How to Deal When the Shit Gets Real Podcast · Rietta Boksha

Lisa Zawrotny: Care and Capacity | Navigating Burnout, Alzheimer’s, and Anticipatory Grief

·39 min·2 clips

“You are amazing and you are doing the impossible.”

1. How to Deal When the Shit Gets Real Podcast features Marietta and Lisa Zawrotny talking about care, capacity, burnout, Alzheimer’s, and anticipatory grief. 2. Marietta introduces Lisa as a productivity coach, wife, mom, cat owner, and former caregiver, and Lisa explains why those roles matter to her work. 3. The episode asks how to handle “the shit gets real” when life includes caregiving, overwhelm, and the pressure to keep functioning. 4. Lisa says her mother moved into the family home after the two had already discussed, “our home will be your home when you’re ready.” 5. She says the caregiving period overlapped with pregnancies and that she became a “sandwich caregiver” caring for an infant, a toddler, and her mother. 6. Lisa describes a slow cognitive decline, repeated doctor visits, and a neurologist who eventually said it was “advanced dementia” and then Alzheimer’s. 7. She explains that hearing “Alzheimer’s” was startling, but the diagnosis gave her a category for research and support. 8. Lisa distinguishes Alzheimer’s from dementia by describing dementia as a broader category with causes such as Lewy bodies and vascular dementia. 9. She says her mother’s sundowning created evening chaos while she was putting children to bed and cleaning up her mother’s room. 10. Lisa frames the experience as survival mode, saying she had to let go of being perfectly productive or organized. 11. She tells caregivers they are “doing the impossible” and says trauma, grief, beauty, and horror can all exist in the same role. 12. She says stopping to care for yourself does not make you “less of a caregiver,” and may make you better at the job. 13. Lisa recommends keeping a daily notebook, digital or paper, to track both the loved one’s condition and the caregiver’s own state. 14. She says the notes help with doctor visits, medication questions, side effects, and behavioral patterns that are easy to forget under stress. 15. A behavioral neurologist and support-group facilitator told her, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be sane?” 16. Lisa says that line became a lasting lesson about picking battles and responding differently as a caregiver. 17. Her tone is direct and practical, with frequent humor, including cat talk, Dunkin’s drive-thru, and jokes about stress eating. 18. The format is a conversational interview with Marietta asking targeted follow-ups and Lisa moving between story, advice, and personal examples. 19. People navigating caregiving, burnout, or a parent’s diagnosis would get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting abstract self-help without caregiving context may skip it.

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