Lessons On Holding It All Together As My Mother's Lifelong Caregiver
by Shelly Grimm
Everyone sees the patient. Who sees the child holding everything together?
Six out of ten adults in America have at least one chronic illness. Behind every one of those statistics is a family scrambling to figure out how to hold it all together—and too often, it's the children who end up carrying the weight.
Author Shelly Grimm was five years old when she first walked into a hospital to say goodbye to her dying mother. She was also five when she realized no adult was coming to save her. What followed was a childhood spent as the parent to her own parent, navigating medical crises, financial disasters, and a world that expected her to be "fine" because she looked like she had it all together.
Shelly Grimm is a lifelong caregiver, author, and founder of The Perpetual Caregiver Collective, a movement dedicated to bringing clarity, compassion, and renewal to caregivers and those living with chronic illness. Inspired by her mother’s battle with Crohn’s Disease and her own journey caring for loved ones, Shelly blends humor, heart, and hard-earned wisdom to remind the world that caregivers deserve as much care as they give.
Shelly Grimm has lived the heart of caregiving her entire life. The daughter of the first woman diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease in the United States in 1956, Shelly grew up learning what it meant to love, advocate, and persevere through illness. After 27 years as a financial consultant and executive, she founded The Perpetual Caregiver Collective — a movement born from both personal experience and professional insight — to bring clarity, compassion, and continuity to those who give care and those who need it. Her debut memoir, Some Asses Need Wiping, and her forthcoming series, Some Just Need…, explore the humor, heartbreak, and humanity of caregiving in all its forms. Through her work, Shelly reminds the world that caregivers deserve as much care as they give.