is gonna be, and then it was like, my, my dad died.
And then I had to caretake my mother for the first year. And now she's at least back up on her feet. And then I'm caretaking my mother in law. And it is it's just, it, I don't know why, but I was oblivious. I was oblivious to it. I don't know. Something that maybe just happened to other people Oh, other people's houses burned down.
My house has never burned down. Right. Or like other people there. I don't know. It just never occurred to me. I was a shock to you. I think for me, I think I expected it to happen later in life. And I think that's the challenge is like, even now I was. This was like over 10 years ago for me.
So I definitely didn't expect to be caregiving for a parent when I was like in full mode of like activated parenting myself. And even now I think I also have. Kids in college and, we're in that stage. We have our youngest as a senior in high school. And so even now I don't expect that I'm like, everyone else needs to chill because I can't, the fact that you just rattled off, like all four of the parent figures in your family's life is massive.
And it like gets it makes me freeze a little bit because I only know my experience with my mom. Years ago and still even still, I'm like, can we get some kids like married and settled through their twenties a little bit before we have to care give for parents? So I don't know if any of us ever plans for that, but we all hope and expect to like, be, I would rather be in my seventies caring for my parents than now, yeah. And let me ask you this. Like you chose this role, right? Like you said, you stepped up and you said this is you're coming to me. But I also know I'm, I too am choosing this role with my, but I don't think it makes it any easier. I think I thought that would be, like this is somehow my choice but yet it's still not my choice.
Right. Like I would, you would never choose to have to do this part and you step in. How has that been for you? I don't know if I'm asking the right question, but to the choice, I found myself like, It's a role, like it's a new part of person you have to be of all of those other things. And it's hard.
It's so hard. It's so like it, yes, it's a choice, but it, it's I think that I had to ask myself. The question of how do I want to, when I look back, how do I want to have experienced this? How do I want to say I went through this and even asking that question and being conscious of that question, I still didn't do it the way I wanted to do it because it's crisis and it's trauma and it's survival.
And the only thing I think what gives me comfort in my own. Retrospection of my experience with my mom is it reminds me so much of the years that I was having babies. And how many kids do you have, Keri? I have two. Okay. I think like I look back at those years and I think I felt like I was in survival mode.
I know a lot of. Women and men love that, like little baby sage, but I chose, we chose for me to stay at home with the kids and I'm so thankful for that. But I felt like everything was on pause. I didn't have time for myself. I was like, a good day was when I actually could take a shower. If I actually got a full night's sleep, which might even just mean 6 hours, like it's like those type of survival, like 1 day at a time.
I have to just move through this moment. Feeling like I didn't have a lot to show for my life. Because I, I was like picking up the same toys all day I remember like my husband would come home from work and I'd be like, I promise you that I cleaned up this house today and there's nothing to show for it.
It looks like chaos. And I think that caregiving, cause that is caregiving too. And I think like caregiving is that. It brings up a lot of those same feelings of I can't do anything for myself. Everything's bombarding me. I feel like I'm just putting out fires. So, so it's a choice, but it's a, it's such a different choice.
It's a responsibility. It's like a love. It's like a sacrificial choice. That's what it is. That's a great word. That's it's a choice to sacrifice. Are deep are bigger wants and desires and needs for somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, uh, and I'm going to say though, I'm going to say this word and I think I can't believe I'm going to say it out loud, but, uh, and I felt that as with, in that same stage with young babies and feeling I have sacrificed everything that even though I knew it was my choice and I knew it was the right thing to do, there was always this like small little part of resentment in me.
And because I was also watching other people still be able to get. Oh, yes, they'll be able to water themselves, still be able to uh, go do their passion. And right. Yes. And I feel very, I've, I have felt some of those same, I've had to work through feelings with caretaking as well. And I feel like, I think I wanted to say it out loud because I think a lot of us out there who It's almost like I, I can sometimes tell myself it's you can't feel that way, right?
Because this is being done, right? But yet it's there. It's a really weird space. I really appreciate your honesty with that. And I think it's so valid. It's like that. I've made this choice. Let's talk about, let's talk about giving birth and having children. I've made this choice and yet I'm watching somebody else's career or, maybe they just get to go to parties all the time and be fabulous where I'm like cleaning spit up off my shirt.
