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Pull up a seat at our table, where badass women from all walks of life—fashion, beauty, design, music, philanthropy, art, and more—come together to share honest stories, serve truths, and dig into the realities of modern womanhood.
Johanna Almstead:
Hello, everyone. I am menu planning for my next guest, and I'm feeling pretty summery. It's been really, really hot where I am, it's been really beautiful. So, I think I'm going to start with a chilled zucchini soup with crème fraîche and toasted pine nuts. And then I'm going to do a lovely burrata with peaches and prosciutto and some basil oil, maybe. And then for the main, I'm going to do, I can never say this word right, spatchcocked chicken. It's really nice, you can do it on the grill and it cooks really evenly. I'm going to do a green herb marinade, so lots of parsley, mint, lemon, just throw that on the barbecue. And then on the side, I'm going to do some roasted eggplant with tahini and pomegranate and do a little grilled flatbread with that. I think that's going to be delicious.
And then for dessert, ooh, I'm going to do an olive oil cake. I love olive oil cake. I'm going to do olive oil cake with macerated strawberries and fresh whipped cream. That's where I'm going for dinner tonight.
Music wise, oh, you know who I heard recently that was so fun? Nelly Furtado. So I'm going to go Nelly Furtado, I'm going to go a little Nora Jones, I'm going to do Macy Gray. I'm kicking it back.
My next guest is so warm and so smart and cares so deeply about humanity, and I really can't wait for you to get to meet her. So, let's dig in.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Eat My Words. I am really looking forward to this conversation today because we are going to talk about something that I think is a reality for more people than I know who would like to be going through what we're going through, but so many of our listeners are living through this right now.
My guest today is a licensed master social worker and geriatric care manager with more than 25 years of experience. She has dedicated her career to helping older adults and their families navigate the complex challenges of aging, serious illness, and cognitive decline across inpatient clinical and community-based settings throughout New York City. Through this frontline work, she witnessed firsthand the profound impact of aging related conditions and the critical gaps that exist within our healthcare system.
Guided by the belief that all people deserve to live with dignity, choice, and access to education, medical care, and supportive services, she co-founded the Care Collective, a nursing and care management company designed to meet those exact needs. The organization was built to provide comprehensive, person-centered support for older adults living with cognitive decline, chronic conditions, and complex health needs, and for those who care for them. She also co-founded CareFind, a staffing registry that matches families with highly caring, qualified, and professional caregivers. She herself is also a mother, a friend, and an active member of her community. Christine Richmond, welcome to Eat My Words.
Christine Richmond:
Thank you. It's really, I'm so pleased to be with you.
Johanna Almstead:
Well, thank you so much for being here. One of the reasons I'm very proud and happy to have this platform is for exactly these kinds of conversations, to be able to have these conversations so that people in our audience know that people like you and your organizations exist before they need them, hopefully. Because I personally went through an experience where I did not know that people like you existed when it was time for me to make some really hard decisions about my mother's care. And so I'm really, really happy to be here today with you and to talk more about what you actually do and how you help people so that we can educate people and make sure they know what their options are.
Christine Richmond:
Yes, yes.
Johanna Almstead:
But before we talk about your work, I always like to talk about your journey of how you got to your work and where you came from and how you developed into the person you are now. So, where would you say your journey began?
Christine Richmond:
Wow. Okay, so my journey began in a small suburb just outside of Toronto, Ontario. I'm the oldest of five kids and we were '70s kids and then teenagers in the '80s, and we raised ourselves. Our parents were hard workers, my mom was a nurse. And it ended up that I became a social worker, and one of my sisters became a nurse, and then another sister started working in supporting people with immigration and languages and helping them as they immigrated to Canada and she's still helping people as they get jobs and function. So, she's working in that world of helping people. And then I have another sister who's also working in mental health. We all, through our upbringing, our parents, whether they realized it or not, showed us and taught us that the idea is that we're supposed to help people.
Johanna Almstead:
Really raising caregivers, huh? Look at that.
Christine Richmond:
They raised caregivers. And I don't know if they went too far or not, but really it was, what can you do for other people? Don't worry about yourself, take care of other people. And I don't remember, actually, I do remember us having those conversations and we were religious in a Christian kind of way and that was the theme, always do something for somebody else. And so here we all are, doing things for other people. And I got a degree in psychology, which is the kind of degree that you can do everything with or nothing with, it's very basic.
And then after I immigrated in a long and windy road to the US, that's a story for a whole other podcast, but ended up in the US in the early '90s. And because of my immigration status, I wasn't able to work, I was married to somebody who had a visa and I didn't. So I had two kids and I raised them, and at a certain point I needed to go back to work. And again, story for another podcast with my immigration journey, but I ended up having to volunteer, a nursing home. That was my in. Through the Alzheimer's Association in New York City, I was able to connect to a nursing home and work, but I couldn't get paid because I didn't have a green card. And so I had started volunteering at the Alzheimer's Association because I needed something to do to get my foot in somewhere, and I've always gravitated towards working with seniors.
I was a class parent for my daughter's second grade class and I had to make a donation to the Alzheimer's Association for some event that we were doing. And I had said when I was on the phone making this donation, I said, "What can I do? I need to start doing something to get my foot in the door for work. Do you have an opportunity?" And they said, "Well, you can volunteer on our helpline." Okay, so I did that. I went into Lexington Avenue once or twice a week and I sat in their office and I took helpline calls from people who were struggling with family members who had Alzheimer's and we connected them to services all through New York City, the five boroughs, and we listened. We helped them work through problems and supported them. And then that would be a couple of times a week during the day, and I needed to find a babysitter for my kids at that point, so I was paying to go volunteer.
And then they asked me would I be willing to do this, because it was a 24-hour helpline and they needed more people. So I said, "Sure, you can send those calls to me in the middle of the night." So the helpline calls, I think two or three nights a week would come to my house. It was back during the time of landlines, and-
Johanna Almstead:
And they would just forward them to you?
