Meet Elizabeth Miller | Certified Caregiving Consultant & Founder of Happy Healthy Caregiver

We had the good fortune of connecting with Elizabeth Miller and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Elizabeth, is there something you can share with us that those outside of the industry might not be aware of?
According to the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) and AARP, the US holds 53 million family caregivers. This number increased by over 5 million in just five years! So many variables contribute to the continuing rise of this statistic. Simply stated, people are living longer due to continued advances in medicine and technology. As our older population expands, the care needs multiply. This creates a caregiving crisis since the supply of those who can provide direct care cannot meet the demand.

Quality care is also extremely expensive. Medicare does not pay for long-term care and the majority of individuals do not carry long-term care policies. Many families find themselves having too many assets to qualify for Medicaid services and yet struggling to find the money to private pay. I know when my mom lived in an assisted living facility, she was paying the equivalent of a nice used car each month!

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has also been a rise in individuals wanting to remain at home or ‘age in place’. All of this is factoring into the increased demand for family members to fill this care gap. Over sixty percent of family caregivers also work outside the home. The average caregiver provides 24 hours a week of care for a loved one – this is the equivalent of a part-time job. No wonder many family caregivers are stressed and burned out! Some individuals (primarily women) are feeling forced to leave the workforce or reduce their hours in order to help care for a loved one. While this may work for a short-term need it will have lasting impacts on their financial security if considered a longer-term remedy. This disastrous cycle just continues to ripple out into future generations.

And, we could add a whole other sad chapter to this if we talked about the impacts the demand for family caregivers has on our employers.

What should our readers know about your business?
I had no business starting Happy Healthy Caregiver while raising two children, working full-time in a leadership role, and caregiving for my mom. While starting this online business gave me more to do in the craziest season of my life, it also helped to keep me sane. Returning to my writing roots helped me process the emotional roller coaster of caregiving. Connecting with others provided me with new tools and resources to try. I learned so much about myself in this journey and felt compelled to make someone else’s caregiving years just a little bit easier.

I can’t count the number of times I thought about throwing in the towel on my side hustle. At the end of the day, I knew that while dissolving Happy Healthy Caregiver may have provided some instant relief, the voice inside my head to help improve this caregiving crisis was never going to dissipate.

What didn’t (and still doesn’t) feel good to me is charging family caregivers for services. I want someone else to pay for their support and resources! Caregivers already do too much. This is when I started partnering with corporations that want to connect their products and services with family caregivers. I offer sponsored content opportunities on my blog, podcast, and social community. I also appreciate getting paid to speak to organizations and employers who want to help their caregivers. I’d love to see more organizations host Caregiver Appreciation events and more employers starting Caregiver employee resources groups.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
The first thing I would do is check the festival calendar. Atlanta has so many wonderful food, drink, and art festivals! We’d structure everything else around this while optimizing on the ideal weather. I’m a big fan of the area where we live, technically Marietta but a stone’s throw from Kennesaw. We’d lace up the sneaks and grab the dogs for an enjoyable hike at one of the Kennesaw Mountain trails. We’ve got flat trails and hills depending on their activity level. We’d grab lunch or dinner in Marietta Square. Two of our family favorites are Taqueria Tsunami and Silla Del Torro. Afterward, we’d go for a drink on top of the Strand or in the speakeasy down the street called The Third Door. Finally, we’d take them back to our place to enjoy some board games and conversation on the back screened-in porch. If staying for multiple days we’d work in brunch around the Atlanta Beltway and Ponce City Market. Another day we’d head to the Atlanta Battery and maybe catch a Braves game or live music. We could also shop at the Woodstock Outlet Mall and grab some food and drink in downtown Woodstock. We’d need to work in some other hikes to work off all the consumption so we may head to Red Top Mountain, Sweetwater Creek State Park, or the Roswell Mill Waterfall.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I could give so many shoutouts since my dad trained me on the importance of networking and connection when he told my siblings and me that ‘life is a contact sport.’

First, I want to recognize my wellness coach and mentor, Ashley Poptodorova (https://ladieswholovechrist.com/), who gave me the space to share my caregiving experience and the confident push I needed to start blogging. Next, I want to thank the Flipped Lifestyle community (https://flippedlifestyle.com/) for providing me the web tools and community support I needed to grow an online business. I am grateful for Denise Brown with The Caregiving Years Training Academy (https://www.careyearsacademy.com/). She trained me to be a Certified Caregiving Consultant and created a network of pioneers who are out there filling a considerable gap in our healthcare system – a coach and support system for family caregivers. Finally, I want to thank my husband, Jason (https://drinkbiolyte.com/), for believing in my vision. I took a mammoth risk by resigning from my well-paid corporate job this past May to pursue Happy Healthy Caregiver full-time. Did I mention we have two kids in college?! We have a hypothesis year that I’m proving out. The hope is that with enough speaking, coaching, freelance writing, and partnerships, I can continue to grow Happy Healthy Caregiver enough not to have to return to the corporate world.

I also owe a GINORMOUS shoutout to all the individuals in the Happy Healthy Caregiver community who reach out in some small way that affirms that what I’m creating matters. These words, no matter how tiny, have a significant impact on my drive.

Website: https://happyhealthycaregiver.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happyhealthycaregiver/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethbmiller/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HHCaregiver

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happyhealthycaregiver

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAcYkpMK6I3Y0ep-kyvrZaQ

Other: The Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast can be found on all the major podcast platforms including Spotify.