I have a simple message for all you perfectionists out there trying to negotiate senior caregiving management: there is no such thing as a perfect plan. Whatever you want to call it — best practices methodology, a formula for success, the “only” way, a proper technique, research-backed rules-of-thumb, the scientific-based playbook — none applies to the steep, pot-holey, wtaf mountain road you’re white-knuckling right now to navigate. So slam on your damn brakes and flick those debilitating “doing it right” expectations out the window! Instead, settle into these four truths:

• You’re doing the best you can,
• With the information and resources you have in that moment.
• There is no book, study or expert that has all the answers,
• And whatever you’ve decided to do, whatever action you’ve decided to take, that is the best and “right” course, because…(repeat bullet point sequence.)

I wish I had someone whispering these mantras in my ear during the caregiving misadventures I reluctantly experienced several years ago. There were so many impossibilities and misfires and insurmountable issues in my elderly friends’ final chapter. It was suffocating, the choices — none were great, nothing was sustainable and everything required a pivot, typically within 24 hours. It was very stressful trying to live up to the expectation there was a “right way,” and I was not measuring up — like at all. Even when I hired a geriatric care manager and an experienced caregiving firm and leaned on their estate planning/elder attorney for the “right” answers, I felt inadequate and totally off-base.

I think there’s an illusion that if we read enough, study better and talk to the right people we can master Geri-drama 401 and get a gold star or an A+ or that “atta girl” we so desperately hope to achieve during such challenging times. This is such a lie! While there are many, many experts in the fields of medicine and gerontology and caregiving who indeed have best practices to share and helpful knowledge to impart, they don’t own your particular situation. Only you do. Reading up on all this stuff — the material, the research, the books and articles — is time well spent and will help inform your decisions, don’t get me wrong (this is how I spend every day now!). But trying to squish your uniquely complicated circumstance into a theory or formula is self-destructive — and anxiety-inspiring. Perfect-schmerfect!