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. So at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning at any given night, probably three nights a week my phone could ring, and that would mean it would be somebody from the helpline. And it would be me sitting on... I'd flip on the lights in the bathroom and I'd sit on the edge of the bathtub so I would wake up, and I would be talking to somebody who was having a crisis. And this was my volunteer experience.
And through that organization, I met a social worker who had just moved to the Alzheimer's Association from a nursing home and I wanted to talk to her about that. She connected me to an administrator at the Cobble Hill Health Center in Brooklyn, which was just a 20-minute walk away from where I was living in Carroll Gardens. And it took me about four weeks for him to call me back, but I just wanted to talk to him because I didn't know what the story was in that facility or what I might be able to do there. I was just curious, and I was very naive because I didn't know what the world of nursing homes was like at all. If I had known more, I would have been too scared to talk to him, but ignorance is bliss.
So I called him and I kept nagging him, and he happened to call me back at a time that was really not ideal for me to go in. I was walking past and I said, "Yeah, I actually have a couple minutes, I can go in," and I wasn't dressed appropriately. Anyway, he said, "I have 20 minutes for you." I think I was wearing shorts and sneakers. And I went in and he sat with me in his office and he actually gave me about an hour and a half of his time and he ended up saying, "We do need a part-time social worker. Would you want to come and work with us?" And I said, "I do, but I don't have a visa that would allow me to work." And he said, "Wow, that's unfortunate, but if you want to just come and volunteer three days a week, we could still use you." And before I know it, I'm saying, I said, "Sure."
And then I'm walking back home and thinking, "Well, what did I just do? Now I have to figure out..." At that point, I have a six and a half year old and a two-year-old.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my God.
Christine Richmond:
And I'm newly divorced. At that point, I didn't have any status in the US because I was just divorced and he left us nothing. I'm Canadian but I don't have any status and I can't work, and no real income other than what he might be offering us. Anyway, so I've said yes and now I'm like, "Oh geez, what am I going to do?" So I figured it out and I started volunteering. And I don't know, looking back, I'm not sure how I figured it out, but anyway.
Johanna Almstead:
Sometimes you just do, right?
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. Fast-forward eight months, and I've been doing this work as a social worker and I'm getting all this experience and I get called down to the administrator's office and I thought, "Oh, great. This is it. He doesn't need me anymore. Oh, well, it's been great." And he says, "Christine, we really do need you. We need you full time and we're willing to sponsor you for your H-1B visa."
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my gosh.
Christine Richmond:
So [inaudible 00:11:14].
Johanna Almstead:
That means you're so indispensable.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. So anyway, that's the pathway that I started to really work in social work in geriatrics, and that was in 2001.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my gosh. It's so crazy, I always think about this when people just say yes. This comes up a lot on this podcast, of this idea of just putting yourself in the path of opportunity and then when something happens, just saying yes and then figuring it out later. And wow, did that work out for you, huh?
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, that has worked out. And once I realized that I had done that, it was a yes that led to something, there was a couple of... I can point to other times in my life since then that I had to make a point to say yes to something that was super uncomfortable. But Christine, you have to say yes to things because something happens when you say yes. You have to say yes and you also, you should volunteer your time. And people say, "Well, I don't have time to do that," or especially for young kids in school or universities, volunteering your time to do something will always offer an opportunity somewhere, even when it's not obvious at first. So when you're doing something for somebody else, something will always, always come from that, least of which is that you're helping somebody.
Johanna Almstead:
Right, right, exactly.
Christine Richmond:
So anyway, that's where-
Johanna Almstead:
So, you got a full-time job.
Christine Richmond:
I got a full-time job.
Johanna Almstead:
And figured out your kids, figured out your little kids and your newly single status.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, yep. Newly single status, now I had a job. Now I had more of an identity because before that I had been just a mom and I say just a mom, but that was a real thing to get my head around because people would say, "What do you do?" And I'd say, "Nothing," which felt horrible because you don't do just nothing, but you don't have anything that you can put your finger on.
Johanna Almstead:
You do so many things.
Christine Richmond:
You do all of the things, but you don't get credit for any of the things because things in this country and North America anyway, are tied to your profession, and I didn't have a profession. Now I had a profession and it is a profession that completely aligns naturally with who I am, which I feel very lucky. I fell into that somehow, and it's again where I think that I don't know what to attribute that to other than maybe luck or the universe. I don't know, it gets woo-woo, but I'm able to do what I feel like I'm meant to do.
Johanna Almstead:
That's huge.
Christine Richmond:
It is huge, it feels so huge. I feel very aligned with what I'm supposed to be doing in the world. And this start was huge. I owe so much to this administrator at Cobble Hill Health Center who since passed away. But the visa was one thing, they also had a program that paid for half of my master's degree at Hunter College. So, I went back and got a master's degree while I was working full time and I went back to get a master's degree. This was all around 2006, 2007, 2008. Continued to work, and then eventually that turned into a green card, and now I'm here. The master's degree allowed me to go further in my career. I became a director up through that and I've just gone further and I was able to start a company with a colleague that does this work and works so closely with families, managing all of the things that we saw were problems when we were working in nursing homes.
Johanna Almstead:
You're balancing this all with raising two small kids on your own?
Christine Richmond:
Mm-hmm.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay, yeah. Let's talk about that. Let's get to that.
Christine Richmond:
Okay.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay, so talk to me about that time.
Christine Richmond:
Wow, yeah, it was busy. Of course, it was busy. We were in Carroll Gardens, New York, which was, I think that's what took the edge off. It was such a great place to be. Our community was really great. I used to say it was like living on Sesame Street. It was a neighborhood that the kids could play, we had a great community. I remember it being very hard, but now at this point in my life, I look back at it so fondly. Those were the good days. Does that make sense? Because even though I was on my own, that's actually sometimes a good thing because the other person in the mix isn't there to challenge you on anything. It was me and two kids.
