I became my mum’s carer the way most people do. Not in a single dramatic moment, but slowly, a little more each month, until one day I looked up and realised my entire life had rearranged itself around hers without my ever agreeing to it.

I don’t resent a second of looking after her. I want to say that clearly, because carers are so often made to feel they have to apologise for being tired. She cared for me my whole life. Now it’s my turn, and I’d do it again a thousand times.

But somewhere in the appointments and the medication charts and the broken nights, I disappeared. And the strange truth is that the thing which saved me wasn’t anything grand. It was a one-hour walk on a Saturday morning.

The slow erasing

If you’ve never cared for someone, it’s hard to explain how total it becomes. It isn’t just the practical tasks, though there are endless ones. It’s that you are never fully off duty. Even asleep, half of you is listening. Even out of the house, your phone is a leash, and your mind is back in that bedroom.

My world shrank to the size of our flat. Friends stopped inviting me because I always said no, and eventually they stopped asking, and I told myself that was fair. I forgot what I liked. Someone asked me what I did for fun and I genuinely laughed, because the question belonged to a different person, one I used to be.

The loneliness of caring is a particular kind. You are needed more than almost anyone, and seen less than almost anyone. You can be touched out, talked out, utterly surrounded, and completely alone.

Saturday, nine o’clock

It was a carers’ support worker, actually, who pushed me. She arranged some respite cover for a couple of hours on a Saturday and more or less ordered me to leave the house and do something, anything, that was only for me.

I had no idea what. I hadn’t wanted anything for myself in so long that the muscle had wasted. In the end I found a local walking group that met at nine on Saturday mornings, by the park, all paces, newcomers welcome. It was close, it was free, and two hours of respite was exactly enough.

The first Saturday I almost spent the whole walk on my phone, braced for it to ring. But the group set off along the river, and a woman fell into step beside me and started chatting about nothing in particular, and somewhere around the second bend I noticed I had not thought about medication charts for fifteen whole minutes. I nearly wept with the relief of it.

For one hour, I was not a carer. I was just Bridget, walking, with the cold air on my face and someone laughing beside me. I had forgotten that person existed.

What the walk gives back

I go every Saturday I can now. The group know my situation; one or two of them have cared for someone too, and they never make it a big thing. They just save me a spot and ask how I am, not how she is. You’d be amazed how rare and how precious that question becomes.

It hasn’t made the caring easier, exactly. But it has made me able to keep doing it, because for one hour a week I get topped back up. I come home lighter, and I’m gentler with her for it.

If you’re caring for someone and slowly vanishing, here is what one hour on a Saturday taught me:

  • Looking after yourself is not stealing from them. An empty cup pours nothing. The hour you take comes back as patience.
  • A walking group is the perfect fit for a carer’s life. It’s cheap, it’s local, it asks no long commitment, and you can come and go as your situation allows. Look for walking and hiking groups tagged social or beginner-friendly.
  • Ask about respite. A carers’ service or your local council may be able to help with cover, even just for a couple of hours. That was the door for me.
  • You are still in there. The person you were before all this hasn’t gone. She’s just waiting for one quiet hour to come back.

I gave so much of myself to caring that I forgot I was a self at all. One hour a week, walking, reminded me.

If you care for someone and you can’t remember the last thing you did just for you, start with one hour. Find a walking group near you or browse clubs by your borough. You are allowed this. Truly.