Karen Warner Schueler - Author, The Sudden Caregiver: A Roadmap for Resilient Caregiving

Karen Warner Schueler

Karen Warner Schueler is an executive coach who has helped hundreds of senior managers discover the unique qualities that inform their leadership. As president of her coaching firm, Tangible Group, she designs and delivers premiere leadership experiences for individuals, teams, and multinational corporations. She received her Master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.

She is currently launching a series of learning modules for caregiver resilience. The Sudden Caregiver is her first book.

On the day Karen became a sudden caregiver, she was a wife, a mom, a consultant and business owner, a coach, a runner, a friend, and a consumer of too much Starbucks coffee. She was not a caregiver. Until she was. On that day when her late husband was diagnosed — out of the blue — with stage IV cancer, Karen certainly had no idea that she had instantaneously joined a silent army of informal, unpaid family caregivers around the world who had also been pressed into sudden service.

The Sudden Caregiver: A Roadmap for Resilient Caregiving is a practical and proven guide, a roadmap, and a source of comfort for anyone who is caring for a loved one, and especially for those for whom the role was unexpected. With the acronym C-A-R-E (Crisis, As Normal as Possible, Resolution, and Evolution), Warner Schueler explains each phase of caregiving and helps the reader apply what they need for their unique situation, including her own personal stories and stories from caregivers of all types. The author invites readers to dive right in where they feel they need the most help, as every caregiving situation is unique. 

Karen guides readers through evidence-based strategies, drawn from the principles of positive psychology, that are designed to help raise well-being and resilience for both the caregiver and the person in their care. They provide direction on not only what to do as a caregiver but also how to be as a caregiver. She also discusses how to integrate the lessons of caregiving once your role as caregiver ends. 

In addition to the book and worksheet appendix, readers can download a free Sudden Caregiver’s Playbook, with helpful worksheets and activities to guide the caregiver through each step of the journey.

I’m so excited for you to connect with Karen, check out her work and new book, and follow along as she continues to helps caregivers and the person in their care raise their well-being and resilience.

I'd love it if you'd introduce yourself, what you do, and what you're working on.

I’m a professional problem solver: By day, I’m an executive coach, and for nearly 20 years I’ve been working with executives to help them get out of their own way so that they can do good for the people in their worlds.

I’m also an author. I’ve just published by book,The Sudden Caregiver: A Roadmap to Resilient Caregiving. Six years ago, my late husband was diagnosed out of the blue with stage four cancer and I became, overnight, a sudden caregiver. That launched me in a new direction. In addition to being a coach and consultant, I am on a mission to reach caregivers and help them change their story, from one of stress and depletion, to one of resilience and well-being. Now I’m developing a series of short on-demand classes to help them raise their own resilience, depending on their circumstances.

How did you get started?

When Joel Kurtzman, my late husband, got sick, my path was obvious. I wasn’t thinking about writing a book. Like all caregivers, I was just putting one foot in front of the other. But I had just completed my Masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Positive Psychology. So I was looking for a roadmap, something to help me understand what I was doing. All I found was research that confirms what we already know. The statistics for caregivers who don’t self-care are pretty grim. But that wasn’t my experience. And the longer I was a caregiver, the more I met other caregivers who shared their own positive stories. 

Our experience was not grim. It was filled with positive emotions, stronger relationships, intense engagement and problem solving, things to be proud of, meaning and purpose for the role we were playing and a sense of accomplishment. Those are all elements of research-based models of well-being. Then I found a graph buried in a report on aging and it confirmed for me that caregivers acknowledged that the negative things, like worrying and being overworked, were part of it for sure, but they gave far more significance to the positive things. That was an “a-ha” moment and helped me structure the book I would write: Part 1 — How to Be a Caregiver; Part 2 — What to Do As a Caregiver; Part 3 — How to Integrate the Lessons of Caregiving.

What inspired the work that you're doing?

I always knew that if I could figure out how to do caregiving in a way that was generative, I would one day write about it. 

Because I had always been a good visual communicator, I thought I could create a roadmap for caregivers. When I was halfway through the book, I encountered a concept created by a classmate and friend of mine from Penn, Joe Kasper, which he calls Co-Destiny. He had lost his son to a rare disease when his son was in his teens. Co-Destiny advocates for those of us who are mourning a loved one to carry on their work in some way. My late husband published 20 business books in his life time. He was a big guy in that world. I thought if I could make life easier for the caregivers of the world by writing a book, it would honor his legacy.

What is your biggest passion? Do you feel like you're living your passion and purpose?

I’m aware that I am blessed to have found my passion in my work as a coach. When I decided, literally on 9/11, to leave my corporate career in order to coach people in business as a way to make the world a better place, I have never looked back. Now nearly two decades later, I’m expanding that approach to include caregivers. My ideas for changing the caregiver’s story draw largely upon the work I’ve done across my entire career. I started out years ago as a tech writer and my book shares a bit of “here’s what you can try, and here’s why it will work.” 

I have to say, though, in addition to changing the world, I’m passionate about my family. I have a two step-kids just launching their careers, and a working daughter and son-in-law who have given me two amazing grandsons Oliver, 3 and Lucas, 1. Due to Covid I cannot see enough of them. But boy do they have my heart. My love for them knows no bounds.

What is your joy blueprint? What lights you up, brings you joy, and makes you feel the most alive?

