New York Girl Again - The After

For years, caregiving forces you to live entirely in your head—scanning the room, anticipating emergencies, managing schedules, and predicting what could go wrong next. But what happens to the body that carried you through all that survival?  In the Season 2 premiere of our summer series, Movement Is Healing , Thérèse explores how grief, burnout, and long seasons of care live physically in our sho...

In this episode of New York Girl Again – The After, Thérèse reflects on one of the many important skills caregiving teaches us: flexibility. This week’s planned conversation with Theresa Gratton, founder of Flying Fabrics by Theresa, had to be postponed because Theresa’s dad is in the hospital. That change of plans became a meaningful reminder of something every caregiver knows deeply: Life can ch...

Welcome to Season 2 of New York Girl Again – The After.   Exactly one year ago, on Father’s Day, I launched the very first episode of this podcast. I chose Father’s Day intentionally because my father was the final and most difficult chapter of a caregiving journey that spanned twenty-five years.  In this first episode of Season 2, I reflect on why New York Girl Again – The After began, what I hav...

What happens when the relentless rhythm of caregiving suddenly stops?  In our Season One finale , we confront the overwhelming silence of 'The After' and explore the profound realization that grief isn’t just about losing someone we love—it’s also about losing a role, a routine, and a version of ourselves.  We reflect on 52 weeks of shared stories, unpacking the complicated, contradictor...

Caregivers are fighters.  We fight disease.  We fight decline.  We fight impossible odds.  We fight for one more holiday, one more birthday, one more good day.  But what happens when the caregiving journey ends?  What happens when there is nothing left to fight?  In this deeply personal episode, Thérèse explores one of the most misunderstood concepts in healing: surrender .  Drawing inspiration fr...

What happens when someone who has spent years surviving caregiving, grief, obligation, and profound isolation suddenly wakes back up emotionally? In this milestone 50th episode , Thérèse shares a deeply personal chapter about heartbreak, healing, and the vulnerability of entering "the After." When you have been emotionally starving for years, a sudden shock of attention can feel like a s...

How long have you been speaking to yourself in ways that would break the heart of someone who loves you?  In Episode 49 of New York Girl Again – The After , Thérèse explores the brutal inner voice many caregivers are left alone with after caregiving ends — the voice that says:  “You should be over this already.”  “You’re weak.”  “You’re falling apart.”  After years spent saving, carrying, sacrific...

Mother’s Day can feel unbearable after losing your mother — especially if you were also her caregiver.  In this deeply personal episode, Thérèse explores the invisible grief of becoming motherless in “the After” of caregiving : the silence afterward, the identity loss, the guilt caregivers carry, and the emotional disorientation of losing the woman who was once your first emotional home.  This epi...

Is there really good in goodbye?  In this episode of New York Girl Again – The After, Thérèse explores what happens after loss—not just the absence of your person, but the layers of grief that follow.  From identity loss, broken connections, and trust diminished to the quiet disorientation of the “after,” this is an honest look at the parts of grief no one talks about.  This isn’t about finding so...

“By the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.”  Most of us remember The Velveteen Rabbit as a charming nursery tale.  But for a caregiver, it becomes something else entirely.  It becomes a mirror.  Following the sudden passing of her friend and colleague, Dr. Greg Hinson, Thérèse found herself unexpectedly r...

Do caregivers really “love too much”… or does something deeper happen?   In this episode of New York Girl Again – The After , Thérèse reflects on a moment that stayed with her for years—her mother telling her, “You love me too much.”   But what if it was more than just love?  Drawing on both lived experience and the psychology of caregiving, she explores how long-term care reshapes attention, iden...

You can miss them… and still want your life back.  You can feel grief… and relief.  If life after caregiving feels confusing… you’re not alone.  In this episode, Thérèse explores the emotional reality of life after caregiving , grief, and healing—discusses the concept of paradoxical thinking and why conflicting emotions are not a sign that something is wrong.  👉 You’re not broken. You’re holding...

