My guest today is my dear friend Vadim Liberman. He’s the editor at TLNT and ERE.net. He’s also affectionately known as “the Liberace of HR” because of the enthusiasm and glamour that he brings to the world of work. Vadim’s on the show today not to get super-nerdy about sourcing or recruiting, but instead to talk about his mom, who has Alzheimer’s. Vadim is her primary caregiver, which is unique because he’s a dude, and his mom is his mom, and that’s not common.
We speak candidly today about the challenges, the pressures and the stress of being a primary caregiver. So if you are a caregiver or you know someone in your life who is, I think this conversation will be super-relevant to you. Listen in to hear Vadim and I discuss the joys of caring for the person you love and why handling caregiver stress is so important for everyone involved.
Becoming a Caregiver in the Age of COVID
Vadim hasn’t had the chance to go out dancing on a “school night” in quite a long time, and not just because of the pandemic. It’s because of the job as a primary caregiver that he’s taken on while also working full-time.
“My mom has Alzheimer’s. She was officially diagnosed in October 2018. I saw some signs before that. Anyone who’s familiar with Alzheimer’s or dementia knows that this only goes in one direction, it just progressively gets worse and worse, and of course, that progressively gets harder and harder on me as her primary caregiver.”
“I know this is going to sound cliché, but she was this energetic — and she still has energy, too — but she was this energetic, smart, funny, full-of-life woman who was very social, very curious about the world around her, enjoyed dancing, enjoyed people. Really, she really enjoyed people. She’s an immigrant, obviously, like I am, too. I came here when she came here from the Soviet Union and just really lived the American dream for herself, for her family, for me. Of course, then when the Alzheimer’s hit, and as she continued to degrade from it, it was all these elements of her life just being stripped away.”
COVID-19 has touched everyone’s life. I know it certainly has made a huge impact on Vadim.
“I am in her house right now, actually. The thing about COVID is that I haven’t been in my apartment for a really long time. COVID hit, what, March 2020 or so? My mom and I had just taken the vacation then. It was supposed to be this mother-son vacation thing to create memories, mainly for me, obviously. Then we got back, COVID hit, and I did not go back to my home in New York City until a couple of months ago.”
“I mean, it really does impact the things that I do or the things or the risks that I’ll take going out.”
The Importance of Handling Caregiver Stress
One of the things that made me worry about Vadim was that, as he and his mom’s lives have grown smaller and smaller. I knew that anxiety and depression levels had risen while his mother continued to grow more ill. I ask him what he does to unleash tension and manage self-care.
“When I say ‘caregiving’ and ‘managing caregiving,’ what I’m really talking about a lot of the time is managing my own emotions. A lot of caregiving, I would say the majority, is not really assisting the person who needs the caregiving, but it’s really just managing your own life and your own emotions specifically. It’s not even a time management thing. It’s been really hard managing with my mom, for whom patience is the most important virtue that I can possibly exhibit.”
“There are times when I’ve gotten so just upset over the situation, with myself, and I know better than to start crying in front of her because that’s going to upset her. Oftentimes, I’ll go to the bathroom, I’ll go to a room, whatever, I’ll just silently just let it out. But then there are those other times where I do it right in front of her so that she can comfort me. I know it when I’m doing it, I think to myself, “Vadim, don’t do it. This is effed up. Think about her.” But then I’m like, selfishly, “No, I need this.”
Rethinking How Organizations See Caregiving Needs
Organizations and companies have a responsibility to caregivers. Vadim delves into how they can better listen and offer adequate support to employees who are caregivers.
“I think that a lot of times, companies — again, well-meaning — the caregiving benefits, the caregiving rhetoric, it’s all about time management. Ultimately, the goal is really, ‘how can we get you to be a better employee?’ They’re not going to say that, but that’s really a company’s goal. They care more about your productivity than you as a person. I know they go hand-in-hand. … I’m not saying companies don’t care, but it’s more of a side effect.:
What’s needed, Vadim says, is “a mindset shift in society overall” where the responsibility for eldercare can “be put on par with child care and other types of care. I don’t feel like we’re there yet.”