But yeah, it's like sitting with our choices and accepting those things and knowing that I am in this exact stage that I want to be in. And here's the difference. Here's the rub. And I still have resentment. Because I'm struggling with what I don't have right now. And then you move into caregiving for our parents.
And here's the difference. It's like that same struggle of feeling stuck or feeling like your life is on freeze or on pause for other people. And yet, like with children. There's all this like beauty and giggles and sweetness and like fantasizing about the future. It's so beautiful. There's so much hope, right?
With our parents, we're dealing with a struggle, resentment, feeling that pause, but there's grief and there's like loss. And so, Oh, This is how the caregiving does not compare with children versus caring for someone who's ill or dying. It's just the depth of of grief and trauma and crisis, like I say, and I don't want to undermine that there is still beauty.
There's presence, there's acceptance. We get to be with them. That's a good thing. Like we get to be with them another day. But woof the grief is real. And I don't think that I was able to acknowledge that when I was right in the middle of my process with my mom. Were you able to find ways to care for yourself during that time?
Were there little ways that you're like, okay, I can't do all of those things, but I can pocket this thing here. Or in retrospect, can you. Can you coach yourself and be like, God, I wish you would have done this. You I, oh, it was just like we said it's it was such a daily Goal or struggle to try to stay present and to try to accept what was good right in front of me.
So, if my youngest would be like my most willing to accompany me to visits to my mom, once we placed her in a memory care home and man, the. The sweet levity that he would bring, just hugging a hug. She would hold her. My mom is nonverbal because she had primary progressive aphasia.
And so she couldn't say anything and she, she would hold her arms out to him and he would just hug her over and over again. And it's being able to see what's good. And I think the thing, oh man Keri I don't know, I honestly look back and I have Thankfully, I'm able to have some compassion toward myself.
And I think that I know that's not a thing to do necessarily, but I think if we can look at ourselves with compassion as, especially as the children of the parents were tending. Yeah. And know that our parents would love us and appreciate and be proud of us for the love that we're giving back to them and just have compassion for what we're able to do and what we're not able to do.
The things that I regret that I look back that I would feel so much guilt over, my bad attitude or my like. Avoidance or the things that were true of me in my caregiving of mom and I would feel so much guilt and burden and I, and now I look back and I think, Oh, mom would have forgiven you.
And she would have been so sympathetic and compassionate. So now we have this opportunity to parent ourselves and be that same like gentle mother. To ourselves in that and just say, you're doing the best you can, you're holding so much right now. You're doing more than you ever thought you could right now.
And look at you go look at you still being healthy, like still choosing things for yourself. So, obviously there's all the things I can recommend, take a walk, call a friend, I definitely, I'm a huge, I will say this because this aligns with My story, but share your story, tell people what's happening, even the little bit you've shared with me in this one episode.
Oh, it just makes me take a deep breath and it makes me want to hold space with you. And I think that to me and my journey was healing because I felt less alone. Yeah. Yes.
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Episode resumes:
Just speaking our truth of what's happening right now can I just tell you about how hard it was to make this doctor's appointment for my mom? And then my dad had this and then, it's like just saying is like a release a hundred percent.
Yeah. Cause it's it is a very. caretaking in general, whether it's an elderly parent or even young kids, it can be very lonely.
It's so lonely alone in it, even though you're not right. It definitely feels lonely. So I think that's really great advice. One, for me, one of, there's so many like lessons that I'm learning along the way. And I love how you were talking about like how you wanted to experience this, like, how do you.
Back and have that. And one of the things I do in my journaling process is, uh, I write down the seeds of who I want to be. And ones that I'm currently planting. One says I'm a grateful caregiver, healthy boundaries, support, encouragement, and delight. Because if I can bring delight into the room And in the space I'm going to be more likely to be more patient, right?
And I'm going to see this with a smile, right? I'm going to be able to clean up the messes and all of the hard things the brutal full parts, right? So for me, that's an also. Reminding myself to be grateful that I have the opportunity, I have a lot of friends who's, who's, I have a friend whose dad died three weeks after mine and he had a massive heart attack and just he was there and then he was gone and she would give anything to be able to walk part of this journey, right?