After caregiving ends, many people find themselves asking:  Am I allowed to want a beautiful life?   In this episode of New York Girl Again – The After , Thérèse explores what it means to move forward without guilt —and how the strength, discipline, and empathy built through caregiving can be redirected into something new.  Not away from what was…  but toward a life that finally includes you.  Thi...

Caregiving ends. But no one prepares you for what comes after. Not the silence. Not the space. Not the feeling of standing somewhere between the life you were living… and the one you’re supposed to build next. In this final episode of the Women & Caregiving series, created in honor of International Women’s Month, Thérèse explores what it truly feels like to live in that in-between. The loss of...

Why do so many women put themselves last—especially in caregiving? In this episode of New York Girl Again – The After , Thérèse explores the deeper truth behind this pattern—one that goes far beyond personality or choice. Drawing on psychology, biology, and real-life caregiving experience, she breaks down how women become wired to anticipate, carry, and prioritize everyone else… often at the expen...

March is Women’s History Month , and on New York Girl Again – The After we’re continuing our series exploring the strength, sacrifice, and resilience of women caregivers.  For years, caregiving can shape every part of your life.  Your schedule.  Your priorities.  Your purpose.  But what happens when the caregiving chapter ends?  In this episode of New York Girl Again – The After , Thérèse explores...

On International Women’s Day , we celebrate women’s leadership, achievements, and progress. But there is another group of women whose strength is rarely recognized . Women caregivers. In the United States today, more than 63 million people provide care for a loved one — and about 61% of them are women. Nearly 40 million women are quietly holding families and communities together every single day....

March doesn’t explode into color.  It softens first.  The ground shifts.  The air changes.  Something underground begins to move — long before anyone sees a single bloom.  Life after caregiving feels like that.  Not the storm of winter.  Not the promise of spring.  But the quiet, uncomfortable in-between where the ground is breaking open.  In this episode, Thérèse explores the season that follows...

Caregiving demanded discipline. You didn’t operate on feelings - you operated on commitment.  Medications were on time.  Appointments were kept.  You showed up — every single day.  And then the After came. And somehow… the discipline collapsed. This episode is about reclaiming it. Inside this episode: • Why caregivers are already wired for discipline • The neuroscience behind identity and repetiti...

There is a kind of exhaustion that only caregivers understand. It is a weight that does not simply disappear when the caregiving ends. As the adrenaline fades and the world quiets, the grief often settles into the body itself — into the joints, the muscles, the breath . Suddenly, the body that carried everything for everyone else feels different. Heavier. Tighter. Unfamiliar. This episode is about...

What happens when caregiving ends… and you finally look at yourself again?  In Episode 35 of New York Girl Again – The After , Thérèse invites caregivers into one of the most avoided — and most healing — spaces of the After: the mirror.  This episode isn’t about body positivity, affirmations, or “loving what you see.” It’s about something more important — returning to yourself after years of survi...

Why does self-love feel so uncomfortable? For caregivers, love has been synonymous with sacrifice for so long that focusing on ourselves can feel like "stealing" from a debt we can never fully repay. We call this The Caregiver’s Debt—the biological and emotional deficit we incur when we postpone our own lives to sustain someone else's. In this first episode of our February Self-Love...

What if the reason you feel stuck in the After isn’t a lack of discipline — but a missing spark? In this episode, Thérèse shares a deeply personal chapter from her life after caregiving: a long, quiet season when grief settled into her body, excess weight took up residence, motivation disappeared, and she honestly believed this version of herself might be permanent. This episode isn’t about diets,...

Caregiving doesn’t just exhaust your heart — it leaves a mark on your body. In this deeply honest episode, Thérèse speaks to the physical aftermath so many caregivers carry in silence: the pain, the weight changes, the exhaustion, and the shame that often shows up after caregiving ends. Drawing from her own experience as a long-term caregiver — including years of chronic back pain, significant wei...

After caregiving ends, many caregivers are left with an unexpected question: If I’m no longer in survival mode…why do I feel so unsteady? In this episode of New York Girl Again – The After, Thérèse explores a skill no caregiver was ever taught — how to hold yourself once there’s no one else left to hold. Drawing from her own 25-year caregiving journey, Thérèse explains why emotions feel overwhelmi...