SHARE THE CARE:
How to Organize a Group to Care for Someone Who Is Seriously Ill.

by Cappy Capossela and Sheila Warnock

The Story

SHARE THE CARE was born when twelve women, including the authors, got together to try and help their friend Susan, who had been suffering from cancer. After participating in a three hour meeting with Susan and her therapist, Dr. Sukie Miller, they began an extraordinary journey, a journey that would turn a group of strangers into a new kind of family.

Cappy and Sheila came to the meeting with two very different viewpoints.

“I was terrified. I knew Susan had cancer but she told me they ‘got it all’ and I wanted to believe it as much as she did. Susan was strong, successful and my peer. I told myself she couldn’t really be sick. I had never taken care of anyone and I didn’t know how.” Cappy

“I was already a burned out caregiver. Being Susan’s best friend, I had been there from the beginning. And at the same time, I was the sole caregiver of my mother, who was very ill. I was exhausted. My work was suffering and my personal life was non-existent.” Sheila

No one in that meeting knew that the experience they were about to have would change their lives. They started out as strangers to each other and stayed together for 3½ years, taking almost total care of Susan until she died. They cooked and shopped, did paperwork and errands, laughed and cried. They checked her in and out of hospitals, took her to doctors, kept track of her medication. They took her to an alternative care center in The Bahamas and even organized her daughter’s wedding. They became known as “Susan’s Funny Family.”

During those years, they developed a unique system of care giving in which all the patient’s needs are met and no one person feels burdened. A system that turns care giving into an uplifting, affirming experience and proves that no one has to do it alone.

Cappy and Sheila documented this system and the stories of that first journey in their book, SHARE THE CARE. How to Organize a Group to Care for Someone Who Is Seriously Ill. Today, it has become the blueprint for caregiver groups all over the country.