Exactly. Exactly. So, so I try to stay in that grateful thing and other thing for me as a as a caregiver is I have had to learn how to use my time more wisely. Used to, I would say, okay, on Thursday, I'm going to do this. And on Friday I'm, setting my schedule for the week. And now if I have time to do it now, I've got to get it done now because I can't, I don't know if mom's going to call and she's got a UTI infection and I'll have to go to the hospital.
I don't know what my day looks like. And so, One of the seeds I plant is I use my time wisely and hold the day before me loosely, knowing that it can change. And that's a hundred percent. Okay. Two. So letting go of my leg life has to happen, by my schedule, both of those things have been very helpful for me walking through it.
Now, I love what you're saying. And I think for sure I can echo that. My journey, I would say, is 100 percent a journey toward acceptance and learning to accept what I can't control and lean into what I can control and I've. I think it's such a huge lesson that I learned is, it's, we often we so often try to control the very things that we have no power over, like our loved one's illness or like somebody else's choices or whatever.
It's we're always trying to manipulate and control the things that we have no control over because we don't feel powerful. But if we like accept those and release those. Like you're saying, like we can plan a day and we have to let it go. We have to accept that's the path toward peace is accepting what we can't control.
When we resist that and get mad, then we're only really disrupting ourselves. We're the ones who suffer. Well, and it's, uh, I was watching a video the other day about, how to get someone with dementia to do what you want them to do, which is like a total misnomer, but it's not. It's not by telling them she was he was using the example of trying to get them into the house and then, but they don't believe they live there.
Right? And it's. In, in our regular minds, it's like we're to control the situation by showing them pictures of them in the house and by showing them their driver's license, it shows that this is their house and all the things, but that's the part you can't control. You can't control that.
They don't understand that this is their house, but if you, once you let go of that, then your mind is free to problem solve and be like, What do I really want them to, what do I really need them to do? I need them to go inside. So let's what do they call it? Like a a prescribed lie. What you got to do to get them in there.
Oh we're just doing another errand today and ponder inside. And I've just got to pick up one thing while we're here. So why don't you come in and say hello and, just freeing your mind up. But it's a, but it's a really, it is about that letting go of the controlled the part that we can't control.
Right. Oh my gosh. Yes. You're even that example just reminds me of parenting again of using your playful imagination. Yes. It's like we can control our children when they're little. But how much better is it when we like play? And engage with like creative imagination with them and let go of our like agenda all the time.
And I think that's true with our caregiving as well as okay, I have to now take, instead of what would take two seconds of going into the house is going to take however long to engage this person. Yeah. And not lose my patience. Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. Talk to me about living with the what if, what does that mean and how has that changed the way you're living today?
The what if like, maybe what if you got it? Oh yes. Okay. Oh yeah. That's been a journey, Keri. I don't know your experience with, okay, so you're, you lost your father and I think my theory is that anytime we witness a loss like that, watching someone we love die, my theory is that it easily becomes a fear for us, right?
Oh, what if I'm going to go that way too? Or if we approach a, if we lost a sibling or a partner or something, we approach their age, we start wondering Oh, well my life ended at this time too. So I already had this, I watched my mom lose her ability to speak. I lost her.
We lost her personality. With frontotemporal dementia it's led, it's not like Alzheimer's. It's not memory based. It's it's. Personality emotions, compulsion, it's all of those things start to fade. And there's different types of variants with FTD, but my mom had primary progressive aphasia.
So she lost her ability to speak. And I said that earlier, but it's pretty profound watching someone you love not be able to communicate. She started whispering. She started like saying the same phrases over and over again, which were just like okay. Or let's go. So not being able to communicate with my mom was pretty huge.
Has a profound impact on me. And then losing her at such a young age, when you think Oh, she's gonna be my kid's grandma for a long time and witness my kids. Getting married and having their own families. And anyway I very much after I lost her in my fear of getting what she had, I would think, Oh no.
It was just a one off way. We don't have it in our family. Like I know there's genetic components to FTD, but I was like working really hard to stay in my denial lane. It was much more comfortable there. And then unfortunately my uncle her younger brother got diagnosed with FTD as well recently.
And he's living with it in late stages now. And that was such a huge, like, wake up call for me of okay. I might actually have this. This really could be Genetically linked to me and now even my children and I was already doing work around advocacy with dementia awareness, frontotemporal dementia awareness, caregiving support type of stuff.
