From Fixer to Faithful Companion: Stories of Hope with Jackie Freeman

What happens when a self-described "overachiever" and "fixer" faces the uncontrollable challenges of caring for multiple loved ones with serious illnesses? Jackie Freeman's powerful story reveals the beautiful transformation that can occur when we release our grip on control and embrace faithful presence instead.

Jackie grew up believing she could handle anything life threw her way. As she puts it, she was raised during the height of the feminist movement with the message that she could "bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan" – essentially managing everything through sheer determination and competence. This mindset met its match when her husband was diagnosed with brain cancer (surviving seven years beyond his six-month prognosis) while she simultaneously supported her father through Alzheimer's disease.

Through raw honesty and surprising humor, Jackie shares the profound shift from believing "everything was mine to do" to recognizing her limitations and finding strength in surrender. One of her most beautiful insights comes from what caregivers at her father's memory care facility called "Perry's Time" – the practice of giving her father space to process information at his own pace rather than rushing him. This approach transformed not just her father's care but Jackie's entire philosophy of caregiving.

The conversation explores practical wisdom for the overwhelmed caregiver: creating a medical notebook, finding small moments for spiritual renewal, accepting help from others, and discovering unexpected blessings even in loss. Jackie's perspective on hospice care is particularly enlightening, framing it not as "giving up" but as embracing support that allows both patient and family to live fully in whatever time remains.

Most movingly, Jackie reveals how caregiving ironically healed her marriage by reversing their love languages – her husband, whose love language had been acts of service, was now receiving service, while Jackie, who valued quality time, was now giving service. This role reversal created deeper understanding between them and opened space for meaningful connection even amid tremendous challenges.

Whether you're currently caregiving or supporting someone who is, this conversation offers hope that even in our most difficult seasons, we can find purpose, connection, and unexpected grace. Connect with Jackie's resources and books at JackieFreemanAuthor.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Jackie Freeman
• 6:10 Growing Up as "The Fixer"
• 8:48 Simultaneous Caregiving Journeys
• 14:50 Learning to Accept Help
• 17:55 "Perry's Time" - Honoring Each Person's Pace
• 22:10 From Sprint to Marathon: Pacing Yourself
• 27:10 Treasuring Moments and Finding God's Presence

Transcript

Rayna Neises: ​[00:00:00] Hi, this is Rayna Neises with A Season of Caring Podcast, where we share stories of hope for family caregivers pushing past the busyness and loneliness of caregiving to see God even in this season.

Today I'm happy to introduce to you Jackie Freeman. Jackie is a writer, speaker, and caregiver advocate who understands this. Sacred weight of walking alongside a loved one in their final season. She cared for her beloved husband Roy, through his courageous journey with brain cancer, while also supporting her father through the challenges of Alzheimer's disease.

Jackie knows the overwhelming demands and deep heartache of caregiving, but also the surprising beauty found in everyday moments of grace. Her story from Fixer to Faithful, A Story a Love, Loss, and Letting Go invites others to release the pressure, to do it all, and instead, lean into God's faithful [00:01:00] presence. With honesty, humor, and hope Jackie speaks of feeling unseen and worn thin, reminding them they are not alone today. She encourages others to live content, love well, and care without regrets, because even in loss, there is a lasting purpose.

Jackie Freeman: Rayna the invitation.

Rayna Neises: Have you here today. 

Jackie Freeman: Thank you, for 

Rayna Neises: Let's just start off by having you introduce us a little bit to your caregiving seasons and what they look like for you. 

Jackie Freeman: Well, Rayna, let's go back. To when I was a little girl, I grew up being the fixer. I was the go-to to get something done, , and do it right. If you had a Christmas tea, I could color coordinate everything and have it done without a sweat on my brow. And I had two parents who adored me.

I was their only child. And so the pressure to be perfect. Was there. They loved me, but that was how I was raised. You see Rayna, I [00:02:00] grew up at the height of the feminist movement. I could break out in song and your audience would know, I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan.

Never, never let you forget. Are you my man? 'cause I'm a woman. Well, that was how I grew up. Believing everything was mine to fix and I could do anything. As a little girl, I would say to my mother, when I'm the mama and you are the little girl, it's gonna be this way. I mean, I was in charge.

My parents as they aged, I was caring for them. My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and so keeping track of helping my mother, assisting my mother in medical appointments, making sure their diets were really good.

