When life hits you hard, it’s not about pushing through at all costs; it’s about finding the balance to thrive. Jennifer Takagi shares hard-earned wisdom from her caregiving journey, emphasizing the power of self-care, intuition, and spiritual healing. She inspires us to listen to that quiet inner voice, trust our instincts, and embrace moments of rest and reflection, even in the most challenging times. Her message isn’t just about caregiving—it’s about living with intention and letting go of what doesn’t serve us.
About Our Guest:
Jennifer Takagi, a 12-Minute Success Coach, empowers individuals—especially women—to discover their purpose and potential. Believing in the power of self-trust and intuition, she helps clients gain clarity, confidence, and meaningful success. As a keynote speaker, she inspires audiences to lead with their values and inner wisdom. Jennifer’s blend of intuitive guidance and practical strategies encourages growth, alignment with personal values, and impactful, soul-led leadership.
https://www.jennifertakagi.com/
https://www.facebook.com/takagiconsulting/
https://www.instagram.com/jenniferjaggerstakagi/
About Me:
I have cared for many family members across the life span, experiencing the joys and challenges of child-rearing, the poignance of caring for parents, friends, and elder partners. I realized that I could not handle the stress of family caregiving 24/7/365. It was time for a new approach to caring. My health and happiness were slipping away. This is how Think to Thrive for Caregivers evolved. Let your mind meet your heart so you don’t lose track of your life.
Connect with Me:
https://www.deborahgreenhut.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahgreenhut01/
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Transcript
Hi everyone. Welcome to the share giving secret where we explore strategies to help caregivers so they don't have to work solo. So today, I'm really honored to have with me as my guest a good friend, Jennifer Takagi, who has a lot of wonderful programs to make you more efficient and help you get through your life and your day. I'm going to let her tell you all about those. And first, I want to open up by saying, Hello, Jennifer,
Jennifer Takagi:Hi. Thanks for having me. Deborah. It's great to have you
Deborah Greenhut:here with me too. So can you tell us a bit about yourself and perhaps your connection to caregiving as we get started?
Jennifer Takagi:Yeah, I it's, it's kind of funny. I always say I'm the youngest of four, and so I should have been the one the baby taken care of, but just kind of always ended up being the caregiver. And when I was 34 my mother woke up early in the morning to go to the bathroom and hit the floor, and she had suffered a massive stroke. It was the size of the grapefruit and wiped out the whole right side of her brain. And as stroke, the size of a pin prick, can kill you, and a huge one, you can live with. So you never know every every stroke is like a thumbprint, like there are no two exactly the same. They're commonalities, but they're not identical. And so what I considered a very young age of 34 because I wanted to be the baby for way longer than that, I ended up being one of the primary caregivers of my mom. My dad was there. Thank God. He was amazing with her, and she lived 11 years, which is very long for a stroke like that. The last four my dad was battling cancer, so we had both of them, and they died 12 days apart, and so we buried them on their, what would have been their 57th anniversary, the month after, after they died. But it's really it's a lot to maintain a marriage, a career and a life when you're so integrated with your family and helping. I have sisters. They were helpful too. Everybody thinks they did the most, because that's how this works. But yeah, I got to do a bit of it.
Deborah Greenhut:Yeah, it often seems that way that everyone has that, that tunnel vision about their own contribution. And I think partly because, as you said, it is so big and hard to do. There's so much work, you know, a team of people probably would not be enough. So So I understand that. Now, I bet you could tell us quite a bit about self care for the caregiver, if you actually took the time to do it. So I'm wondering, how did you handle that situation, that part of it?
Jennifer Takagi:or:Deborah Greenhut:Those are such important lessons. I When my parents passed away within two two months of each other, I had a similar situation on my hands, although we didn't have quite hospice at the time, and my mother was was just unexpectedly happened, and I tried to stay and stay and stay. So I wish I had had you as my teacher at the time, but I hope everyone who's listening carries that lesson where you do have to go home and sleep. And there is plenty to do afterwards, unfortunately or otherwise, but there's plenty of work to do after someone dies. It's not over.
Jennifer Takagi:No, well, it's over.
Deborah Greenhut:So those are great takeaways from from talking with you, Jennifer, and I'm wondering, because you're, you are a bit of a healer now, you do take care of people in your business. Is that something that you draw from that early caregiving experience, or does that go even further back,
Jennifer Takagi:e too much. And in January of:Deborah Greenhut:Do you think it replenishes you to have healed someone?
Jennifer Takagi:Oh my gosh, it does. I'll just tell you about this one, biggest one I have numerous but a friend of mine probably got older than me from water aerobics, had broken her hip, and then she couldn't walk and she couldn't lift her leg. And the doctor said she was fine. There was no reason, and she was like, but I can't without a walker or a cane. She couldn't walk because she couldn't lift that leg. So I did a lot of emotional healing on her for I don't know how many sessions we did, a lot, and we just kept getting deeper and deeper and deeper. And then I learned Body Code, which is creating balance in the physical, emotional and spiritual body. And we did literally one session, and identify a specific and I'm not a medical person people. I have a degree in French like this. I'm not a medical person at all. And she had an imbalance in her hip, and I had to google like, where's that muscle? What does it do? And the next day, I called her and I said, I have this deep knowing, that intuition piece that you're going to be able to walk. I don't know when, I don't know how long it's going to take, but I just know you will. And she goes, I was able to lift my foot off the floor one inch today, and I haven't been able to do that in two years, and when we looked back, it was two years to the day that she had had her hip replaced. So did the doctors do anything wrong? Probably not. I'm a big proponent of modern medicine. You're never going to Don't take my prescriptions away from me. Like, no. Like, no. I had surgery, right? I had my knee replaced. I'm going to do all the things, but now she can walk, and we did some more work. She had the other hip replaced. She breathed through that different surgeon, but she breathed through that. But she wanted to heal. She was open to the modalities. And she was like, please, Jennifer, you know, fix me on this I was in an event, and somebody was just crying, and said, Is there a cat in this house? And there was in the basement, and just poof, I cleared her cat allergies. And three months later, she sent me a picture with a kitten right in her face, and she goes, Look what you did, like, I can hold a kitten, so I get a lot out of it. It just it lights me up. It thrills me. We all have our journeys. We all have our paths. Not every outcome is what I want it to be, but death is part of our journey on life. So. So as hard as that is and how tragic the grief is, nobody told me how bad grief was and it is, but yeah, it all, it all, has just come together quite beautifully for me.
Deborah Greenhut:So that intuition, which serves you so well in your current line of work, did you find that you had that when you were caring for your mom as well?
Jennifer Takagi:I had it long before that. I just didn't have a name to it. I would say a prayer, and it would be like, God, I want this. You know, you're a little kid, and it wouldn't happen. I'd be like, Well, okay, that didn't work. And so then it would be, oh God, like my first one was, I wanted to be hit by a bus so I didn't have to go to kindergarten. I don't even know that they had busses in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I lived at the time, but I wanted a bus to hit me so I would miss kindergarten.
Deborah Greenhut:Oh my. I know,
Jennifer Takagi:,:Deborah Greenhut:Yeah, I'm sure there's that was a gripping story, so I don't want to just run right over it, but I'm thinking there's probably a light side and a dark side to intuition as well. You can be maybe too focused on fearing that something's going to happen if you listen too hard, and that's not the right vocabulary for it, but if you're focusing too much on what you think might happen, you might not pay attention to what's right in front of your face.