But once I realized it was my, it could be mine, I had to face my fears in a really profound way. And so what I realized is when my, I felt my fears coming up every day, like every time a word wouldn't come out correctly, or I couldn't remember something. It's every day back of my mind fear. I. I remember thinking I need to deal with this.
What am I going to do? Okay let's just go ahead and say you have it. Let's say you, you are, you 100 percent are diagnosed with this. What would change with your life? What would you do differently? What would you do? How would you And I had this awareness that I would. Live my life exactly as I'm living right now.
I would I'm making this movie which we'll get into I'm sure But I will make this movie that i'm working on I will Love my family I will try to be with the people I care about and love and I will try to live my life as healthy and full As I possibly can And so it just became really simple and it actually released the fear in a huge way and You Also, as it released the fear, it also gave me just so much clarity and alignment that I'm doing exactly with my life what I need and want to be doing.
And that feels so rewarding. To be like, yeah, okay, like I'm living on purpose and I always say it as simply as this. I want to love and live as big as I can for as long as I can. I would also think that in that freeing, it also gives you like a giant permission slip to say no to a lot of things. Yes.
Right. Once you get that clarity, you're like when I was, uh, I always tell people I was the whole reason I came into this well tinted life business was because I was, I found myself buried in the weeds of busyness after not with. Actually grief over losing my job and, uh, in, in, in the time when I was finally starting to like, let go of things.
And I started having that clarity. I made a quick list on my phone of all the things I'd rather be doing than all the things I'm doing right now. Simple act was like, Oh, I was like, why am I doing all of those other things? If I have 20 things on this list that I would rather be doing than the things I'm doing right now, it was literally, it was exactly that.
It was like, I had just written myself a permission slip that said unless it, unless somebody's out. Asking me to do something that pertains to these things, like it's an easy, it's an easy now. Yes. I love that. Yeah. And it takes awareness. It took, it takes you. And I know you're such an advocate of journaling, which I think is like staying present with ourselves and like thinking through what do I actually want?
Because we can live our lives like by default. And not like with intention, if we're not careful, and I love what you just said, because I think it's, I think there's a lot of things in life that give the, give us that gift toward that clarity and awareness. And I think midlife sometimes says that just on its own, but I also think grief does that.
I think yeah, if I did have this site and I know a lot of people do have diagnosis that like change the trajectory of their lives and like those things can be a wake up call for our good. If we let them. Yeah. Well, even 2020 was a wake up call. Oh, for our good. Right. Huge. I have yet to meet I think we're on like almost like 80 podcasts or something now, and I guarantee you that like 75 of them have said the words in 2020.
I had this awakening, I had this totally, this moment. Right. Of I don't wanna do life that way anymore. And Totally. So, yeah. So yeah. That's such a, what a great reminder. That those brutal times. I love it. I just, oh my gosh, I feel like I'm going to have it like tattooed on my forehead. It's so powerful.
One word. So good. I always say we start, we're surf thriving, right? I want to survive, but I thrive in the surviving, but and now I've lost my train of thought, but I think that my brain went to birds. We were talking about the clarity that we got through COVID and then the beautiful times it's okay.
It's all good. Yeah, that's all. It gives us great direction. And oh, no, yeah, that's what I was gonna say. It was just a reminder that it is the hard times. There's always, there's really always good things that come out of it. If we remain aware, right? If we actually stay aware and awake, right? Through it.
Exactly. I was thinking that too. If we move through it, when we try to circumvent it or squash it or any of those other things, like it takes longer. But if we allow ourselves to like just move through that pile of, you know what, yeah. And feel it and smell it and it's like all the things and you can't avoid it.
It will come out. But yeah, if we allow ourselves to move through it, there can be like this real awakening that happens. It's, I'm so grateful for that.
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Episode resumes..
Well, okay. So, speaking of awakenings, yes. Okay. You are working on a new passion project. Yes. So tell us about Wake Up Maggie. Uh, you can tell. It makes me so happy to be able to do this work.
I am. I'm working on my first feature film, it's called Wake Up Maggie. It is a film that I call a coming of middle age story, instead of a coming of age. And it is about exactly what we're talking about, how midlife can do its darndest to unravel us. And I just, , I have to talk about this. Brené Brown calls midlife and unraveling.
