Vol. 24, Issue 4
Aug. 13, 2026

Last month, we talked about AI burnout — the pressure of an invisible workload that never quite makes it onto anyone’s org chart. Well, caregiving is its cousin, and it’s every bit as invisible. A caregiving employee and an AI-burdened employee are running the same quiet math every day: how do I carry this extra weight and still show up for my job?

Here’s what makes that math especially urgent right now. In 2025, more than 63 million Americans were family caregivers — a jump of nearly 50 percent since 2015 — according to AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving. That’s roughly one in four adults. Almost 3 in 10 of them are “sandwich generation” caregivers, raising kids and caring for aging parents in the very same season of life. And seven in ten of them are also holding down a job.

Here’s the part that stopped me. In 2010, there were about seven potential family caregivers for every American 80 and older. By 2030 — just a few years from now — that ratio drops to four.

The Boomer generation is aging faster than the workforce behind it can absorb the caregiving. Which means more of your employees are already carrying this load quietly, whether or not it has ever come up in a benefits conversation.

Which brings us to Kari Berit.

Kari Berit, MS 

The Unexpected Caregiver

I’ve had the pleasure of being in Kari’s audience twice, both times when I booked her here in the Northwest. I’ve always walked away with something useful and a smile on my face.

Her stories are entertaining and impactful in the same breath — she shows you the power of thoughtful caregiving right alongside the cost of poor planning, and she somehow makes it feel like common sense that you just hadn’t gotten around to yet.

Kari learned caregiving on the job, so to speak — first as a court-appointed guardian for an at-risk elderly man, then as a family caregiver for her mother, her grandfather, and her sister.

For more than 30 years since, she’s been in front of industry associations, private businesses, financial companies, and religious organizations, helping people move through the aging and caregiving transitions nobody quite prepares you for. She’s the author of The Unexpected Caregiver, and she’s built her own framework — the S.A.N.E. Method™ (Supported, Appreciated, Not Guilty, and Energized) — to help caregivers stay grounded instead of just getting swept along.

In her book, she writes about the part I see come up repeatedly: self-care. “In order to care deeply for someone else, we must first love ourselves,” she says. “Many of us carry a suitcase of old wounds that reopens the moment we’re called to give care.” For families with solid footing already, she says, caregiving becomes less about mending and more about love — which is really the point of the whole journey.

“I make it safe to talk about the elephant issues,” she told me once. “That’s how families end up with an open, honest dialogue about what’s actually affecting their lives.”

Even at the hardest points in the caregiving journey, Kari teaches both family and professional caregivers to recognize the boundaries they need in order to protect their own health — and her audiences leave with a toolkit they can use the very next day, not just something they nodded along to and may forget by the time it’s needed.

She’s every bit as effective in a virtual room as she is on a stage, which makes her a particularly good fit for ERG programming as well as for organizations with employees spread across time zones. (Kari herself splits her time between the U.S. and Norway these days, and so virtual is often the easiest way to bring her in — and she is as engaging online as having her in the room).

If your ERG or association is looking at caregiving for a fall program — or if you just want a speaker who can turn a hard topic into a room full of nodding heads and a few good laughs — and create some real benefits in the process – Kari is my first call.

Give me a call at 503-699-5031 or barbara@speakwellbeing.com, and let’s talk about whether she’s right for your group.

Cruisin’ on the Columbia

Last weekend my husband and I enjoyed a dinner date on the river, yes, ON the river.  We took a riverboat dinner cruise on the Columbia River to celebrate our 21st wedding anniversary. It was fun to learn about history and geography along both the Oregon and Washington shores, including stories of the Lewis & Cark expedition and Native American lore.

We left from Cascade Locks where the Bridge of the Gods (background in photo) is located. That’s also where we go to buy steelhead or salmon from the Indians who have fishing rights nearby. They set up canopies in the parking lot of the local motel when the fish are in season and offer their daily catches fresh from the river.

While the scenery wasn’t quite comparable to our Alaska cruise last year when we celebrated our 20th, the feeling of being on the water and cruising along on a beautiful evening was sweet and brought back those precious memories. It was also a lot closer to home and a lot more economical!

I hope you’re getting out and enjoying whatever summer activities make your day — for your well being and those your love.

Barbara

For Your Well Being is published with the intention of bringing you insider speaker reports, exclusive stories about special events around the country, meeting planner tips, and fun stuff from the worlds of health and well-being. Be well and be in the know!

The Speak Well Being Group is a specialized speakers bureau, focusing on health and wellness for all types of organizations that want to foster health and well-being for their employees, members, clients, and in their communities.

Our speakers are hand-selected. They are not only experts in their fields; they connect with their audiences while bringing them life-changing information, smiles of recognition, and ultimately a sense of well-being and hope.

Finding the perfect keynote speaker for your special event or conference is my personal passion, not just once, but year after year. It brings me great joy to know that your audience was delighted and moved by the speaker we selected together. I’m committed to making the process easy, pleasant and fun.