Johanna Almstead:
Right. You can raise your kids how you want to raise them.
Christine Richmond:
We could raise the kids how I wanted to. There was certainly a lot of challenges. I mentioned that I have three sisters, but at that time, our youngest brother passed away and he was 28 and we had that.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. We had that as a family. I'm the only one that lives in the US. Everybody else lives in Canada, so there was lots of small trips back and forth, so staying connected to family, but being away from our support system, so I was really managing on my own. So, I became very independent.
Johanna Almstead:
Yes, I imagine so.
Christine Richmond:
So yeah, that was a struggle, but it's what we do. I think that was my particular challenge. All of us as parents have our version of what a challenge is. I had friends that had huge support systems, but those come with challenges. You get a lot of people in the mix. I didn't have to worry about everybody's opinions and ideas of the way I should be doing things. I could have used a little bit more help sometimes, but I didn't have the baggage that went along with that. It was just my experience, I don't know how else to explain that, but I think the relationships that I formed with my children were unique in that way.
My kids are really cool people, and one of them is actually turning 32 today. I have say happy birthday [inaudible 00:16:56].
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my goodness. Congratulations.
Christine Richmond:
[inaudible 00:16:58], 32, having a great life in Florida on a sustainable farm teaching kids music. She's just an incredible person. And then going through a really interesting journey with my little kid who's 27, but went through a journey and is now a transgender person and is the coolest person I know. And-
Johanna Almstead:
And how old was that child when they went through that journey?
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, that started in middle school.
Johanna Almstead:
Wow.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. A long, drawn out journey that again is a whole other podcast for anyone. And I'm open to talking about that with anybody who's going through that. They should call me, but yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay, that's good to know. That's good to know.
Christine Richmond:
Because yeah, you need support and these kids, this isn't something you just choose for fun. This is a real thing, and people need to have the support and know that they're safe and can be who they truly, truly are. And then there's a long journey to finding that out. And when it starts to manifest itself right at puberty, man, that's so confusing and emotional. And puberty is a hard time for anybody, but if you're not sure who you are and you're not sure you can talk about it, you're not sure what's safe, oh.
So we were going through that, and finally at the end of, actually I'd say midway through high school through lots of twists and turns, Sid was able to talk about who he is and we were able to embrace that.
Johanna Almstead:
Amazing.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Wow, yeah. So that's a whole other journey. So you're navigating all this still on your own as a parent and still building your career and supporting your children in their each individual journeys of becoming who they are as people.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Holy moly. Well, what do you want your kids to know about that time? Because I feel like now you have some hindsight and they're probably old enough and maybe they'll listen to this podcast. What do you want them to know about that time? Because that feels like a really multilayered, complicated, intense, busy, full, full time in your life.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, and that's so insightful of you to comment on that. I think that, and we've sort of talked about it, but if I could just say anything to them is, just that we were all young. We were all very young. I was a young mother, we were all so young, and that I just loved them to pieces. And to understand that there's things that we know now that only time could have taught us and that everything that happened was only done in love, and so to forgive ourselves for things that we couldn't have known at the time and-
Johanna Almstead:
That makes me weepy. Time is a good teacher, right?
Christine Richmond:
Time is a good teacher, and I'm weepy too now, oh. We've had, thankfully, been able to have some conversations, the three of us, and they've started to understand and I'm so grateful because I don't think I had anything to do with it. But they understood through just their own reading or thoughtfulness about what generational trauma is like. Does that make sense? And so-
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.
Christine Richmond:
... the older one said to me, "Mom, I know that you're the way you are because the way grandma is." I'm like, "Oh yeah." Check, check. Okay.
Johanna Almstead:
Check, check.
Christine Richmond:
And I said, and then to be fair, I said, "But she's the way she was because the way her mom was." And then she says, "I know." And like, "Oh, I'm so glad you know." And so, it's like just a lot of grace to go around and we all just love each other and that's our bottom line.
We just love, love each other, and we're family and that's our bottom line. That doesn't even capture it. I have feelings that I don't have words for, and that's it. We can always do better for one another, but if we know that and that everything that we do do is grounded in the idea that we're trying our best for one another and that we're open to talking all the time and we don't have our backs up always, where you're just like, "Well, could I have done differently?" Let's not attack. Let's just openly talk. What do you need? What do you need me to do? Can I do that for you right now? Can't I? What do I need from you? Having adult children is a really cool thing. I am really enjoying my adult kids.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. I'm looking forward to that. I don't have them yet. I still have kid kids. I still have little little kids, but yeah, it seems like a whole other way of parenting. It's a very different thing, right?
Christine Richmond:
Interesting, you're not really parenting anymore. You're always a parent, but around the 18, 19 year old mark, I was very aware that even though I was desperate to keep parenting, didn't really get to do that anymore. The universities won't give you your kids' grades.
Johanna Almstead:
Right, right.
Christine Richmond:
They move away from you. Elizabeth went to British Columbia to go to university and I didn't have her handy, and now she's in Florida. We're empty nesting now so the whole relationship shifts over time. So I'm a parent, it takes a long time, took me anyway, a long time to settle into a new way of being with my kids. I don't even know if they listen to this podcast, they may not even be realizing that, but the love is so profound and it doesn't ever change, but the logistics of it does. Weird. And it's up to the parent to figure that out. It's not the kid, they don't have to worry about it. It's up to me.
Johanna Almstead:
Right, right. Yeah. You have to shift gears a little bit.
Christine Richmond:
And let them go a little bit and not be constantly on top of them for stuff because-
Johanna Almstead:
Oh God, I can't imagine it yet.
Christine Richmond:
I'm still so far away from it.
Johanna Almstead:
I know.