“Survey your employees: Do they have caregiving needs? What are their thoughts on bereavement? Maybe use that to inform policy.”
Vadim stresses the importance for us all to understand caregiver’s needs, “The more others listen to people like me talking about this, the more anyone right now is listening to you and me, Laurie, talk about this, I think that really helps create a climate of recognition that this is a really big, big topic that often is hidden in people’s lives.”
[bctt tweet=”“A lot of caregiving … is not really assisting the person who needs the caregiving, but it’s really just managing your own life and your own emotions specifically.” ~ Vadim Liberman. Learn more about handling caregiver stress on Punk Rock HR!” via=”no”]
Watch This Episode
An Update on Vadim’s Caregiving Journey
In November 2022, I sat down again with Vadim to ask how things are going since we last spoke.
People in This Episode
Full Transcript
Vadim Liberman:
When I say “caregiving” and “managing caregiving,” what I’m really talking about a lot at the time is managing my own emotions. A lot of caregiving, I would say the majority, is not really assisting the person who needs the caregiving, but it’s really just managing your own life and your own emotions, specifically. It’s not even a time management thing. It’s been really hard managing with my mom, for whom patience is the most important virtue that I can possibly exhibit.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Hey, everybody. I’m Laurie Ruettimann. Welcome to Punk Rock HR. My guest today is Vadim Liberman. He’s the “Liberace of HR” and the editor at TLNT and ere.net. Vadim’s on the show today, not to get super-nerdy about sourcing or recruiting, but instead to talk about his mom, who has Alzheimer’s. Vadim is her primary caregiver, which is unique because he’s a dude, and his mom is his mom, and that’s not common, and we speak candidly today about the challenges, the pressures, the stress of being a primary caregiver during COVID or not. So if you are a caregiver, or you know someone who’s a caregiver in your life, well, I think this conversation is super-relevant, so sit back and enjoy my chat with Vadim Liberman.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Hey, Vadim. Welcome to Punk Rock HR.
Vadim Liberman:
Hi, Laurie. Good to be here.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, you’re a returning visitor, and I’m so pleased to have you here. Before we get started, why don’t you tell everybody who you are and what you’re all about?
Vadim Liberman:
Yeah, I mean, well, listen, LinkedIn says I’m the “Liberace of HR,” so that has to mean something, right? I bring glitz, glamor, excitement to the world of work. But the job I actually get paid to do is I’m at ERE Media, where I am editor of ere.net, which is an online publication for talent acquisition professionals, and I also edit TLNT.com, which is an online pub for HR professionals. I also program our events that we have for ERE, community-building, all of that great stuff.
Laurie Ruettimann:
You’re doing a lot for one salary. I love it. You and I have known one another for, what, over a decade? I think like 2009 is when we met. Do you want to tell that story of how we know one another?
Vadim Liberman:
Oh, my gosh. Well, Laurie likes to still say that I was the best boss she ever had, but if you all know Laurie, if you’ve been listening to Laurie’s podcast for a while, you know ain’t no one bossing Laurie around. I was Laurie’s editor. Laurie was writing a column about HR for a magazine called The Conference Board Review. That’s where we met, and that’s actually how I got interested in the world of work, through editing Laurie’s HR column, and then we just became friends since then talking about everything, including the exciting world of HR and beyond, right, Laurie?
Laurie Ruettimann:
I think that’s accurate. Our conversations tend to skew not sufficient for the current state of work or the future state of work, and then we do all of this professional stuff around work trends and talent acquisition and sourcing. But I want to say, back then, I held this firm belief that you couldn’t be friends with people that you worked with, even in a freelance way, and Vadim, you’re one of the people who changed my mind on that. I mean, I’ve known you now for well over a decade. We are true friends. We share too much. I don’t know, what do you think about that? Can you be friends with someone you work with?