Of course, I always did have a little dark chocolate for my mother. But anyway, that said, I loved being with my father. I was the apple of his eye and he was mine. My father in [00:03:00] heaven in the disease he made it easy to care for him. And I know that that is not always the setting for many caregivers, but I was blessed with that . My dad would love, music. My mother was a wonderful pianist, and whenever she tickled those ivory, my daddy would straighten up, his eyes would twinkle, and he would start patting his thigh right to the beat of the song.

So keeping that as much a part of his life is what we tried to do. But in the middle of that is if that wasn't enough. My husband was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2004 Glioblastoma, uh, he was given six months to live, but he lived seven and a half years. So I was simultaneously caring for my husband his treatments and his medical records, making sure he ate well as much as anyone else, and my father and my mother. I remember saying to my mother at [00:04:00] various times, Mom, I don't want this disease to take both of you, because it was consuming to her. She was a wonderful caregiver. She was one of those women that you could know she was standing behind the scenes.

Supporting you in whatever way possible. And I needed to mimic that for her. And so, That was where my caregiving role began.

Rayna Neises: Sadly, life doesn't just throw us one thing at a time, does it? It always seems like there's so much, especially with a journey like Alzheimer's because it does last for so long and there is no normal, it has a tendency to change so frequently. So that would definitely be difficult to be caring for both of them at the same time and just kind of feeling pulled in both directions. I'm sure there were many days where you just thought, Ugh, how do I be there for both? 

Jackie Freeman: It really is a moment in time when you say, I don't know how I can do this. [00:05:00] And if you know the Lord, our words need to say Lord. I wonder how you are going to handle this. You see that that overachieving, stubborn, overachiever that I was, I thought everything was mine to do, and realized, that everything isn't mine to do. I wasn't really playing God, but in some ways, I mean, I knew God existed. He created the heavens and the earth in all of us. I was certain he needed me to take care of my little corner of the world.

But oh my Rayna, we are not to carry it all ourselves. I was struck by the passage in Exodus 18, where Moses' father-in-law, he says, Jethro says you're gonna burn yourself out. Moses doing all of this yourself. And if someone like Moses, a man of God, one of the patriarchs of the Old Testament is on the verge of burnout, we need to take a page from his story to say, how can I make that part of who I am? So finding ways [00:06:00] to, accept help realizing that, asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It is knowing there are resources, I learned early trying to do everything myself was often a case scenario where I was denying someone an opportunity of a blessing of helping. When someone said to me, Jackie, you make it look so easy, why don't you let me help you? I wanna be blessed. Well, that just cut me right to the core. I certainly don't wanna someone from receiving a blessing. It became part of, who I was. My mother. One of the greatest gifts that she did give me was move my father closer to my farm.

I could help more when he wasn't as far an hour and a half away from me. So truly a blessing . That was a hard sell for my mother. She believed we should do everything in the house and that was her role. But their house, layout wasn't conducive for someone as his level of care exceeded and his abilities decreased. So we [00:07:00] found a wonderful facility, that handled memory care near me and my mother. It was just a blessing because I said, mom, they will be his custodial caregivers, you can remain his wife and I can remain his daughter. And I mean, my father's last, 18 months of life he was happy. And he was well cared And my mother's role and my role, it was one that we just walked alongside. One of the hard things was, as I've, I know many people, we wanna correct them. If they say the grass is blue and it isn't, we want to convince them there that it's green. My husband and I had gone to some training when my father was diagnosed. This was before my husband's brain cancer. And one of the comments they made, not to encourage us not to correct the person we're caring for. They called it love lies. That we simply say, you it's raining and it's not raining.

Well, I [00:08:00] love it when it rains. Don't you, daddy? I wasn't telling him. It's not raining Dad in his eyes. It was raining in his mind. I entered his space. I think too often we try to get them back into our space, and that is, that is something I wanted to try to do as long as I could, because there were moments where he was lucid and he was, in my world, in my space. But more often than not, I knew I had to enter his space. And that was as this overachieving type a kind of person to learn, to breathe, to learn, to just sit and be present because that's all that we have is this momentIt's the present, and that's why it's a gift. That's why it's called the present. It is the gift if we truly know how to accept it and caring for my father that way, really set the tone. So when my husband's care, became more intense and really, he again, was very easy to take [00:09:00] care of following his surgery.

The doctor said he'll either come out swearing like a sailor or you'll get the best of him because it was the right side of the language.

Rayna Neises: Mm-hmm. 