She's I don't think midlife is a crisis. I think it's an unraveling. A crisis is one event and unraveling is like an undoing. And for me. Living my life as a people pleaser, as a person without boundaries, as a, yes, outside, no inside kind of person. Oof, that unraveling was the best thing that could have ever happened to me because it made me more raw.
It made me more solid. It made me know myself in ways that I hadn't known myself all through life. And. It gives me so much clarity on. Yes. And so, this script that I've written is so much about that journey. So, we watch Maggie be able to tightly control her life and, everything is like working for her as much as it can as a mom and wife and business owner until she gets a wakeup call from her estranged younger sister.
Who gets in some trouble, Maggie has to decide if she wants to go and rescue her yet again. And being the ultimate caregiver, Maggie decides to go. And when she does, she just, she realizes so much more is happening in Jane's life than what she realized. So Maggie. I don't like to give too much away, but Maggie has to enter a caregiving role with her younger sister.
And this film is a love letter to caregivers. It is for all of us, Keri, who know so deeply what it feels like to feel invisible, powerless at our wits end. Every day brings up new challenges where you're just like, I don't know how I'm going to get through this. And yet. I get to be with this person I love and there's moments that are just so tender and true.
And how do I want to walk through this? And it's Maggie's journey from control to acceptance. It's Maggie's unraveling that we watch on the screen. And it's I say, it's. It's based on very true stories because it's from my own lived experience and from the lived experience of friends that I love who know what this is like.
And I just can't wait for this film to be out in the world because it's wild. We're currently fundraising and about to enter into pre production for the film, which is, gathering our, Crew and our cast and our locations and all of that. And already so many people have gathered to support this, have reached out to say, Oh my gosh, what are you making?
Like, how can I help? I want to support this because they're already feeling like seen and they're already feeling like hope and healing. And the movie's not even made yet. And so I just, I guess to conversations, right? Around something that. I do think that people have been sitting in their basement caretaking and not having this conversation open.
Yeah. And it's like with caregiving, it's so easy to say Oh, go take care of yourself. Don't forget to put your oxygen mask on first. We have all the things that we say and that we know we're supposed to do. And yet I, I know how much I fail. I quote unquote failed. And I know how desperate I felt.
And I think being able to see that and watch that in somebody else, like that's where the healing comes in films and shows is when we get to see the expression of the truth happening, not just like the right answers. Yeah. Cause there is no set of right answers. There is no magic formula.
Or how to care give or how to be your best self and 12 easy days, right? Right. There's no such thing. We're all different. And every single situation is so different.
Yes, it's complex. It's layered. And I think the thing that I think You'll resonate with us so much. The thing that I always think about so much is life does not stop just because you become a caregiver.
Caregiving doesn't knock on your door and go, excuse me, is this a good time for us to bombard you? Because we would like to add another person that you have to support full time. Are you good? Are you good for that right now? No. No, it's very rude the way caregiving enters into life and just bombard you with everything.
Yeah. Yeah. And then over the course of the day, bombard you in different ways as well. Totally. Totally. Well, so what do you hope people do differently after watching your film? I really hope that People can find a way to be compassionate toward themselves.
While they're in the midst of the heat that they can see and encourage themselves for the labor of love that they're giving the sacrificial love to go back to what we said in the beginning, I hope that people can see that and that they can. Allow themselves to, I always say, find hope, despite it all, smile, despite it all, find some joy, despite it all.
And I do think that comes with staying present in this moment. Yes, my day might have been wrecked, but oh, my gosh, my mom, I just got to hold her hand for a second and allowing ourselves to just embrace those little gifts. In the middle. So good. Um, it's just, it's so good and I'm so thankful.
I believe that we all go through what we go through so that we can help other people grow through it. And the fact that you're using the brutal part of your life, the fuel, a passion and a project that is gonna reach people and them through it. That's why people are surrounding you.
That's why people are, how can I be a part of this is because because of that energy, right? Because you are pulling it through and that next line of people need to hear what you have to say. So, yeah, for doing that, all of this work that you're about to embark on. Thank you. And I should add that I very much care about.