Christine Richmond:
Well, what hurt, it doesn't hurt, hurt, but when they don't call you every day, or they don't call you every week even. Hello? And you're like, I guess that's good. You're supposed to be obsolete they say if you've done your job, they don't need you, but man, oh man.
Johanna Almstead:
They don't need you anymore. Right? So, wow. Okay, so you raised these two humans who are now delightful adults. You spent your years mothering and making your way through the system of New York City and the elder care system in New York City. What made you start your own business?
Christine Richmond:
That's a good question. So yeah, we're muddling through, I guess, the nursing homes, which are necessary. But I'm going to say the word, horrible. So I was working in those four different ones in the New York City area for about 17 years, and-
Johanna Almstead:
And these are like government funded ones? These are not private care facilities?
Christine Richmond:
Interestingly, they're all government funded. All of them, every single one will take money from Medicare and Medicaid and they will all take your private money too. But, and it's like a whole... Nobody would ever understand how they work just rolling into one of them. It's a very complicated business, actually. So worked in these, and for 17 years, had the opportunity to migrate out of them and started a private practice on my own doing geriatric care management while I was still working in nursing homes. Once these kids of mine started to shift out of... they got older and they didn't need me all the time, I had time in the evenings, I started a small practice while I was still working at nursing homes.
Then had an opportunity to move over into working in a home care company. It was a private company that was actually started in Canada and it was just a coincidence that they were from Toronto, but they were opening up a location in New York City and I had crossed paths with them in doing some networking and they wanted me to come help them start this company in Manhattan. And so, this was a great way for me to get out of nursing homes.
So I quit the place I was working at and I went to work with this company, and I met the woman who is now my partner. And we worked together with this company for several years, and that's when COVID started and this company started very small and we had a lot of autonomy and it was a great place to work. This company was all about the people that they were working with, the families, it was so person centered. It was, whatever this family needs were going to do. They need somebody tomorrow? We're going to get them a helper tomorrow. What do they need in that home? We're going to do it for them. We had so much freedom to take care of our families.
My partner, Larissa, is a nurse and she was part of all the compliance of what has to happen at a home care agency. And I was the Director of Care Management, making sure that all care happened the way it was supposed to. And we had a sales team and we just grew this company. It was fantastic. About a year into COVID, it was doing so well that the owner sold it to a big national chain of home care agencies. Truly, they had a location in every state, in Hawaii, they were in Canada, they were in Puerto Rico, they were everywhere. And to me and Larissa, it lost its heart and soul and we saw that this was a great opportunity to start our own thing. So we opened Care Collective early in 2022, and that was the birth of Care Collective.
Johanna Almstead:
And can you kind of get into it, because I was even surprised by some of the things that you said that you do, because I think so many people think about, well, I don't know if I need a nurse for my aging father or my partner or whoever it is who needs help. I'm not sure I need medical care, but I need these other things, and I was surprised to hear. So, can you tell in layman's language, our audience, what are some of the kinds of things that you do to support a family and the person who is actually in need of good care?
Christine Richmond:
Oh, yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
I guess they're all in need of, everyone's in need of care when people are needing to care for someone, but.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, sometimes the assumption is or what somebody will hear somebody in the hospital says, "Well, you should get a nurse." Well, the nurse actually is a registered nurse and people don't hardly ever need an actual nurse to come into their house.
Johanna Almstead:
Unless there's like specific medications or injections or things that need to be administered, but.
Christine Richmond:
Yes, and that's the huge different-
Johanna Almstead:
Right. I think that's a huge differentiation that I learned [inaudible 00:27:50].
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, and if you do need it for something like that, you need them to come in, do it, and leave. You don't need to hire a nurse to stay in your house all day, that is just so phenomenally overkill. You don't.
So, you need all the small nuanced things that you can't do during the day when you're at work or you're with your kids. So we will manage doctor's appointments, we arrange for people to go back and forth to doctor's appointments with your family member. We'll get a doctor for you if you're struggling to find a really good neurologist, or good example, I have podiatrists that go to people's homes just to cut their toenails. We'll figure that out so you don't have to find that person. We do find wonderful home health aides. You want to come in four hours a day, three times a week, or maybe you need somebody around the clock, but we're very, very good at finding that good fit so that families can go about their day and not worry that their mother or their father is completely alone. And fine tuning that fit so that it works for the family and for your mother or father-
Johanna Almstead:
That's a part of it also.
Christine Richmond:
... that takes time and tweaking, and when families try to manage that on their own and they're trying to just flip through their contacts and who do they know who can do this, and then taking the time and interviewing people and being there to introduce them to their parents and then troubleshooting all the little things that can happen, that's a part-time job, and we do that. We train people. We get to know the parents and the families and know what's the most important thing in this person's world and what has to happen or what can never happen, how this day has to look.
And then we make sure the prescriptions are at the house and in the pill box and are being taken properly. The mattress isn't right anymore. Maybe a hospital bed is a good idea now. We get that in place. Somebody fell. What happened? What was missing? What's in the way? What caused the fall, and how were we going to make it so that that doesn't happen again? What was the result of the fall? Is there an injury? What are all the things that have to happen now? Sometimes the fall isn't because somebody tripped. Sometimes you would think, "Well, I fell and I broke my hip." Not necessarily. What if there's something that happened in your body that caused you to fall?
So, there's just a lot of thoughtfulness that has to happen when you're looking after the health of somebody who's aging, and that includes the whole cognitive realm. When people's cognition is starting to decline and understanding what's happening there, because that's sad and scary for families, but it's super sad and scary for the person that it's happening to. And there's education that goes with that and there's a lot of TLC and understanding, and skilled and nuanced conversations that happen with families and the individual that it's happening with. We coordinate some good neurological testing at the early stages of that so that families understand what's going on, and that interventions can happen, and we're connected to really good resources for that.
