Welcome back to So Your Parents are Old, everybody. I'm Vanessa Gregoriotis. And as we all know,

caregiving your old parents is really isolating. Even if you're not stuck at home all day with your

cancer-afflicted dad, you're just visiting a couple days a week, or you're taking care of finances from afar while somebody else in the family handles the hands-on stuff.

It can still be so lonely if you don't have friends to talk to about it.

That is why I started this podcast because I really didn't have people in my life to talk to about it.

And it is why our guest today started her very powerful, articulate, succinct, just awesome

newsletter and online community. Kim Elliott's newsletter is called Gray Monster, which is a very funny title for the aging parental

units, who I think probably a lot of you can relate to that. It has articles, it has resources

for caregivers, it has info about Medicare, Medicaid, all delivered in this fun, digestible way,

which is not easy to do with this stuff.

So welcome Kim.

Hi, thanks for having me.

I'm excited to be here, Vanessa.

Thank you.

I was so excited to meet you and learn that you are a businesswoman, an adult caregiver, you live in Colorado. You're not very old. To be honest, a lot of the people who are in this business, the business of the

business of caregiving, tend to be middle age. I think I qualify as middle

age. I am 45 years old. But when I started my care experience, I was watching my parents

care for my grandmother. And I had a very close relationship with my grandmother. I was very

lucky growing up to live in the same town as her. And I spent a ton close relationship with my grandmother. I was very lucky growing up to live in the same

town as her. And I spent a ton of time with her. When I was in my early 20s, my grandmother passed

away and she'd been living with dementia the last few years of her life. And my parents were

fortunate enough to be able to bring in in-home care for her. But we would still go over and, you know, help with medication delivery. And here I was in my late teens, early 20s. And,

...