Supporting research for all dementias, but specifically frontotemporal dementia. And I also care about policy change and advocacy for caregivers. We need more support in our health care systems in our government. Policy is I think that this is also the power of a movie is we're not just going to be shown toward people who have caregiving or dementia, but this can be in anyone's living room and hopefully affect true change down the road.
So I very much care about that aspect of. This filmmaking as well. So hopefully we're a twofold, then we really catch the heart and and encouragement of those who really need it, but that we also pave the way for real change to happen in our country and world. So good. All of the links to all of those fun things that she just talked about will definitely be in the show notes.
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Episode Resumes...
The second part of the interview, is where I love to ask the guests all the same things, which.
The first one is what their life season is and, how it affects the way you do life today, because caregiving is a life season, right? Our life season can change at the drop that and so understanding where you are in life.
What season you're on in life helps informs those yeses and those nos, right? Like it gives us the power to be able to say, yep, nope not this season or yes, though this season. Tell me about what's the life season you're in right now and what does that look and how is that informing the way you do life?
Such a good question. Such a good question because I love to think about my life in chapters and seasons because gives me patience when I feel and. When I feel I'm in those chapters that feel slower or more insular, so I am in a massive season of transition with our children heading to college.
And I don't know what empty nest is. I think I'm going to call it open nest at this point because I haven't experienced. Experienced a true emptiness yet. And I think that it's a revolving door, and I know for me that these years in our children's early twenties are more like constant energy shifts.
It's like you have them off at school and things get quieter, you buy less groceries and then all of a sudden they're home and you need all the food in the world. And it's just bonkers. But but I also feel like for me. I'm in a season of expansion in my life. And I think I look at that as a gift that my mom gave me because.
I want to encourage anyone who feels like they're in a season of contraction or a season of healing or caregiving or anything that they feel. If you feel like your life is really small right now, I want you to remember that seasons change. Just like you said, so, so I'm in a season of expansion where I have more time to do this work, and I'm trying to seize the day with it.
I don't know what's to come. I live my life very much not knowing if we'll be caregiving for someone else, or if I'll run into something personally, That limits my work or my ability. So, so I feel very much that I'm riding a wave and I'm riding it and it's growing bigger and I'm going to ride it all the way to shore as long as I can.
That's my season. I love it. I love it. And yeah, what a great reminder of the hope that's on the other side of any side, any storm. for me seasons particularly, there's, there is, it's that fuels the growth, right? Right. It's the rain that causes the flowers to grow. Yes. And you probably, you needed that unraveling In seasons to be open and where you are now in order to do these projects and this expansion going forward. So absolutely. Absolutely. I think that I just love this. So I want to shoot this. I hope it's okay. But I love the idea of contraction and expansion. If you think about the whole planet breathing, the tides breathing the seasons breathing that we're in a contraction where the leaves are falling.
And then there's an expansion that happens every spring. And it's gosh feel it in your own lungs and know that your life is going to mirror that. I just find so much hope in that. It's so beautiful to me to connect in that way. It's so beautiful. It's the natural way. I think one of the things I know is that when I teach people about how to live their life, based off the garden it's once you see and realize, and you're like, Oh Things aren't always in bloom and yeah, the leaves fall and then the things come and then you're like, Oh, okay.
And you can start to apply that to your life and you feel it just, it changes your perspective when you look at that for sure. What beautiful work you're doing. Okay. I really appreciate it. Okay. What regular practices do you have that might help us to live our best well intended lives? What do you do on a regular basis that helps you?
Yeah. Okay. So I would say one thing I do every day is walk our dogs. My husband and I go for a walk every day at five something. And I am like, a dork with I constantly take photos of like nature on our walks. It's usually just for me, but I'll zoom in on a rainy leaf or a flower in bloom or the, uh, All colors and I think just connecting in that way and like looking up and now is so profound.
Goes back to your garden analogy. I think connecting with nature is so important. So that's something that's huge for me. And, we live in Portland, Oregon. So it's rainy and cloudy and it's so important for us to get out because that gray. Will affect your mood if you let it and then the other thing is just providing my body with nurture.
I think love to practice yoga. I love. Just to move and walk. And I was like the classic person who would eat my children's peanut butter and jelly crusts for lunch. Like I'd make them lunches and then just eat their leftovers and not feed myself. So I think even just like making myself food and it's like those simple things that I think self care can be so simple and subtle So those are some of my practices that definitely bring me a lot of nurture.