Vadim Liberman:
You can be friends with someone you work with. You can’t be friends with someone you work for. I still stand by that. We both know my former boss at the magazine, Matthew Budman, a great boss at that, but I always tell Matthew, “We were never friends while you were my boss.” I don’t believe that you can have a friendship with somebody who’s responsible for your pay, for promotions, for all these aspects of your life. But the good news is that neither Matthew and I work for The Conference Board Review anymore since we were laid off. And we could be Friends with a capital “F” after that, so it all worked out.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, and friends with his wife as well, Christina. I mean, it’s weird how this thing has snowballed into multiple relationships. Tell us a little bit about your friendship with Christina.
Vadim Liberman:
Yeah, Christina is fantastic. She’s an NYU professor, a book author, MSNBC pundit, and an amazing dance partner when we go out dancing till 4 a.m. to ’90s music on a school night on a Thursday night.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, I know you haven’t been dancing on a school night for a very long time, not just because of COVID, but because you have like a 15th job. Tell us about the job that you’re doing while you’re doing your full-time job.
Vadim Liberman:
Yeah, I mean, caregiving, right? Anyone who’s a caregiver knows that that is not a part-time job, it really is just all-consuming in your life: physically, emotionally, mentally. My mom has Alzheimer’s. She was officially diagnosed in October 2018. I saw some signs before that. Anyone who’s familiar with Alzheimer’s or dementia knows that this only goes in one direction, it just progressively gets worse and worse, and of course, that progressively gets harder and harder on me as her primary caregiver.
I am in her house right now, actually. The thing about COVID is that I haven’t been in my apartment for a really long time. COVID hit, what, March 2020 or so? My mom and I had just taken the vacation then. It was supposed to be this mother-son vacation thing to create memories, mainly for me, obviously. Then we got back, COVID hit, and I did not go back to my home in New York City until a couple of months ago.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I want to get to know your mom for a second because there’s your mom before the diagnosis and then there’s your mom today. Tell us what she was like before the diagnosis. What’s her story?
Vadim Liberman:
Yeah, I mean, my mom was, I know this is going to sound cliché, but she was this energetic — and she still has energy, too — but she was this energetic, smart, funny, full-of-life woman who was very social, very curious about the world around her, enjoyed dancing, enjoyed people. Really, she really enjoyed people. She’s an immigrant, obviously, like I am, too. I came here when she came here from the Soviet Union and just really lived the American dream for herself, for her family, for me. Of course, then when the Alzheimer’s hit, and as she continued to degrade from it, it was all these elements of her life just being stripped away.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Your mom was diagnosed and then you shelter in place in her home for well over a year. What’s the current state of your life right now? What’s going on with it?
Vadim Liberman:
I think it’s well-known to say that what people put out on social media or just through various conversations with people isn’t necessarily the real look into their lives. You might think just based on my social posts that all I do is work, and I do work a lot, but that my life revolves around work, ’80s music, Madonna, kooky clothes, whatever.
It’s not that those aren’t interests of mine, but they pale in comparison to what’s really going on, which is just managing, not just caregiving from my mom. But when I say “caregiving” and “managing caregiving,” what I’m really talking about a lot of the time is managing my own emotions. A lot of caregiving, I would say the majority, is not really assisting the person who needs the caregiving, but it’s really just managing your own life and your own emotions specifically. It’s not even a time management thing. It’s been really hard managing with my mom, for whom patience is the most important virtue that I can possibly exhibit.
I mean, it’s just been really tough, obviously, seeing her decline. I know that lots of people have all different kinds of relationships with their parents. My relationship with my mom has always been really good. I can’t really cite any real dysfunction, that I think of as a dysfunction anyway, and so it’s been really hard for me to just see this person that I love decline, just leaving me drip by drip by drip. It’s been tough.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Vadim, it’s really interesting that you talk about caregiving in relationship to your time management and your feelings, because I would have thought caregiving would drain you. Because not only are you caring for your mom physically, as well as emotionally, but you’re caring for her home, her life. I mean, things need to go on, right? You need to pay your set of bills and her set of bills, and you need to make sure you go to the doctor and she goes to the doctor. Plus, there’s COVID. I don’t know if Alzheimer’s qualifies you as immunocompromised, but then there’s that, making sure she just doesn’t get COVID, right, so there’s operationally a lot of confusion there. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you manage that?