Johanna Almstead:
One of the things that has been so hard in our own journey with my mom who's physically quite well, which is awful in the sense that she's physically quite well but mentally doesn't have much capacity anymore. And so whenever anything does go wrong with her physically, it's very confusing to try to get information from her because she doesn't understand what's happening or she won't remember what happened. Right? So she'll fall and then no one knows how she fell or where she fell, and she's not a reliable source anymore of her own history. You know? And that's really hard. And the advocating within the hospital system, if she ever does go into the hospital of like, she can't be the person who is-
Christine Richmond:
Absolutely.
Johanna Almstead:
... giving her medical history or explaining what's happened, or she doesn't even know why she is there or she doesn't know where she is. And so, that is something that was unanticipated for me. I didn't really think about that part, that's a really hard part.
Christine Richmond:
That's probably one of the more valuable things that we can offer for families is the presence during a hospitalization. We'll go to the hospital when somebody's admitted to the emergency room. And we already know, for instance, your mother's baseline. We know how she is ordinarily, where she is in her journey right now. So that when she gets to the hospital and she's not herself, we're able to show up with a medication list that she has. We know, when is the last time we think she took her medications? We have a sense of what time of day she fell, even if we don't know what happened, but we can explain to the team in the emergency room everything that we know so that they don't make any assumptions and they start to treat her for the real person that she is. We can say, "Normally, this is how she functions. Normally, this is what her cognition is," so they can assess whether she's worse or this is normal.
We show up, like I said, with the actual medication list, they don't have to guess at that. We can even advocate to get her out of the emergency room into a room faster. Some people without us would just sit in a bay for three days. We won't tolerate that.
Johanna Almstead:
I think that also has been such a huge lesson for me, is having someone advocate in the hospital all the time. My mom actually thankfully doesn't end up in the hospital very often, but the couple of times that she has, I've realized that someone, and it usually has to be me or my brother because we both have medical proxy with her and we know her the best, that someone has to be there advocating every second of the day.
Christine Richmond:
Absolutely.
Johanna Almstead:
And that's really, really, really hard when you have a full-time job and a family and children and all these other things. So, I just think these are things that I want if you're not in this situation yet as a listener, to start thinking, about talking about with your family ahead of time before you need these things, because it becomes really a full-time job for someone. And so, I think it's really important that people know that services like your company exist.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. I would add to this, in terms of thinking ahead, like you were just alluding to. If you have aging parents, even for ourselves, this is the time as people in our generation to put together our own and for your parents, healthcare proxy, living will, power of attorney. We all need to do it.
Johanna Almstead:
Yes.
Christine Richmond:
You never know what can happen, but especially for our parents, while they have capacity to make decisions about what kind of healthcare they want or don't want. Call me if you need a referral for a good trust and estate attorney or a good elder law attorney. This is the time, because if you miss the window and decisions need to be made and you're not the power of attorney or the healthcare proxy, it gets just 1,000 times more difficult and you end up into guardianship territory and it's super expensive and time consuming and it's a nightmare. But when you have the documents there ready, you're going [inaudible 00:35:15].
Johanna Almstead:
My mom luckily did very early on, I think she did it probably like in her 60s and made both my brother and I, we both have a healthcare proxy and power of attorney, and it made our process much easier. When the shit did hit the fan and big, quick decisions, big expensive decisions had to be made, it was very, very helpful to not have to go through all those hoops. So I think if everyone's listening, if you have not done that already, do so now with your partner or your family or your kids. Do it and make sure everybody has it.
Okay. So you started this company and then you started another company, right?
Christine Richmond:
That's what we did.
Johanna Almstead:
Because one wasn't enough.
Christine Richmond:
No, we weren't busy enough as it was, but people were asking us, do we know anybody that could just be hired privately to come and work for our family? One of the first things that often will stabilize a bit of a hairy situation and when we start working with a new family is having that helper in the house. And especially in the greater New York area where most of our clients are, there's probably 1,000` home care agencies, they're everywhere, and some of them are good and some of them really aren't. And that's one option, but you go through the whole agency schtick and they can send a variety of people there and they charge you anywhere between, I don't know, 38 and $50 an hour and they pay the aides maybe minimum wage, and they're not necessarily really invested in your family, and some people just don't want that experience. And so often, families were saying, "Do you just know somebody?" And we always know somebody and we would always connect them, and then we'd say, "Mary, meet Sarah." And we'd walk away and we realized, wow, this is an opportunity for us.
So last year, we started CareFind. So it's a registry, it's a staffing registry. All we do is match family members who are looking for an employee, essentially, and we have wonderful caregivers. We have RNs, we have LPNs, licensed practical nurses, and we have home health aides that have certifications to do that.
And we also have people who don't have a certification but that have a wealth of experience and they're able to work as companions, and we love this idea. The idea there is it's a great person to go to a movie with, go to lunch with, go to an opera or a play, go to a gallery with, go listen to music, and it really combats isolation, loneliness, depression. When those things are present, then the dementia risk increases and so does the risk of pain. So, we want to keep people engaged. So the companionship opportunity is there too, and we can match families with people that they would hire. They become an employer and the registry, takes care of their taxes at the end of the year, and their schedules. We can manage that and we take care of the payroll too. It's not an agency but it takes a lot of the daily work. You don't have to write a check every... The admin, it goes away. We take care of that.
So, that's a young company. We're small, but it's energetic and that's the other thing we do.
Johanna Almstead:
I think that's such an important point. I actually was just listening. I don't know if you listened to this, there was a podcast on The Daily, The New York Times the other day about this woman who lives on this crazy island off the coast of, I think the West Coast somewhere, and she's in her 80s or she might be in her 90s, and she wants to stay in her home. And they gave her an AI robot to be her companion. They were citing all this data of how when you're alone and you don't have stimulation and all this other stuff, that all those things you just said, cognitive decline increases and pain increases and all these things. And so it was a fascinating article, you should listen to it.
