Caring for your Loved Ones during the Holiday Season
We asked a couple of our family peer supporters on the Foundry Virtual services team for ways to support young people while ensuring that you – as a caregiver – can support yourself during this potentially difficult season.
September 4 2025
The holidays can be challenging, let’s face it. As a parent or caregiver supporting a loved one who is struggling, it’s easy to go into “care-taker mode” and forget about ourselves.
We asked a couple of our family peer supporters on the Foundry Virtual services team the ways they recommend supporting youth, while ensuring that you – as a caregiver – can support yourself during this potentially difficult season.
As two parents of youth with mental health challenges, we know how easy it is to forget either to care for ourselves, or feel undeserving of taking time away from supporting a loved one. Many days we were consumed and lost with our kids’ own emotional struggles. Our time and energy was spent finding resources and support to help them.
Looking back, we can see that our physical, mental and emotional energy was being zapped, forcing us to operate in burn-out mode just to survive (which of course is, in and of itself, super unhealthy), and leading to further mental health struggles of our own as caregivers.
We collaborated to share some tips we adopted for our own self care with the hope that this can give others ideas too:
And remember, you don’t have to pretend you are merry and bright. It’s healthy to share our feelings, and it provides an opportunity to model how we navigate disappointment. Remember you are not alone and there are people who care for you and will help you.
Additional resources: There are some workplaces that offer an Employee Family Assistance Program (EFAP) – where an intake counsellor can match you with a trained counsellor specific to your needs. Check with your employer or your partner/spouses’ employer to see if this program is available to you.