Vadim Liberman:
I mean, it really does impact the things that I do or the things or the risks that I’ll take going out. Perfect example, for instance, especially with the rise of the Delta variant, right? it has me spooked out a little bit more. I really thought, I think as a lot of us did maybe about a month or so ago, that we were easing out of this pandemic. I started going out again, I was dancing till 4 a.m. again. I’m like, “This is great,” and now I’m reticent to go out again, not because I worry about myself getting sick, I’m just like, “OK, chances are I will get over it.”
But if I did get COVID, I certainly wouldn’t want to potentially give it to my mom or her partner, who’s diabetic, that’s No.1, and so I would have to quarantine myself, right? To quarantine myself for two weeks away from my mom, No. 1, I’m missing two weeks out of her life, No. 2, would be so disorienting and so saddening and just so confusing for her. It would be disastrous, so I really have to weigh these things. I do go into the city, I do see some friends, but I don’t go to crowded settings, et cetera, so it definitely impacts my life, COVID specifically in that regard.
But the more difficult aspect, or the most difficult aspect, is not even — the COVID is really a side thing, I’m not going to overdramatize it. At the end of the day, it really is just the emotional toll of seeing this woman that you love die. I mean, it makes me even uncomfortable using that word. And I’ll be honest, if you, Laurie, if you said to me, “Well, your mom’s dying,” I’d be like, “Well, screw you,” I would think in my head, but I guess I can say it because it is the truth, and that’s really hard to wrap my head around. I can’t tell you how many nights, I literally, I think I cry at some point on a daily basis, literally a daily basis. That’s something that people don’t see, right?
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, Vadim, one of the things I’ve been worried about with you is that, as your mom’s life has grown smaller and smaller, your life has grown smaller and smaller, and I just wonder, what are you doing to unleash some of this tension? What are you doing to blow off steam? What are you doing to make yourself feel better? Because while she knows she’s getting sick and sicker, you also know it, and your levels of anxiety and depression have absolutely risen, so what are you doing for yourself?
Vadim Liberman:
I want to answer this question in two ways. I started playing piano again, “Liberace of HR,” right? I got to live up to that moniker. There are things I do for myself. I’m not saying that this is where you were coming from with your question by any means, but I will tell you this: One of my pet peeves through all of this was just some of the questions or reactions that people would have in me discussing this. Oftentimes, a common reaction would be like, “Well, Vadim, I get that this horrible thing is going on with your mom, but you need to find a way to have a life for yourself. You need to find a way to even just get some time for yourself and do this and live your life” kind of thing.
I usually smile when somebody says that. I’m just like, “OK, whatever,” because I know it’s actually coming from a good place, but the thing is I hate that comment, I hate that remark. Most people, presumably, would never say to a parent with a dying child, or maybe even a spouse, with a dying spouse, “You know what? You need some time away from your child. You need to go have your life.” Right? Nobody would ever dream of saying that, whether they thought it or not, because the general expectation in society, particularly of women, particularly of mothers, is that your life revolves around your child’s and making your child’s life better, and all of that.
But when it comes to eldercare, those expectations are out the window, at least in a lot of Western cultures, certainly at least in American culture, right? It’s not like this in other cultures, but certainly in ours, in American culture, I do think that there’s this expectation that when your parent is sick, the goal is to, yeah, get your parent the care they deserve, but try to remove yourself as much as possible from that so that you can live your life. Very different than what it is for a child. I find that kind of invalidating for me. It doesn’t validate my experience or my relationship with my mom, because for me, to be able to do, I mean, that is my life. That isn’t part of my life — that is so central to my life that it wouldn’t even occur to me to think in that mindset or context of separating the two.
This translates into work, too, by the way. I think that a lot of times companies — again, well-meaning — the caregiving benefits, the caregiving rhetoric, it’s all about time management. Ultimately, the goal is really, “how can we get you to be a better employee?” They’re not going to say that, but that’s really a company’s goal. They care more about your productivity than you as a person. I know they go hand-in-hand — I’m not saying that, I’m not saying companies don’t care — but it’s more of a side effect. I think that until there’s a mindset shift in society overall to recognize people’s experiences that when they’re responsible for eldercare — a parent, maybe a grandparent, just some loved one, right? — then it needs to really be put on par with child care and other types of care. I don’t feel like we’re there yet.