I love that. Okay, final question is comes from my journaling practice. Every day, uh, I look back on the day before to notice the joy, goodness, and growth that was there. And it's really based off a quote from the secret garden that says Mary hadn't noticed it before, but she looked up And I believe that some Many of us are just rushing past our lives and missing, this, the dew drops on the leaf.
And and that there is an, even in the middle of those, really hard seasons, there's joy, goodness, and growth planted. If we're just aware enough to see it. So, so tell me where are you spotting joy in your life right now? Oh, so much. I see it so much in my family's relationship with one another, like my, we laugh a lot.
We're a bunch of sassy people over here and love, like just messing with each other. So just my kids relationships with each other the joy they get from each other, leaning into my marriage in the way that it is now versus all these. years of so many kids around. I'm finding so much joy in the outpouring of support.
With this movie, and I think I just, I feel like gratitude shifts us in our bodies, doesn't it? Like it's I can because making this movie feels like I'm preparing to climb Mount Everest, if I'm going to give like an analogy or metaphor, and I get overwhelmed, like I get Oh my God, what am I doing?
This is crazy. Stop. What are you just quit, pick something easier. And I get like nervous when all I see is me, when all I see is like what I'm doing or whatever. And what helps me are two things. One is I just express gratitude sometimes even out loud. I just say people's names that have come on.
I said, I literally was doing that in my office. I was just reading names out loud that have supported this film. And it just like shifts my body. The other thing that I do that I love that I would encourage everyone is spend a few minutes every day, imagining everything working out and just get real still.
And just get in your mind and imagine everything working out for you and whether that's in your caregiving journey and like all the difficulty of that, or like your dreams of your career, your family or whatever, just spent our imagination can lead us into so much fear and of the future. So why not use it for a good, yeah.
So I've heard people say, if you're going to spend all that time thinking about like worst case scenarios, you might as well at least go ahead and spend the time doing best case scenarios. Yes. Yeah, it calms my nerves so much and I, I really do have a daily practice with that. Like sometimes it leads into a nap, but I lay down and I say, okay, I'm just going to sit here and think about all the things working out for me.
And it's so powerful. So good. Our minds are set. That's crazy. It's so true. It's so true. So good. Okay, so, so the second one really for me is goodness. Is gratitude. Right? It's the good, I'm grateful for. So, clearly you are grateful for all these people who are yeah, to come up and celebrate.
Where are you seeing growth in your life or learning life lessons? Where's that? Oh, I probably jumped the gun with what I just said. I think, I definitely think with that I think I think I'm seeing growth in my own awareness, like I think having practices where, when I notice my nervous system being amplified, yes.
When I notice my, Like I'm buzzy. I'm anxious. I'm spinning on negativity, doing what I need to like pause and shift. And it can be taking a walk. It can be. Often, sometimes, because I'm so much on my computer and my phone, sometimes it's just shifting gears and doing something physical in my home or life, like cleaning dishes or folding laundry, just touching things or interacting with the physical world around me.
Yeah. And then I think, I definitely think that awareness that leads to that practice of meditating and imagining things going right is like a huge area of growth for me. I've spent a lot of years just in denial and like shooing away any kind of negativity or anger or any like bad feeling. And now it's I see them.
I see it. I like process through it, and it's so much better. I'm not perfect. I'm like , but it's that awareness is huge. And then I acceptance and moving through it. Yeah. And equity's perfect. There's no such thing as a perfect charge. Such thing as if you leave and look out in nature, right?
Like . Everything is unique and different and a little bit jagged and missing a branch or whatever it happens to be. So, I love that you said that because it just goes back to your title. It's it's not perfect, but it can be well tended. Yeah. And all a well tended life means is that you're willing to get up and maintain that awareness and open and do just what Mary did in the secret garden, which was be willing to get up every day and unlock the door and clear your path and pull the weeds and enlist your friends.
And you're just willing to go to work on you and really awareness is the key, right? A gardener. is not going to have a beautiful gardener. They don't just run out there and plant some seeds and hide inside, right? They go out there every single day and they notice like, what's growing, what's not, what has blooms on.
Is it going to rain today? Like it's noticing all of those things and then taking all of that information, which is all it is, right. Using it to better tend to, to their garden. And it's the same thing for us. You walk into your life and you notice the weeds that are tripping you up and you notice the branch that fell from that storm last week.