Jackie Freeman: And, so He was hospitalized for five weeks. I never came home. And the farm, we had neighbors taking care of livestock and the farm. So you'd all of those. Managing all of those moving parts was something I did, but I stayed up did, but I stayed up there, near him rather than come home. We call it McCauley in here where I'm at, like a Ronald McDonald house and so my Dad. Um, Mom would come visit me every day. They always took me to lunch. That was my tether to reality outside of caregiving. As you can tell, I have a lot to say about this.

Rayna Neises: It's one of those things that, there is so much to share whenever you have been able to learn so much from your season, and it sounds like it was very impactful in dealing with that control piece that you had held [00:10:00] onto and tried to, control all those environments all that time. And when we get to this point in life where caregiving overwhelms us with things that we can't control. It makes it so obvious how little control we actually have. But like you said in the moment and in how we love and how we support those that we're caring for is really the only things that we can control. And. It's not easy, and I think it's a lesson. God's always trying to teach me, but I definitely am like you i'm just used to being able to just get it done right. And so the season, especially of joining them where they are, change that for me as well, of just being able to learn, to be thankful for the moment and to stay in the moment and not try to make it what I wanted it to be, but rather really helped to create that environment where it was the best thing for my dad.

Jackie Freeman: for my husband, an aspect of this, caregiving for him. I'm sure your audience is familiar with the book, the Five [00:11:00] Love Languages by Gary Chapman. My husband and I had done that study. Before his brain surgery but we discovered we have different love languages. And so once we made those identifications, we tried to speak each other's talk.

It wasn't always easy. I loved quality time and his was service. He felt bringing home the bread and providing for his family. Those were service acts that he did. Mine was just spend some quality time with me him as the worker, the farmer, he was always busy.

So we struggled for many years of trying to make that communication sink. And as I was in that caregiver role for him as the years progressed, he went through four and a half years of aggressive treatment for brain cancer. At the times I recalled this book, this study by Gary Chapman, it struck me that my husband and I were beginning to speak each other's language. 

Rayna Neises: Hmm. [00:12:00] 

Jackie Freeman: I was on the serving it, I could do service for him, care for him. He lost the left peripheral vision of both eyes. So he couldn't drive, he couldn't work. So he lost all of that abilities working on the farm, without someone there right by him. And he in turn spoke the language of quality time. When I think back on that, we had conversations about it and it was like we both could say, we now know what each other felt. 

Rayna Neises: Mm. 

Jackie Freeman: Now we communicate better. 

Rayna Neises: Mm-hmm.

Jackie Freeman: We bought this 60 acre farm an hour or so out of Detroit. And we wanted to raise our sons here. We did. We have three sons. They're married, but we were so busy working, farming, raising all the things you did we didn't appreciate it, but boy we found a lot of quality time to just sit out on a hillside and have a picnic.

We found a lot of quality time, even for [00:13:00] my father walking around the facility going for rides. I would say, dad, this looks just like North Carolina where he grew up as a child. taking him to those hills. And I think those are moments that it helps us as the caregiver realize I can't change what is happening, and the only one I really have control over is me.

I mean, in my case. It's something that I could say, be present just right now. And one thing at, the facility when he passed, people had donated some funds. So my mother and I decided we wanted to give a great big grandfather clock in their meeting room. The women thought it was a wonderful idea, and the plaque that they inscribed on that clock for my father, was W Perry Price and his date of birth and his death date. And it said, Perry's Time because my father, in his care, he could understand what might be asked of him, but it [00:14:00] took time for him to do it. So if we were to say. It's time for dinner and we're ready to get 'em up and get going. That would be when you'd have the struggle. 

Rayna Neises: Yep. 

Jackie Freeman: The ladies learned and we learned quickly give him half a minute, a minute, and before you knew it, he was getting up out of the chair himself. So it was the processing of the information that he was hearing. He could not replicate what was needed. They would just say, Perry, we're going to have dinner now. And they would walk away. Well, he would get up and follow them to the dinner table. And so they said they discovered Perry's Time was the phrase they used because they said everyone living there needs Perry's Time.

