If you only take one thing away from me today, let it be this: make the plan before the crisis makes it for you.
A Call I Won’t Forget
I want to tell you about a call I got not too long ago.
A woman reached out to me because her mom had just taken a fall. That fall meant her mom needed to move into a senior living community, and it needed to happen fast. So her adult children, who live out of state, picked a place.
They never even walked through it in person. They just needed somewhere for mom to go, and they needed it now.
When I sat down with her mom, she was devastated. She didn’t want to leave the home she’d lived in for decades. And on top of that, she didn’t even like the community her kids had chosen for her. It wasn’t her pick. It wasn’t her voice. It was a decision made about her, not with her, in the middle of a crisis nobody saw coming.
She ended up sinking into a depression. What we call RSS, or Relocation Stress Syndrome. She never really settled into that new home, and honestly, I don’t think she ever would have, because the problem was never the building. The problem was that the choice was taken from her.
Why This Almost Never Goes Well
Here’s what I’ve learned doing this work: when a decision is made for a senior instead of with a senior, it almost never goes well. And can you blame them? We all want to make our own choices. Every single one of us. That doesn’t change because we hit a certain age.
There’s a book I go back to again and again in my work, called How to Say It to Seniors by David Solie. One of the biggest things he talks about is that as we get older, holding onto control becomes one of the most important things to our sense of self. Not control in a stubborn way. Control in a “this is still my life” way. When that control gets taken away suddenly, especially by the people who love us most, it can feel like a loss bigger than the move itself.
So here’s what I want you to hear today, whether you’re the adult child or you’re the senior reading this yourself.
Don’t wait for the fall. Don’t wait for the hospital stay. Don’t wait for the diagnosis.
Those three things are the most common reasons families end up calling me in a panic, and every single time, I think the same thing: this could have gone so differently if there had been a plan already in place.
What a Real Plan Actually Looks Like
A real plan isn’t complicated, but it does take some honest conversation. It means sitting down together and talking through things like:
- What can we actually afford, and what does that open up or rule out?
- Where would Mom or Dad actually be happy? Not where’s convenient forus, where would they thrive?
- Is there a family member they’d want to be close to? And just as important, is there someone they’d rather not be near?
Those aren’t easy conversations. But they are so much easier to have on a random Tuesday afternoon than they are to have in a hospital hallway.
Where To Start
If you’re a senior reading this, you have every right to be part of planning your own next chapter. Speak up. Your voice matters here, maybe now more than ever.
And if you’re the adult child, I know you’re doing this because you love your parent and you’re scared for them. I get it. But the most loving thing you can do isn’t to solve it for them. It’s to sit down with them and solve it together, before you’re forced to.
If you don’t have a plan in place yet, I’d love to help you build one. Just email me the word “Plan” and I’ll send you a guide to get started.
Because nobody should have to do this alone.
Christi Finnell, REALTOR®, Certified Senior Housing Professional
832-480-2621 | christifinnell.com
