Courtesy of Minding Our Elders

Becoming an expert on caregiving wasn’t something Carol Bursack set out to do. She was just going to raise her children.

And yet, one by one, elderly people started needing her. Over the course of 20 years, she was caregiver to seven, eventually enduring the death of each. The last one, her mother, died in 2005.

After caring for seven people with whom she had different relationships and who each had unique experiences, she says, “I can relate to darned near anything anyone says. I have just about seen it all personally. And what I haven’t seen, I just keep learning,” through research and writing. The research she does now is for her readers. “I want them to have resources I didn’t have,” she says.

Though she’s no longer a caregiver, “I feel an ongoing, deep obligation to share my journey with others,” Bursack says. “It’s almost as if that was presented to me as my education. . . . This really is my mission. This is what I’ve been given to do.”

Her passion and drive have seen her through not only the demands of others’ illnesses, but also her own misfortune. The day I called, Bursack, 63, was still reeling from a round of layoffs a few days earlier at the Fargo, North Dakota, newspaper where she had worked as a news researcher. But she was also moving forward. She will continue writing an eldercare column for the newspaper and is optimistic about growing her own writing business, Minding Our Elders, as she now can work at it full time.

There’s plenty of other work to be done as well. She writes for and moderates two Web sites. One is OurAlzheimers.com, one of many health sites within the HealthCentral Network, which links experts in the field with those who are suffering. Bursack was named a community leader (a new position). She continues to post two stories twice a week but now has other duties. She answers questions, comments on posts, and points people in the direction of help. She is proud of the fact that she is the “lead hit generator” (with 8,000 hits last month), “so that’s probably where the community leader position came from,” she said. The other Web site is Agingcare.com, a community site for caregivers to the elderly.

She also manages her own Web site, Minding Our Elders, where you can find her many articles as well as lots of information. Her blog there is updated every other day.

She is interviewed frequently, speaks to groups, and will give the keynote address at the Northern Plains Conference on Aging and Disability in Fargo, North Dakota, on September 22-24.

And if you think her potential audience can’t be that large, count again: According to a 2004 study by AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, more than 44 million people age 18 and over provide care to another adult. That’s a lot of people who likely need a shoulder.