Christopher MacLellan, Board Member of All Home Care Matters & Founder of The Whole Care Network
All Home Care Matters
Enriched Life Home Care Services
5.0 • 88 Ratings
🗓️ 4 January 2023
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
All Home Care Matters was honored to welcome a good friend, board member, and founder of The Whole Care Network, Christopher MacLellan. However, you may know Christopher as the "Bow Tie Guy".
When people ask him "why did you create the Whole Care Network"... he always come back to his caregiving experience and how fortunate he was to find resources that helped him and his partner Richard Schiffer manage their caregiving journey. Every caregiver has a story and through their stories, they find validation, resources and respite to help manage their caregiving day.
Christopher feels fortunate to have had their story chronicled in a 2015 Pulitzer Prize-nominated 3-part story “In Sickness and In Health: A Couple’s Final Journey” which told their journey of caregiving. The story told of the challenges LGBT partners have in dealing with the medical and legal system, but it also told of the love and joy of his partner Richard's last years had on their relationship.
Their story has been read by over 500,000 people worldwide since it was published in April of 2014. One of the reasons their story was so successful was because readers could place themselves in their shoes; dealing with the healthcare system, the legal system, balancing work and life, while facing the reality their time together was short. It was an afterthought that the story just happened to be about two men.
When it comes to caregiving, there are no economic boundaries, no racial boundaries, no gender boundaries and no orientation boundaries. Caregiving impacts everyone, and it is through story sharing where diversity meets the road to collaborate on a common cause. And our common cause is to support caregivers before, during and after caregiving has ended.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to All Home Care Matters, the show where we discuss all things home care with discussions on important age-related matters and topics. |
| 0:10.1 | Brought to you by Enriched Life Home Care Services, the number one rated home care provider in Michigan by Top Rated Local. |
| 0:23.6 | Hello and welcome back to All Home Care Matter matters. If this is your first time visiting us here at the show, we want to say thank you for taking time out to be with us today. |
| 0:28.6 | We appreciate how valuable everyone's time is, and that's why we try and make each episode here at all home care matters, something that will hopefully matter to you. Today, we are |
| 0:38.7 | honored to welcome a dear friend of the show and board member to All Home Care Matters and the |
| 0:44.1 | founder of the Whole Care Network, Christopher McClellan. Welcome, Christopher. Greetings, Lance. It's |
| 0:49.7 | nice to be on the other side of a podcast for a change. So thanks for having me. Yes. And I should also mention |
| 0:55.6 | you are a board member of all home care matters and a valuable part of the team. So we appreciate |
| 1:00.6 | that. And we appreciate to be a part of it. Thank you. Absolutely. It's our pleasure. And it's also a |
| 1:06.5 | remarkable resource that you are providing the families and caregivers with the whole care network. |
| 1:11.6 | Well, thank you. And I think we all, as caregivers, we all want to find that path to advocacy, |
| 1:18.6 | especially after caregiving has ended for myself. And I just find that podcasting is just one of the great ways to share stories, |
| 1:26.6 | because it's through story sharing |
| 1:28.5 | where diversity meets the road to collaborate on a common cause. And our common cause is |
| 1:33.2 | supporting caregivers. |
| 1:34.3 | Yes, yes. And you started the whole care network, if I understand correctly, from your |
| 1:41.0 | experience as being a caregiver. |
| 1:43.3 | Exactly. I was fortunate when my partner and my from your experience as being a caregiver. |
| 1:45.0 | Exactly. |
| 1:49.2 | I was fortunate when my partner and my now deceased partner, |
| 1:53.6 | Richard Chiffer, was diagnosed originally with esophageal cancer. |
| 1:56.6 | I kept looking for these, you know, I needed an outlet. |
... |
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