Laurie Ruettimann:
No, we’re certainly not there, but it raises an interesting point about gender and caregiving. Just in my mind, when I think about caregiving, I always think about women. I often think about women, and here you are as a man taking care of your mother, so the insights you bring to this are invaluable, and yet you don’t really talk about this. Except here, I got to drag you on my podcast, right? But are you going to talk more about this in the future?
Vadim Liberman:
I know, Laurie, you keep telling me to write about this. Part of me is lazy, to write about it.
Laurie Ruettimann:
You’re also busy, my friend.
Vadim Liberman:
I’m busy taking a class in music theory because I want to compose a piece, too.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Maybe a DisruptHR talk, you hear me?
Vadim Liberman:
Maybe a DisruptHR talk. I probably should write about it because right now, the most recent thing on my blog is about me peeing on myself at a DisruptHR conference, vadimliberman.com, everybody.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Vadim, that’s evergreen content right there. That could sit up for a while. But I also worry that if you’re not writing about it and you’re not taking notes, you’re not going to remember some of the stuff that you’re going through in real-time, some of the experiences that you’re having. It’ll all become this one grand mish-moshed experience with your mom, and then it hits the point of grief when she passes, and you may lose some of the nuances. There must be some things you’ve discovered about your mom that have been special moments in this process. Anything like that?
Vadim Liberman:
Yeah. Well, just to backtrack for a second, I actually do take notes on just little epiphanies I have and things like that. Maybe I don’t write about them publicly, and I don’t really write about them in some kind of long prose form, but I do kind of keep a running list in my Google Keep app, just about little epiphanies. But yeah, I mean, I feel like I’ve discovered a bunch of stuff about myself and relating to my mom.
I will say this, and I’m going to try and get through this without getting super-emotional. Probably the most revelatory, maybe, perhaps experience or thought that I had in all of this, it was a while ago. I was in my apartment. I was to the song “Memory” from “Cats” and it made me think of my mom, because memory, right? But I also realized, “Wait a minute, this doesn’t really apply because this is about a cat singing about her gloried past that she misses,” and it just somehow wasn’t connecting, but I almost felt like trying to force it to have meaning, some grand meaning in my life, and it didn’t. But for whatever reason, I was still just drawn to the song.
The next day, I’m on a bus going to my mom’s house from the city. It was nighttime. It was dark. There were not many people, almost no one on the bus, really, which is probably maybe a good thing because I lost it. What happened was, I was listening to the song, watching the video again, and it hit me. I’m like, “Wait a minute. This isn’t about my mom, this song, this isn’t. This cat who’s reminiscing about her past and missing her past, that’s not my mom. Oh, my God, this is about me. I’m that cat. I’m the one that misses that past.” When the climax of the song, right, Grizabella, I think is her name: “Touch me, it’s so easy to leave me all alone with the memory of my days in the sun,” that’s me.
This is hard to talk about. I think about, with my mom and her hugging me and her leaving me all alone. It was just about me. In that moment, I lost it. I was like, “How do I get off this bus? How do I walk to my mom’s house? How do I keep processing this?” I was processing it for days, for weeks later.
I will say something else, because this is kind of related, another little epiphany, which has happened several times. And I’m not really embarrassed to say this. I think one of the things one wants to do when somebody has Alzheimer’s is to keep them calm and not upset them. So there are times when I’ve intentionally upset my mom. Let me explain what I mean by that. There are times when I’ve gotten so, just, upset over the situation, with myself. I know better than to start crying in front of her because that’s going to upset her. Oftentimes, I’ll go to the bathroom, I’ll go to a room, whatever, I’ll just silently just let it out. But then there are those other times where I do it right in front of her so that she can comfort me. I know it when I’m doing it, I think to myself, “Vadim, don’t do it. This is effed up. Think about her.” But then I’m like, selfishly, “No, I need this.”
