Still Here

About this journal

For the one who is always fine.

Caring for someone eats the days whole. You get to the end of a week and cannot say what happened in it, only that you are tired and that somebody needed something the entire time.

This is ninety pages of five minutes. Not a plan, not a system to keep up with. One prompt, three lines, and a question at the end of every month that nobody else is going to ask you.

A gratitude journal that does not tell you to cheer up

Most gratitude journals assume your problem is perspective. If you are looking after a parent with dementia, a partner after a diagnosis or a child who needs more than other children, your problem is not perspective. It is that the day went by and none of it was yours.

So the prompts here are small and specific. What was quiet for ten minutes. Who made this easier. What you did that nobody saw. Thirty prompts rotate over the ninety days, so you are never staring at the same sentence.

What is inside

• 90 daily pages, one to a page, undated
• 30 rotating prompts, so no two weeks feel the same
• Three lines rather than a blank page, because a blank page at eleven at night gets skipped
• Three monthly reviews written for someone running on empty
• Three short pages on keeping this going on the bad weeks
• Four lined pages at the back for whatever needs more room

Who it is for

• Family carers looking after a parent, a partner or an adult child
• Anyone in the middle of dementia care, cancer care or a long recovery
• Nurses, care workers and anyone who does this for a living as well as at home
• The friend of a carer who wants to give something that is not flowers
• Anyone who keeps saying they are fine and has not been asked twice

Five minutes, at the end of the day

The page is small on purpose. Three lines can be done in bed with the light half off, and three lines done for ninety days is worth more than a beautiful page written twice in March.

By the third month the reviews start giving something back. You read what February actually looked like and find that you did more than you remember, which is the part carers almost never get told.

Questions people ask

Is it religious? No. No verses, no prayers and nothing about the universe having a plan.

What if I miss a week? Nothing happens. The pages are undated and the prompts do not run in an order, so you carry on where you left off.

Is it for professional carers too? Yes. Care workers and nurses use the same pages, and the monthly reviews ask the questions a supervision meeting usually skips.

Would it work as a gift? It is one of the few things you can give a carer that does not ask anything of them. Write your name in the front.

The details

• 6 x 9 inches, 120 pages, matte cover
• Undated: start on any day, miss a week without ruining it
• Printed in colour on white paper
• Plain cover, nothing on it that announces what you are going through

Not about being positive. About noticing that you are still here, and that some of it was good.

Also from Mara Linde

The Stress Log, a ninety-day tracker for triggers and tension, and Tell Me About You, a keepsake journal of questions for a parent or grandparent.