But anyway, I was thinking about this and this idea of, I think people might not know that you can actually hire a companion, and that that person, again, you don't need to be hiring a registered nurse to do that. You can be hiring, it's essentially almost like a mother's helper, in a way, as someone to be there with your parent or your loved one who needs care, and who can drive them to the movies and sit and do the things that you wish you could do with them but you don't have time to do. So, I think that that's pretty amazing.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. We are just so full of resources for families that they may not even know exists, and we don't have to do anything super prescribed for everybody. The work that we do with each individual family is unique for that family, it's just whatever you need. It's almost just like having a rented relative that has time to do all of this stuff.
Johanna Almstead:
Like a concierge. Yeah.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
I love that.
Christine Richmond:
Exactly. And I can't tell you how much we love doing this. We go into thousands of homes and honestly, my happy place in the world is sitting in somebody's living room talking to them. It's my pitfall, I can get stuck there all day and not get any work done. I just love the time I spend with seniors. And I can't explain it, but I'm just in the right spot, and when we find out what makes them tick, what makes them happy, how they want to live and then we facilitate that, and then we convey that to families sometimes. Oftentimes, there's conflict in families where the way some people think that things should happen isn't necessarily in line with the way the person want things to happen. Sometimes siblings don't get along, sometimes there's problems with the way the money's flowing. There's a lot of ways that we can make life a little easier in a family's bigger picture, and it's always just unique to that one situation.
But we exist, and there's other people like us, we're not the only game in town. We're called aging life care professionals. Anybody that does this is either a nurse or a social worker, for the most part. It's a profession, we're board certified. We're everywhere, you can find a geriatric care [inaudible 00:41:16] in every state.
Johanna Almstead:
Amazing.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, yeah. So we're an amazing resource.
Johanna Almstead:
I'm so glad that you said that, because I think people might think, oh gosh, they're just this one company and they're only in the New York, Connecticut area. And it's good to know that if people are looking for this, that they're all over the country and that you can find resources for you. And it's often, I imagine just sometimes it's just a phone call. I feel like some people might be intimidated because I know from my experience of staffing agencies and insurance companies and hospitals and all the things that you have dealt with, that sometimes you're just like, "I can't even deal." But it sounds like this is a really personalized experience and they can just pick up the phone and call you and ask questions, and that you guys can guide them to the next right steps.
Christine Richmond:
Oh, absolutely. That's the way we work, anyway. You should just call my cell phone and I'll give that to you at the end of this. But to your point about insurance companies, we do do that, right? We will get on the phone with an insurance company and go to bat for you. We recently got a family paid back about $80,000 from their long-term care policy that wasn't reimbursing them.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my God, that's amazing.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. So if you can think of a problem that's connected with aging, we can help you solve it.
Johanna Almstead:
Amazing. Okay. I want to get back to you a little bit now. You've had lots of achievements in your life, it sounds like, and you've done a lot of things to be proud of. But is there something that you are most proud of in your life?
Christine Richmond:
Most proud of in my life? My kids. And I think it's probably an obvious answer for a lot of people, but I'm so proud of my kids. And I would have to say also, I don't want to say I'm proud of myself, but I think I'm stronger than I realized.
Johanna Almstead:
Well, that was one thing I was going to say also. I was going to ask you if there's anything that you once believed about yourself that you've since outgrown.
Christine Richmond:
I'm still outgrowing it.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay. What is it?
Christine Richmond:
But it's that I'm just okay the way I am.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.
Christine Richmond:
Going back to the way we were raised, it was the idea that we were never supposed to focus on ourselves, it's always about helping somebody else. And I think that the underlying message was never intended, but it was that we're not good so we must help other people. And that was never intended, but I've always felt like I need to do better and always do better, always do better. And I do think that that's a good mantra, but not if I'm believing that I'm not good, and I am, and I think I'm outgrowing that, and I think I can be in any room that I want to be in.
And I watch other women achieve wonderful things, amazing things and they put themselves where they want to be and they do the things that they see a need for. And I want to be the person or the woman that says, "I can do that." And sometimes I don't think I can. I'm more inclined to say, "Oh no, no, I could never do that." And I have to get over that, and I'm starting to become more of a... and I heard one person refer to herself as, "I'm a how hard can it be? Kind of girl."
Johanna Almstead:
I like that.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. How hard can it be?
Johanna Almstead:
How hard can it be?
Christine Richmond:
And so, that's-
Johanna Almstead:
We'll find out.
Christine Richmond:
As she's trying to nail something onto her ceiling, I don't know, but I want to be a woman who affects change more than I am already.
Johanna Almstead:
I was going to say, it sounds like you are already, but.
Christine Richmond:
More, more. I want to do more.
Johanna Almstead:
More. More change.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
When you were being raised to be a caregiver, did you have an idea of what sort of success or having it all would look like for you when you were a young child?
Christine Richmond:
Oh, that's big. In our little environment where we were raised, it was so traditional, and that's what I've had to break away from. And again, not anybody's fault, but having it all meant being a mom, happily married, and raising children, and that fell apart. I was happily married and then I wasn't. And I raised children and then I was a single mom and it all fell, it went a different way, and man, I'm grateful that it did. I'm just so glad that it went a different way than that. And I ended up in New York City, not in Burlington, Ontario. And I love where I grew up, but this is the fit. And I'm drifting away from your question actually, but-
Johanna Almstead:
No, [inaudible 00:45:58], I think that's-
Christine Richmond:
I think that I didn't have an idea of what that would be, but I'm building it now. It's becoming clear as I go and I'm making it up as I go, if that makes any sense.
Johanna Almstead:
For sure, and I like... It sometimes it's like when there's such a clear prescribed formula of what something is supposed to look like, sometimes the only option is to blow it all up to see what happens next. You know?
Christine Richmond:
That's a good way to put it. It blew up.