Then in that moment, I realized the first time right away, I realized it really quickly in my mind, my mind is running just really quickly, I realized what this is about is trying to reestablish the norm of a relationship between the parent and the child. That’s the only way, literally, that is the only time, the only way I know how to reestablish that. And it does, it makes me feel better temporarily. I don’t know that it makes her feel that bad, but that’s one of my coping mechanisms that I use sparingly. But it wasn’t the epiphany that I had that when I react this way in front of my mom, it really is to reestablish that mother-son relationship.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, Vadim, that’s really tender and also a story that highlights some of the nuances and just, I’m going to say it, the craziness of caring for your parent, right? I mean, this is not a natural position that any of us are in, and yet you’re right. I mean, we talk about child care, we have child care classes. We don’t really offer anything except time management tips, to your point, for eldercare. Vadim, we have talked about the challenges of you taking time away. Because people like me in the early stages were like, “Why don’t you get a caregiver?” and you put me in my place. Why don’t you get a caregiver?
Vadim Liberman:
I can go into lots of logistical details on why I’m not getting a caregiver right now, but let me say, one day, I will get a caregiver. There’s no way that I’m going to be able to handle the challenges of caring for her. I am not somebody who wants to wipe my mom’s butt. Someone will do that, right? That’s not me. I know my limitations. Then again, I thought I knew other limitations, I’m doing things with her, for her, that I never thought I’d be doing, either. But right now, it doesn’t make sense. I work remotely. I’m home.
She’s still aware of her condition. What she needs the most is really just companionship that the average caregiver is not going to be able to give her. Particularly, if I or her partner is home at the same time, who do you think she’s going to go to to talk? A caregiver who, let’s face it, is probably not going to speak Russian? My mom does know English, but her language skills are diminishing. She’s going to come to me, someone who she has a connection with, she’s going to go to her partner.
It doesn’t make sense right now. There’d be nothing for the caregiver to do right now. But people are like, “Well, you should just get a caregiver, anyway.” I’m just like, “OK, well, you know caregivers cost a lot of money, too.” By the way, I would spend anything, I would spend all of the money I have on my mom, but I want to spend it wisely, too. Her care is going to cost a lot of money in the coming years, right?
Of course, I will hire a caregiver, but I’m not going to hire one now. Again, I get where the question’s coming from. I think that sometimes what happens is, when people ask the question — I’m not saying that that was you, Laurie — but when others might ask the question, there’s a judgment in there. Just the other day, I actually had somebody say to me about this very issue, when I said I wasn’t getting a caregiver, she actually said, this is a friend of mine, “I disagree with your decision.” I’m thinking in my head, “You what? Nobody was asking for your advice.”
Laurie Ruettimann:
Vadim, that’s not a friend of yours. Come on now, come on now. That’s someone who is thinking about themselves. I just feel like one of the things that I’ve learned about our friendship through this, just in general, it’s good life advice, that the more I shut up and listen, probably the more helpful I’m being, and the minute I swoop in with any “I think” or “You should,” I’m not being helpful. I think just having some proximity to your experience has really taught me that, just to shut up and let you be. I don’t know, what are some things that people are doing that are helpful for you?
Vadim Liberman:
I would say in a very general way, I’ve had friends who just listen. I mean, I think we all know this is really a universal human desire to just want validation and just want to be heard, and even when your friend says that they’re coming to you for advice, it takes a good friend to know, “Are they really coming to me for advice? Maybe they just want to be heard.” Oftentimes, the best comment that somebody can say to me is, “I’m sorry. This really sucks. I’m sorry you’re going through this. I’m here to listen,” right? Or, “I hope you feel better” or, “I hope things improve. I hope your mom, the decline slows,” or whatever, just stuff like that. At the end of the day, it’s the most and least somebody can do often is really just to listen and be there. That’s really the only expectation that I have of people.
