For Mitch Augarten and his spouse, Don Levitsky, caregiving has been a journey filled with challenges, lessons and moments when simply knowing someone else understands can make a difference.
Now, the Cherry Hill couple hopes their experiences can help others traveling a similar path.
Augarten and Levitsky will share their story during “Surviving the Caregiving Journey,” a program at the Cherry Hill Public Library on Monday, Oct. 19, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. The event will focus on the realities of caregiving while offering a message of empathy and hope to caregivers, care receivers and their families.
The idea for the program grew partly from Augarten and Levitsky’s participation in Laura Mauldin’s book, In Sickness and In Health: Love Stories From the Front Lines of America’s Caregiving Crisis. They are one of four couples featured in the book, where they appear under pseudonyms.
After a “meet the author” event earlier this year, caregiving expert Dr. Barry Jacobs encouraged the couple to continue sharing their story.
“You need to recognize that you are now standard bearers for caregiving; you need to go out and tell your story,” Augarten recalled Jacobs telling them.
Those words eventually inspired Augarten and Levitsky to develop their own presentation.
The couple has dealt with caregiving for 18 years, an experience Augarten describes as a journey with plenty of ups and downs. Over the years, they have learned how caregiving can affect virtually every part of life.
While creating the presentation, the couple identified six areas of the caregiving experience: recognizing the caregiving relationship, managing day-to-day responsibilities, navigating medical care, handling emotional challenges, maintaining the relationship between caregiver and care receiver and managing relationships with other people.
One of the biggest challenges, Augarten said, has been the emotional and physical toll of caregiving.
“Caregivers too often feel misunderstood and isolated,” he said. “No one understands the challenges that they face on a daily basis.”
That isolation is one reason the couple wants the program to connect people not only with one another, but with organizations that can provide ongoing assistance.
Among those resources is the Well Spouse Association, a national organization supporting people caring for a spouse or partner with a chronic illness or disability. Its Cherry Hill chapter holds virtual meetings on the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 6:30 p.m.
Augarten participated in the group from 2018 to 2021 and credits fellow caregivers, including some who had spent decades in caregiving roles, with helping him better understand his own experiences.
Another resource is Jewish Family & Children’s Service, which offers a caregiver support group as well as mental-health counseling and other programs. Augarten and Levitsky have also participated in couples counseling, which Augarten said has helped them improve their communication and develop coping strategies.
Their own relationship will be part of the library discussion.
Augarten acknowledged that caregivers and care receivers can experience many of the same emotions, including loss of identity, frustration, guilt and uncertainty about the future. At the same time, their individual experiences can be very different.
“When things are going well for Don and I, we try to focus on what struggles we share, and how we’re a team working towards the same goal,” he said.
The presentation won’t be entirely serious. Augarten will perform a brief stand-up comedy routine inspired by caregiving and his life with Levitsky.
Humor, he explained, has long helped him navigate uncomfortable situations, including hospital stays and doctors’ appointments. His routine will touch on comments non-caregivers sometimes make, as well as lighter moments from the couple’s 36 years together.
The event will also feature a resource table where attendees can take home information about organizations and services that may help them.
Augarten hopes people leave with at least one idea they can use in their own lives. He emphasized that caregiving is not a “one-size-fits-all” experience, so something that worked for him and Levitsky may not work for someone else.
More than anything, he wants caregivers who may be struggling privately to know that they are not alone.
“Their struggles are real and that there is help out there which can make things a little easier for them,” Augarten said.
It is a lesson he and Levitsky learned through nearly two decades of experience: Support may be available, but caregivers sometimes have to take the difficult first step of asking for it.
“Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need,” Augarten said.
