I keep my phone fully charged, I like to know that I can use it in an emergency and it keeps my anxiety over it running low at bay (if you know, you know). This is in stark contrast to my personal batteries- all of which are running dangerously low. I’m exhausted physically and mentally, I feel older than I am, too drained to experience much joy, and haven’t had fun in ages. I can’t remember the last time I felt happy or content, it would have been more than four years ago, before I became a carer. I don’t know what it would take for me to feel OK again but I know it can’t happen while I’m a carer.

Most carers feel the same, I dare say. Our lives, hopes, finances, and dreams have been drained out of us by the lack of help and support from successive governments. We’re all running on empty, powered by fear and stress, doing what needs to be done day after day, with no respite, never having a chance to recharge or take a breath.

For the non-carers reading this, imagine if you can, a life where you can never do what you want, so overwhelmed with constant caring for someone else that it completely drains you. Now imagine you’re utterly exhausted after doing this non-stop for a week, can you take the weekend off to recharge? What do you think? Of course not. There is no rest, so you have to keep going. Week after week after week. There is no help, there is no fun, there is no life. You are drained emotionally and financially, and your life dwindles to an existence. C’est pas possible! As my French mum would say.

I assure you that it is possible. This is what unpaid carers experience everyday, they have discovered that there is a point beyond burnout, beyond hopelessness, beyond emptiness. This needs to change, it cannot continue to be the case that those needing extra care and support (which is likely to be all of us at some stage) have to depend on their loved ones sacrificing their lives to provide it.

The concept of ‘running on empty’ isn’t my idea (I wish I was that clever!), it is part of the We Care campaign’s latest project to get our future government to finally act. Here is their manifesto in a nutshell:

• Publish a National Carers Strategy.
• Reform the Carers Allowance so carers can survive.
• Increase funding available to deliver adult social care.
• Create a duty of care on the NHS to identify carers.
• Give carers breaks.

Do something positive in the run up to the General Election, visit the We Care Campaign’s website here and read their manifesto here. Your future self will thank you!