Johanna Almstead:
It blew up, and so you had to paint your own picture, right? You had to make it up as you went along, which I think is sometimes the only way that you can break that cycle.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, exactly right. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Well, as you are helping caregivers care for themselves, helping everybody, how do you nourish yourself? How do you keep yourself well and centered and nourished?
Christine Richmond:
This sounds strange, but the work itself is nourishing. So that's a gift, because not all of our work and the situations that women find themselves in is. So it's funny advice to give, but for me, the work that I do is nourishing. And it's very challenging sometimes and it can be very sad, but then thank goodness some of this stuff is very funny and people say funny things and silly things happen and you get to laugh at it and you're like, "She did what? Oh, okay." So, there's that.
But then I have a metaphor, I guess I call it lily pads, and it's not new, other people have used this. But when I'm at work or I'm with a particular family or an individual, I'm on their lily pad. And when I'm not with them, I jump off of that to the next lily pad, and I'm 100% present with that situation. And then I'm on my home lily pad. And on the weekend when I'm with my husband and our dogs in a forest somewhere, I'm not doing other things. It's important to separate and be 100% present with not work things. And when I am doing my work with families, that I'm 100% present in that moment with that particular family and that particular situation and that there's not a lot of bleeding between the two. And there are moments sometimes when in those five, 10, 20, half an hour in between, you have to shake it. Okay, get my head together, sit outside for a second, get a coffee, do something and then realize what I'm doing and what I'm about, and then jump back in again.
But there's training. You have skills and specific training to do what you do in your world as a career. I do too. I have a master's degree in social work, we've learned the skills to do what we do. So, there's a way to center and we do that. But I say just in general, get outside, be outside, be in nature.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. Lots of people on the podcast say that, so it must be working for people.
Christine Richmond:
It's just I think scientific.
Johanna Almstead:
Yes, it is. This is not news. This is not news for us. We just have to pay attention to it, right?
Christine Richmond:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
So, I feel very strongly about women continuing to dream for themselves at every point in their lives. What are you dreaming about these days?
Christine Richmond:
I am dreaming about Care Collective growing larger. We are ready to really grow. So, that's a work related dream. What am I dreaming about beyond that? Does it make sense to say I'm happy in my regular life?
Johanna Almstead:
That's great. You're totally allowed to say that.
Christine Richmond:
It's just, I think you to dream... I don't know. I'm dreaming about more time home. I'm dreaming about a cottage, dreaming about maybe retiring one day if I ever, ever did that. I think I'll retire and then I think, oh, I don't think I could ever retire, I could do this till I was 80. I'm dreaming about getting another golden retriever because those are addictive. I have two, I could have three, I could have four. I have dreams that I don't think I could ever do, but very just ordinary everyday life dreams. But the big one I think is to grow Care Collective to reach more people and CareFind, those are big dreams.
Johanna Almstead:
I love that. Okay, so we are at the very exciting lightning round of silly questions. Many of them are about food, mostly just because I like to talk about food and I like to learn about people through the food that they eat. But often, they're not about food so there's other things. Don't overthink these, just say what first comes to your mind. What is your favorite comfort food?
Christine Richmond:
What is my favorite comfort food? I would say probably a peanut butter sandwich. [inaudible 00:50:49].
Johanna Almstead:
Oh, white bread or brown bread?
Christine Richmond:
Oh, brown bread and add jam, strawberry jam.
Johanna Almstead:
I love that for you. That's a first on this one. What is something other than building your business and being a mother? Because we know that. What is something you're really good at?
Christine Richmond:
Baking. I'm a baker.
Johanna Almstead:
What do you bake?
Christine Richmond:
Oh gosh, you name it. Cookies, any kind of pies, actually. I make good pies. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
What is something you're really bad at?
Christine Richmond:
Discipline, if it comes to stuff I don't want to do.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, me too.
Christine Richmond:
I'm a good procrastinator, in other words.
Johanna Almstead:
Me too. What is your favorite word?
Christine Richmond:
Grace.
Johanna Almstead:
That's my daughter's middle name. What is your least favorite food?
Christine Richmond:
Eggs, can't do it.
Johanna Almstead:
Interesting. Any kind? No way.
Christine Richmond:
No way, no how. They just don't go down.
Johanna Almstead:
Got it, okay. Least favorite word?
Christine Richmond:
No.
Johanna Almstead:
Do you have any hobbies?
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. I would say hiking has become a hobby. Sewing when I get a chance is a hobby. And reading when I get a chance is a hobby, yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Best piece of advice you've ever received?
Christine Richmond:
I got to think about that. I would say, best piece of advice. It's not something that anybody said to me specifically. I think Eleanor Roosevelt probably said it, but you have to do the thing that scares you.
Johanna Almstead:
Yes, I love that. If your personality were a flavor, what would it be?
Christine Richmond:
If my personality was a flavor, chocolate. I want everybody to... A lot of people like it.
Johanna Almstead:
Crowd pleaser. I like it.
Christine Richmond:
Yes, I am a pleaser. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, there you go. Okay, last supper, but it's not sad. You've just graduated to the next realm of enlightenment and joy. What are you eating tonight?
Christine Richmond:
That would be a huge salad with farro and mushrooms and a bunch of different lettuces and something really crunchy and nuts and all kinds of stuff in there. And it would be warm.
Johanna Almstead:
Ooh, warm farro salad.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
And are you drinking anything with this?
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, I would have a light red wine, pinot noir probably.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay. Have you had a moment in your life where you've had to eat your words?
Christine Richmond:
Yes. Have I?
Johanna Almstead:
Would you like to share any?
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. Well, sometimes I speak without thinking. And I've said things that didn't come out the way I meant. I don't know if I can think of an example. Or I've said something that was actually wrong, it wasn't factual, and I should have been a little more informed before I opened my mouth. So, I did have to go back and apologize and make a correction, and I'd had to do that probably more than once. Like living and learning earlier in my career, being a little too confident or trying to feel confident. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. If you could eat only one food for the rest of your life all day, every day, you don't have to worry about it like nutritionally sustaining you. What do you want to eat all day, every day?