I tell a story in my book about meeting my grandson, Oliver, for the first time in his birthing room. He was born just as I had entered my second year of grieving after the death of my husband. I had moved to a town where I was starting all over. I had given up my coaching practice temporarily to work for a boss who turned out to be a nightmare. Everything felt heavy and hard. And then I got the text from my daughter that she was in labor. I grabbed the next flight, flew across the country, and walked into the birthing room where the kids were happily cocooned with their newborn. My son-in-law handed a tightly swaddled Oliver over to me. I held this hot little bundle against my heart and joy entered — there’s no other word for it. That was the moment when my grief started to be replaced by joy.

If I had a blueprint for joy, it would be what I call “Pathways to Well-being” — and it’s downloadable at my web site. It is comprised of six resilience builders that offer a kind of shield against negativity. As humans, negativity is built in — we’re all about survival, so we’re constantly looking for things that can bring us down. But as caregivers, we also have to hunt for the good in a trying and relentlessly tiring situation. My “Pathways" are built on evidence-based models of well-being that include noticing positive emotions like pride and gratitude, keeping your focus on things that matter, allowing people to help you, finding meaning and seeing caregiving as something bigger than oneself, and letting yourself feel you’ve accomplished something, however small or big. To me, building well-being is a pathway to joy.

As for what lights me up — the reason I find my work as a coach so rewarding is that every interaction with the people I work with brings with it the feeling that I matter. There’s research (Prilletensky, et al) on the concept of “mattering,” which is essentially reciprocity: I add value and I am valued. When I’m “mattering” to a client, it resonates in my head, heart and soul. Not sure how else to describe it. But I know it when it happens. And it happens 99.9% of the time now.

How do you live intentionally? Are there tools/resources/practices that you rely on to help you stay mindful and grounded?

Living mindfully is every human’s challenge because our built-in negativity bias will always narrow our view of the territory just in case we have to fight or flee. There’s research that says we’re three times as likely to look for the bad as for the good. So to live intentionally I try to adopt the strategies that have been proven to be effective. One tool is a concept in Positive Psychology called Broaden and Build, created by a professor named Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, who wrote the books Positivity and Love 2.0. Broaden and Build says that, as long as we aren’t actually in danger, we can intentionally broaden our outlook, see the good in what’s around us, that that will help us to see even more options. 

She wrote a whole book about it, but one essential way I apply this is something I put together for my clients (and myself) called “Take Five.” It’s a practice of spending one minute on each of five questions: 1) Am I grouchy or cheery? Shift my mood. 2) Who or what do I take for granted? Appreciate and be grateful now. 3) How will I get some exercise today? Schedule it in. 4) What three things need doing? Prioritize over anything else. 5) Who needs my help? Reach out right away.

What would your younger self think about what you're doing now?

Such a great question. This week I had a chance to consider this in a way I never had before. My mother passed away recently — peacefully -- of Covid. She was 87 and had lived a long and good life. I was raised in a blue collar family with white collar ambitions. My mom never graduated from high school yet she wanted us all to go to college. I wrote and delivered her eulogy on behalf of my four sisters and told this story. 

My mom made her living humbly, at a local government facility as a typist. One day she called me and told me a local contractor — it turned out to be the mega-billion-dollar company, Raytheon — was looking for a part-time technical editor. She thought I should apply for it. I had graduated from college the year before and was working in our local bookstore. I was hesitant to apply. I remember saying, “Mom, they aren’t looking for a kid. They want to hire a grown up.” She said, “You just graduated from college with a degree in English. Aren’t you a grown-up?” I applied for the job, got it, and a year later, Raytheon transferred me to their Boston facility. That one part-time job changed the trajectory of my whole life and launched a many-faceted career that has been going strong for over four decades now. 

So my younger self would probably quote Marianne Williamson, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.” And then she might thank me for listening to my Mother.

Do you have a go-to mantra or affirmation? 

If I have a mantra, it’s: "The only way out is through.” This has been important to me throughout all the tough times in my life: as a single working mom raising my daughter solo; as a marketing executive caught out of the country on 9/11; as a caregiver battling a terminal disease on behalf of my husband. It was especially important to me in the year after my husband died. I began to think of “through” as the shimmering city on a hill and that I was on a journey toward it. I knew in my heart that there was no short cut to grieving but I really ached for one. I began to imagine that once I reached that city — “Through" — I could rest and make sense of everything. That turned out to be true but you can’t know that when you’re on the journey, only after you arrive. And you won’t arrive if you take a short cut. The journey will only take longer.

What is your biggest dream?

I really don’t want anything more for myself — I have a wonderful and loving husband, a daughter and son-in-law who are doing great, those heart-achingly sweet grandkids, and — no small thing — I’m healthy at the end of a year when many are not. I just wrote and published a book — something I never thought would be possible. I have worked hard in my life AND I’ve been incredibly lucky. It’s time to serve the world.

My biggest dream is to reach every caregiver on the planet and help make just one thing better for them. There are 53 million caregivers in the US alone and 11% of the populations of most developed countries. With Covid, those numbers have to be higher. If I could make just one positive change per caregiver just in the US, that’s 53 million positive changes! I have to believe that would change the world in some way, tilt it toward the good.

To learn more and connect with Karen visit her website www.thesuddencaregiver.com and www.tangiblegroup.com and via email KWS@thesuddencaregiver.com and karen.warner@tangiblegroup.com and you can find her book “The Sudden Caregiver: A Roadmap for Resilient Caregiving” on Amazon here

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