What happens when caregiving begins before childhood is even finished?

In this deeply human and eye-opening conversation, Dr. Eugene Manley Jr. shares what it was like to become a caregiver as a child—and how those early responsibilities shaped his empathy, career, and lifelong commitment to health equity.

A biomedical scientist and founder of the STEM & Cancer Health Equity Foundation, Dr. Manley bridges lived experience and professional expertise as he reveals:

1. How early caregiving forces children into adult roles
2. What happens when even highly educated patients are failed by the healthcare system
3. Why caregivers need real-time advocates, not just paperwork
4. How burnout, income loss, and systemic bias disproportionately affect underserved families
5. Why storytelling, information-sharing, and community are survival tools for caregivers.

Dr. Manley has actively turned lived caregiving into action through health equity work. Caregivers are not invisible—and their stories are not small. This episode is a reminder that advocacy begins with being seen, heard, and supported.

BIO:

Dr. Eugene Manley Jr. is a biomedical scientist, health equity advocate, and founder of the STEM & Cancer Health Equity Foundation. Raised in inner-city Detroit and shaped by early caregiving experiences, he now works to improve health literacy, diversify the STEM workforce, and reduce disparities in cancer care through education, advocacy, and community-centered programs.

Links:

1. STEM & Cancer Health Equity Foundation: info@secchq.org
2. Social Media: STEMCCHQ (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn)
3. LinkedIn: Eugene Manley Jr., PhD

Hashtags:

#TheSharegivingSecret

#CaregivingStories

#HealthEquity

#CaregiverAdvocacy

#PatientRights

#HealthcareJustice

Caregiving quietly asks people to disappear—and then praises them for it.

In this episode of The Sharegiving Secret, host Deborah Greenhut, PhD speaks with Dr. Matthew Campbell, licensed psychologist and co-author of Our Primal Five, about why caregivers are uniquely vulnerable to depletion, isolation, and hopelessness—and what actually helps.

Drawing from clinical work with dementia caregivers, personal family experience, and decades of research, Dr. Campbell introduces the Primal Five: sleep, sunlight, movement, social connection, and consumption. These are not luxuries, he argues, but biological requirements caregivers often abandon without realizing it.

Together, Deborah and Matt explore:

1. Why caregivers struggle to even hear advice meant for themselves
2. How caregiving becomes invisible solo labor over time
3. Why praise and faith language can unintentionally trap caregivers
4. The difference between depression and the far more dangerous state of hopelessness
5. How families can spot early warning signs that a caregiver is in trouble

This is a compassionate, practical, and deeply human conversation about restoring visibility, choice, and kindness—to the caregiver.

Bio Dr. Matthew Campbell is a licensed psychologist, author, and founder of Our Primal 5, a practical self-care framework focused on the five foundations of mental and physical health: sleep, sunlight, movement, social connection, and consumption. With years of clinical experience, Dr. Campbell helps people cut through overwhelm and focus on small, sustainable behaviors that improve mood, energy, and resilience. His work bridges science and real life—offering structure without rigidity and progress without perfection. Dr. Campbell is the co-author of Our Primal 5: The Simple 5-Week Guide to Self-Care, and his mission is simple: help people feel better by doing less—but doing the right things consistently.

Social

Website: https://www.campbellps.com/our-primal-5

Book: https://a.co/d/8w3z5KX

Caregiving is shaped as much by the story we tell ourselves as by the tasks we perform. In this solo episode, Dr. Deborah Greenhut explores how unconscious caregiver narratives—hero, martyr, fixer, invisible one—quietly determine burnout, resentment, and motivation. Listeners are guided to examine the story they are living inside, identify where it no longer serves them, and begin revising it with clarity, self-respect, and choice.

Caregivers rarely choose their role intentionally—but they do live inside a story about what that role means. In this episode, Deborah Greenhut introduces the idea that motivation, exhaustion, and even guilt are often consequences of the narrative a caregiver has inherited or adopted without consent.

Using a coaching lens grounded in the Rational Caregiver framework, this episode helps listeners identify their dominant caregiving story, understand how it shapes behavior, and begin rewriting it in a way that restores agency. This is not about doing more—it’s about seeing differently.

#CaregiverStory

#CaregiverBurnout

#CaregivingSupport

#TheRationalCaregiver

#CaregiverCoaching

#CaregiverIdentity

#CaregiverMotivation

#FamilyCaregiving