I mean, I do have another friend — a lot of friends, actually, suggest that I see a therapist. Not a bad suggestion, but I will say this, too. I had one friend, and she is a close friend, and the second I brought this up to her, she apologized. But every time I would talk about my mom, or almost every time, the reaction would be, “You need to see a therapist.” I heard it the first 20 times, I got it, I’m not an idiot. I know the option exists. I probably will see a therapist at some point because why not? I’m a little narcissistic, too. I love to hear myself talk.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I do want to say, one of the joys that I’ve had about the past year during COVID of just texting with you is that you’ve been singing to me more. I wonder if just being a goofy weirdo like that has been helpful. Are you having fun doing stuff like that, connecting with people?
Vadim Liberman:
Everyone, I will randomly just sing usually ’80s songs, right? It’s really the Liberace of HR singing Bon Jovi, singing some other random ’80s song by Tiffany or Debbie Gibson or whatever. Much to my dismay, half the time, Laurie doesn’t even know which song I’m singing, and I’m questioning our friendship. I don’t understand this. How do you not know? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it’s just the goofy … That’s what I do for self-care, I sing ’80s songs really off-key into people’s voicemails or just as voice text.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I love it. It’s one of the things that’s joyous to me. Well, as we start to wrap up the conversation, I wonder if there’s anything you want to leave our community with, knowing about caregiving, knowing about you, knowing about how to behave to someone who might be a caregiver in their own lives?
Vadim Liberman:
Yeah, I mean, I think that what I would love to see, and this is ironic because you were mentioning, Laurie, about me writing about this or talking about this more, I would love to see more people talking about their caregiving experiences, particularly with elder loved ones. Just through my own experiences, I’ve spoken to a bunch of friends and professional people that I’ve met who are going through very similar struggles who I wouldn’t have known unless I brought that up — and they wouldn’t have known about me. I think that the more people talk about it, the more, again, cliché to say, the more normalized this gets, and the more that employers can take notice, too, and really offer real flexibility to people, real time off.
I just want to throw this in because I didn’t get to say this, I just remembered as I’m talking about this, but Sheryl Sandberg, years ago, Facebook, for example, updated its bereavement policy. Much more humane. I forgot how many weeks it was, but it was weeks, it wasn’t just five days, and it wasn’t like, “OK, well, if it’s a cousin twice removed, then it’s this many minutes you can take off,” kind of thing. But it was a much more humane bereavement policy. It happened as a result right after Sheryl Sandberg’s husband died really tragically, and it was traumatic for her.
On one hand, great that Facebook did that, but does it have to take that kind of traumatic experience, for a company’s senior leader to experience themselves? At Facebook, it clearly did. It probably does at a lot of the companies. What I would love to see is for us to stop relying on this buzzword of “empathy:” “You need to have empathy.” How about just logic? How about just logic? Can we go back to logic in employee needs? Survey your employees: Do they have caregiving needs? What are their thoughts on bereavement? Maybe use that to inform policy rather than wait for something to happen to a leader. It shouldn’t have to take that — never mind that even when tragic things happen, for some leaders, even that isn’t enough to change policy. It was at Facebook, thankfully.
I guess what I’m saying is the more people talk about this, the more others listen to people like me talking about this, the more anyone right now is listening to you and me, Laurie, talk about this, I think that really helps create a climate of recognition that this is a really big, big topic that often is hidden in people’s lives, particularly men, right? Because Laurie, you mentioned it, too, around the issues with gender. Women can talk about their grief much more easily than men for various reasons. It’s more accepted, too. So I think that the more that we talk about it, the more it’s normalized, I think that it makes it easier. It makes it easier for others to feel validated, which is, yeah, really what any of us wants.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, Vadim, I love you so much and I’m sorry you’re going through this. My voicemail is always open. One of these days post-COVID, I’ll get to see you again, but until that time, thanks for being a guest on Punk Rock HR.
Vadim Liberman:
Oh, thank you for having me.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Hey, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that conversation on Punk Rock HR this week. Now, for more information, all the notes, all the highlights, all the resources, you know where to go. You can head on over to laurieruettimann.com/podcast. Now, that’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll see you next time on Punk Rock HR.