November is National Family Caregivers Month, which I didn't know was a thing until this week. The word "caregiver" usually brings to mind someone helping a parent with dementia or raising a child with a medical need, and those people have earned every bit of attention this month brings.
On Wednesday I spoke at the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence's (MOCADSV) Living Your Legacy conference, in a session called "Supporting Survivors and the People Who Walk Beside Them." The second half of that title applies to far more people than survivors' families, and the holidays are when it shows.
Every holiday table this year will have someone quietly holding someone else up. They might be married to someone who got a hard diagnosis this spring, or helping a parent through the first year without their spouse, or watching a sibling work through early recovery. Nobody gave them the title, and most of them wouldn't claim it.
I know what those tables can feel like. The first Christmas after I was sexually assaulted came less than a month later, and I was dreading it. Holidays are often a time to feel happy with family. I didn't feel happy, and I didn't want to go. I didn't feel like the same person I was anymore, but I felt like I had to play that part.
The people who loved me were walking into that Christmas, too. For a lot of them, it was the first time they'd been around me since the assault. They were probably nervous, not sure what to say or how to act, and that didn't end when the holidays did. It carried on for months, while they tried to figure out how to show up for someone who wasn't quite the person they knew. That's caregiving, even if I wouldn't have called it that then.
Who are the caregivers nobody calls caregivers?
They're the people standing closest to someone in a hard season, usually a partner, parent, sibling, or close friend. They notice the bad days first, take the phone calls, drive to the appointments, and rearrange their own lives around someone else's. Because it doesn't come with a diagnosis or a job title, almost nobody treats it as caregiving, including them.
Why are the holidays harder for caregivers?
The holidays add a second job on top of the first one. At a family gathering, the person beside someone who's hurting is often running interference the whole time. They decide whether to go at all and plan the early exit. They watch their person's face from across the room, steer conversations away from the topic nobody should bring up over pie, and answer questions so their person doesn't have to.
They also carry the gap between what the holidays are supposed to feel like and what their house actually feels like this year. Everyone else comes for the meal and goes home. They take it home with them.
Why is "How's she doing?" so hard for a caregiver to answer?
It turns them into a spokesperson for someone else's pain. It's usually the first thing people ask, and at a holiday party they hear it again and again. Every time, they have to decide how much to share, protect their person's privacy, and come up with an answer to a question that doesn't have one.
The people asking mean well. They care, and they don't want to intrude on the person who's struggling, so they ask the person next to them. The trouble is that the update becomes the whole conversation, and nobody follows it with a question about the caregiver.
What should you say to a caregiver instead?
Ask about them. "How are you doing with all of it?" is a different question from "How's she doing?" You'll probably get "fine." Ask once more: "No, really. This has been a long year for you, too."
Then make an offer small and specific enough that it doesn't become one more thing they have to manage. "Let me know if you need anything" hands them a task. "Can I take the kids to see the lights Saturday so you two get a night off?" gives them something to say yes to, or to move to Sunday.
And if you want to support the person who's hurting, reach out to them directly. Routing your concern through the caregiver adds one more message they have to pass along.
This works at the office holiday party, too. If someone on your team has spent the year caring for a family member, ask how they're holding up before you ask about the person they're caring for.
When do caregivers need support most during the holidays?
Usually the week after. The gatherings end, family goes home, the decorations come down, and the attention that showed up for the holiday leaves with it. I like to say nobody sends a casserole in year two. Nobody sends one in January, either.
If someone in your life is carrying this, put a reminder in your phone for the second week of January and check in then. An ordinary Tuesday text after the season is over can mean more than another "thinking of you" in the middle of it.
What if you're the caregiver this year?
Give yourself permission to do less. You can skip the gathering or leave early. You don't owe anyone a full report on someone else's healing, so it's fine to decide on one sentence ahead of time and give that same update to everyone who asks.
The harder part is letting someone take care of you. Before the season gets busy, think of one person who would want to know how you're really doing, and tell them the truth when they ask.
And if someone does ask how you're doing, notice if you start turning it into an update about the person you're caring for. Answer for yourself, even if all you say is "It's been a lot."
Jessi Bixler is an entrepreneur, marketing strategist, and the author of The Story We Share (Next Thing Press, 2025), a memoir about the ripple effects of sexual assault through a family and the systems that respond to harm. She speaks to leadership audiences and advocacy organizations on what people carry and how it shapes how we lead.
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