And you use that information to go, okay, well, I probably should deal with that branch. Right. And that those weeds, they're not out of control yet, but I probably should make, keep my eye on them and notice. And it's just, it's all information. It's all awareness. It's information that we can use to better tend to our lives.
And it's such a labor of love. Like hearing you say that I'm like, no one does that. begrudgingly, like if they were begrudging, they would quit. And I think about that. That is a late, I often say with my movie, I'm rooted in love. So I'm so deeply rooted in love that nothing can really I have this strength to Embrace what comes and bring everyone with me.
And I always say we all rise together. And it's like that rootedness. And I think what you're saying is like this labor of love and it's just so connected to me. I love that. I love that analogy of the well tended life is so good. Thank you. Well, I, this has been so good, Katie. It was what my soul needed, and I know there are people out there who needed to hear these words as well.
So, thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us. Tell people how they can find you, follow you, invest in our movie, and all the things. Thank you for asking that. First, real quick, I just wanna say yeah, I am such a fan of The Secret Garden. It was like one of my favorite books as a little girl, and I still have my old copy.
It's like seventies vintage with like green on the sides. My daughter has it now. It's so good. Anyway yes, I am, I try to make it really easy to find me. I am under Katie Prentice everywhere, so my website is katie prentice.com. My all my social media is Katie Prentice. The movie is Wake Up Maggie Movie.
So on Instagram and Facebook, wake up Maggie movie and then wake up Maggie movie. com. So for anybody like just donate money towards that or what's what are the opportunities there? Thank you so much for asking that. I, we are currently still fundraising and we'll probably be fundraising through.
Production because we'll need funds for post production. We have a fiscal sponsorship, which allows us to offer tax deductions on any donations. And that link is on our website and on our social media. So if anyone wanted to contribute to wake up Maggie and receive a tax deduction, or if they. Had the opportunity to offer a corporate match.
We're able to receive all of those in that way and give them that tax break under our fiscal sponsorship. We're really proud of that. That's something it was a huge application process. And so we're happy to offer that. We also, if someone doesn't need that, we have a go fund me. That makes it maybe a little bit easier to donate.
So both of those options I try to. Make pretty obvious wherever we are. But yeah, we're I always say it's every dollar matters to us because. It's not just the amount, it's the energy and the time and in it, what I feel like is we're not just raising money we're growing a community around this film.
And when people donate and give to Wake Up Maggie movie, I feel like the coolest thing is they get to watch and be a part of this whole process. And when the film is done and we get to premiere it at different places, hopefully in the U. S. We'll have our audience. And so we want you not just to give to the fundraising, but to come out to the theaters when we show the film.
Oh my gosh. It is so good. Yeah, I'm excited. Thank you to everyone who has been listening to this podcast. I sincerely hope that this episode has inspired you today to wake up and be passionate with yourself during the unraveling in order to live out your best well tended life. So until next time, y'all blessings and blooms.
Thank you so much, Katie. This was awesome. Thank you, Keri. I adore you.
Episode Outro:
Oh, my goodness. Y'all, that was so good. Don't forget to check the show notes for my favorite heart tap moments from this episode. What is a heart tap? Well, whenever I read, listen to a podcast or watch a speaker, I'm always on the lookout for those like head bob heart tap and aha moments. You know what I'm talking about?
These are the things that cause your head to Bob and agreement, your heart to make that tap moment. When a much needed word of wisdom comes along or your soul to scream, ah ha That was the word I was looking for. So for each episode I like to share a few of my heart taps in the show notes with you, but I'm curious.
What are they? Are your heart tap moments from today's episode, run on over and direct message me your favorite moments, questions, heart taps, and more over at Instagram or Facebook today. And if you were inspired by this episode or maybe learn something new, make sure to share this show with a friend or post about it in your stories.
Finally, Could you do one more favor for me today? Will you take a minute and hop on over to Apple podcast and leave a kind and thoughtful review for the Well Tended Life podcast? You see, this is how people find us. And every positive review helps to unlock the door for someone else to get in on the magic of life tending too.
Thank you again for listening and being a part of this Well Tended Life community. And until next time, y'all blessings and blooms.