Christine Richmond:
This is going to sound funny because it would nutritionally sustain me, I think, but I love cashew yogurt with chocolate protein powder in it. It's like chocolate pudding and I can eat it all day. Yeah, it's probably gross sounding. I eat it for breakfast. It's really good.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay, okay. That's a new one for this one. Okay, where is your happy place?
Christine Richmond:
Happy place is this home where I am right now. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Aw, that's nice. What did you have for dinner last night?
Christine Richmond:
One of those salads. It had quinoa in it, but it was one of those salads. It was kale and quinoa and asparagus and green beans and toasted almonds and a dressing that I had made a few days ago that I forget what was in it, but it was good. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
What do you wear when you feel like you need to take on the world? So, you're going to a big meeting or a big hot date or a fun event or something, what do you wear?
Christine Richmond:
I have a black blazer that is my go-to, I've had it for years. And I would wear that over probably a black tank top and wide leg black pants. That makes me feel very comfortable. Very chic and super, and it's comfortable to wear and it doesn't really ever fail me.
Johanna Almstead:
I love that. Most memorable meal you've ever had.
Christine Richmond:
We have big, big Thanksgiving feasts at our home every year. The most memorable one I think was probably last year and it was one of the largest we've done and I think we had 14 people and I think that's maybe not big for some people, but it's big for us in this home, and it was all family. And for us that's big because we're the only ones here so everybody came to us this year from all parts of Canada and other places, and it was a big celebration. And the food was incredible and the company was great and the night just went forever and ever and it was beautiful. So, that was memorable. That was probably the most memorable meal I've had in a long time.
Johanna Almstead:
That sounds absolutely perfect. What is your go-to coping mechanism on a bad day? Like when things start to just really go haywire and you're really out of sorts, what do you do?
Christine Richmond:
Have a shower.
Johanna Almstead:
I like that.
Christine Richmond:
That's something else I heard one time. I don't remember where, but it was this idea and it was actually meant for children. When the children are out of sorts, just to add water.
Johanna Almstead:
Yes. I've talked about this.
Christine Richmond:
Have you heard that?
Johanna Almstead:
When they're crabby, put them in water.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah, that's what I remember. Give them a bath, throw them in the sprinkler, do something, get them outside, add air, sunshine, or water. And anyway, took that to heart. So, I get in the shower and actually it works, it's true.
Johanna Almstead:
It does work, I agree with you. Okay. Dream dinner party guest list. You can invite as many people as you want, dead or alive, and they're all going to come. They're all going to say yes. So, who are you having at your dream dinner party?
Christine Richmond:
Oh, I want the Obamas, for sure.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay, love that. Great start.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. There's a couple of my clients that I would have.
Johanna Almstead:
Aw.
Christine Richmond:
I've worked with some fascinating people and some of them aren't with us anymore, but I would love to have them to engage in the conversation, people that have done amazing things. One of my first clients worked on atom bomb in the Manhattan Project.
Johanna Almstead:
Really?
Christine Richmond:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Whoa.
Christine Richmond:
Incredible, yeah. So I would have him and I would have another client that I can think of. Hillary Clinton. This sounds a little political, I guess. I would have... let me think. There's some authors. Hard to say. I think I would keep it there and keep it intimate.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay. I like it.
Christine Richmond:
I think too many people I would lose the thread. I think that bunch would be perfect.
Johanna Almstead:
That would be a pretty intensely great.
Christine Richmond:
That would be intense enough, yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
I would like to hear the conversation between Obama and the atom bomb person. Okay. So, what is one thing for sure that you know in this moment you don't need to have known it yesterday, you don't even need to know it again tomorrow. What do you know for sure right now? What feels true to you?
Christine Richmond:
That what I'm doing in my life right now is right. That I found what I'm supposed to do and I can stick with it. I don't need to be pursuing anything else, I'm where I'm supposed to be.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh, what a beautiful place to be. I love that for you.
Christine Richmond:
Yeah. Thank you.
Johanna Almstead:
Can you please tell our listeners where they can find you, where they can find your company and find out more about the work that you do?
Christine Richmond:
Absolutely. My website is www.carecollectivehealth.org, www.carecollectivehealth.org. My cell phone number is where you should reach me. I'm going to tell you (917) 587-2800.
Johanna Almstead:
That is a first. No one has ever given their cell phone number out on this podcast, but I love that you are.
Christine Richmond:
You can do that. We don't have a huge social media presence right now because it just hasn't been our thing. We don't need it so much, but it'll get bigger as we grow. But that's our website, and on there you will see another phone number, but if you want to reach me directly, that's the way to do it.
Johanna Almstead:
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story and sharing your work with us. I feel better knowing there are people like you in the world, and I'm sure our listeners will feel better after listening to this episode. Thank you for the work that you do and for sharing this time with me, it's been a real gift.
Christine Richmond:
Aw, thank you for having me. This has been an absolute pleasure.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh, what a lovely conversation. It's really just makes me feel better that there are people like her in the world who care so much about humanity and other people.
Thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I do. I hope you found it helpful. If there's anyone that you know who's going through this or is about to go through this, please share this episode with them so they know that resources like Christine and her company exist in the world. Please forward it, you can send it via text or email. You can just copy the link in your media player and you can put it in a DM, you can put it in a text message, you can put it in an email, you can post it on your social media. And if you're not doing so already, please follow us on our social media. We're at Eat My Words, the podcast on both Instagram and TikTok. And as always, I'm so grateful that you guys are here and I will catch you on the next one.
This Eat My Words podcast was created, produced, and directed by me, Johanna Almstead. Our Sound Editor is Isabel Robertson, and our Social Media Manager is Isabella Boutros.