They were taking residents and putting them in our time. We need to be done. And so I often think of that, Perry's Time when they said Everybody deserves Perry's Time. And that's a tribute to my dad and, the quality care that they [00:15:00] provided. And so I used that even with my husband's care. He had to learn everything all over again. It was amazing. He was a brilliant man and still was after, time you would think if we had conversations, you and I, Rayna, you would wonder which of us had the brain surgery because he was that brilliant of a man and everyone admired him for that and wondered how he would take living with these deficits that he had after this surgery. I wanted to make sure I mentioned that because that's something that any caregivers's time and place. Take a breath, take a beat, and then say, well, let's go now. And then it's almost like an invitation rather than a get your arm under their arm and say, oh, we go, you 

Rayna Neises: Yeah, 

Jackie Freeman: No one likes 

Rayna Neises: when we have an agenda that we're pushing, then they are going to push their agenda back and then their agenda's not gonna match ours because we're pushy. And so I used to tell my sister that my dad lost his hurry button. And so [00:16:00] I just had to remember there was no hurry left, and so we just had to take the time that it took. To get things done because as soon as you tried to be in a hurry, that was when it didn't happen.

So what would you say was most surprising to you about caregiving? 

Jackie Freeman: I think, I have to go back to the Type A person I thought I could do it all. When I had the two men I loved the most in desperate need of care, I soon realized, I couldn't do that. And that's when certainly that, I alluded to passage and Exodus there. You need to seek help. I realized. Caregiving isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. And if in a marathon you pace yourself, you don't realize it's gonna happen in a split second. You realize the haul of this. That was something when I could grasp my head around that was helpful to me to not try to think I had to do everything.

Like in a marathon race, you have people cheering you on. We would have friends that he [00:17:00] worked with that, would take him to, car shows, and they were very attentive knowing that he couldn't see on the left side of both eyes. So they knew he walked always on his left side so he wouldn't bump someone or hurt himself. In a local community that he was in a machinist club with once he was able to be mobile, I certainly made it a point to drive there. These men, they would have dinner, I would go to the local mall and read or walk or shop, but they attended to conversations with him, opening up those windows for opportunities for others to help. Being wise to use that time to feed myself emotionally, physically, spiritually was so important. And, hospice was very good at that. In the last 16 months of my husband's life. When we knew he could not endure any more treatments, his neuro oncologist had initially [00:18:00] said to us. I want you to write your philosophy of life. I typed it up for him and it was a little short paragraph to the effect that I have lived a wonderful life and I wanna use every tool in the toolkit to attack this demon. But, I know there'll be a time when we have to talk about the quality of my life, not the quantity of my life. And then he said to me, Jackie, we're not dying with this. We are living with this and live we did. My husband, said, I understand hospice will help my wife and my family care for me better and help them journey these last days with me better. I wanna sign up for that. 

Rayna Neises: Hmm.

Jackie Freeman: That's a gift, Rayna, that I know not many people have. And so I wanna encourage people to look at not hospice [00:19:00] as a death, warrant. Uh, I have many experiences in family members where they go on hospice for care and then they go off of hospice. Every six months there is an evaluation done. And so my husband was on hospice for 16 months in our home. And They sent care, a health aide five days a week. I had caregivers that came on Sunday mornings so that my mother and I could go to church and have brunch together. We had people that came in so I could attend a Bible study from hospice. They knew that I could be stronger when I was personally fed.

By my spirit and with food and companionship, with people on the outside. And in fact it was, like when you come back in again and you see 'em brand new, it's like all new. I would encourage anyone, even if it's full-time in your home, to just step outside and take a deep breath. My [00:20:00] granddaughters love this saying, inhale, blue skies, exhale gray. And even if you just can do that and say thank you, Lord. I take in the good and I release the bad. I know those sounds simple, but sometimes that's all we have time to do. 

Rayna Neises: The better we are at accepting help, the more of those windows of time that we have, but sometimes it is difficult to realize who could be helpful. I think sometimes we're looking for specific people, or we think somebody needs to be trained. You were able to benefit from his friendships that had already been in place for years and to continue those friendships and allow them to continue. Even though things looked different, how they spent their time together wasn't the same. But that friendship was still the same. And I think we have to really step back and look at how can we do that? How can we continue to support our loved ones relationships outside of our own? I think so many times as caregivers, you have a tendency to step in, take over everything and not let them have their own identity outside of what we're [00:21:00] trying to do. So I love those examples 'cause they're really, really powerful in helping them to maintain their independence and their dignity as well as. Taking care of ourselves and using it that time for our self-care.

Can you share one time when it really stands out to you where God just showed up for you in your caregiving? 

Jackie Freeman: Well with both of the men, as I said, i, I loved, my father, I remember going for a walk one day, around the neighborhood, and the cat was drinking out of a bird bath. My father broke out into hysterics at that, which when you think about a cat eating out of the bird's bath, like, okay, I'm gonna lick this up until one of these birds lands, and bingo, there you go.

Every time I see a bird bath or I just. Bring back that funny little memory and it seems, very small, but, , it was powerful to me. I think I said to you, my husband and I, we learned to treasure every moment, especially here on the farm. We have a son who was born in, August during the Ade [00:22:00] meteor shower.

And when he was a child, a baby, we would wake him up in the middle of the night, bundle him up his little face out under the cloth and look at the night sky, all the stars, shooting stars, and we would say, this is the Sky's birthday celebration for you, Jace. And so my husband and I, I said, we have to continue that. We have to honor that and we would do simple things like that where there were years of working and busyness that we didn't even reflect on the joys that we had in our lives. We are so busy trying to accomplish something else. So those are some of the things when I see, the meteor showers. That's a moment back to where I was with him. And I think journaling certainly has been a part of the caregiving role. If I were to say something that, has helped me or surprised me, I have gone back to see journal entries where I have felt at the bottom of a pit [00:23:00] and I can now look back and say, by the grace of God, his faithfulness, he pulled you to where you are today. And so writing, that's perhaps that's where this author journey, came from, following my mother's death.

My mother, she had a heart condition, she died suddenly. And I had a chance to go on a pilgrimage to Israel following my mother's passing, and, it was wonderful, visit sites I had read about in the Bible, but we had traveled to the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, and up in the cliffs there were caves where the demon possessed man may have lived. And when he saw Jesus coming across the water, he ran down. And the demons, I'm sure your listeners know this story, but, Christ cast the demons outta the man into the swine And the legions of swine were cast into the sea. And the community didn't [00:24:00] like that because this was a pagan community. That was their livestock, their livelihood. They wanted Jesus to get out of town. And when they got there and saw that man demon possessed, could not be contained. He was fully clothed of sound mind, and when Jesus got ready to leave, he wanted to go too. I said those words. I wanted to go. I couldn't imagine living, breathing without my husband or my mother or my father, but Christ's words to him were what?

Were spoken to me that day. You're to go home and tell others what I've done for you. And that Rayna is what my author writing Speaking Journey is all about. Telling others how faithful God has been, even when I haven't been faithful to him. How powerful his love is to override and the calm and comfort he provides when we allow him to do that in [00:25:00] our lives.

And so I would encourage your readers, you know, the things that I alluded to that I do for my, my dad and my husband. Yeah, create your own medical, notebook you're keeping track of what you're doing. Those annual appointments go to them, follow up on them. Sometimes we're just depleted, but, we have to take care of ourselves.

And as a caregiver, you can't pour from an empty cup. And so while they're still living, you need to do that. But even after that, because this caregiving it has an end, end date at some point. It might not be nice to think about that, but, I want to be able to think that I've tried my best. Moments of prayer it isn't just when you have your Bible open or when you're on your knees or in a church, pew. breath, prayers prayers that, I can recall helping my husband in the shower and his beautiful curly head of hair drying it for him. And [00:26:00] remember thinking, Lord, let him see the love of God and not the fatigue in my eyes when he sees me again. God honored the prayers. I know that. And, I would encourage your listeners to, create those lists of things that you know, that can help you become closer to the Lord.

So I would encourage your, your listeners to do that exercise and of course there Rayna, there's my pickleball. 

Rayna Neises: Yeah. 

Jackie Freeman: I learned pickleball after the death of my husband and my mother, and I thought, I fell in love

Rayna Neises: I love it as well and I think it's an amazing sport, so people need to pick up their paddles and give it a shot because I always tell people, you don't have to be athletic, but you can find people to help you improve. It is just so much fun.

So, Jackie, go ahead and share with us, how they can get your books and how they can stay in touch with you. 

Jackie Freeman: Well, I thank you Rayna, for the opportunity to address your audience, [00:27:00] but they can reach me at www.jackiefreemanauthor.com. I'm on all of the socials. That same way and I would love to hear from them. On my website there is a sample Jackie Freeman author, A sample, a devotion of the latest book. I've written nine books, various devotional books, children's books, but also there are some resources.

Rayna Neises: Well, I encourage you to reach out to Jackie and find all of her great resources at www.jackiefreemanauthor.com. Thank you listeners for joining us today for A Season of Caring Podcast with Stories of Hope with Jackie where there is to live content, love, well, and care without regrets. If you have financial, legal, or medical questions, please be sure to contact your local professionals and take heart in your season of caring.