Happy National Caregivers Day. This one's for you - even if you're not sure the title fits.

I didn't call myself a caregiver for a long time.

I was just a daughter. A daughter who happened to fly to Australia after my mom's stroke because my sister needed a break. Two weeks. I'd hold things down, she'd recharge, and then life would return to whatever normal looked like after a stroke.

I remember standing in my parents' kitchen the first morning, watching my mom move slowly toward the stove. She used to hum while she cooked. She used to break into song mid-sentence, mid-chore, mid-everything. You'd walk into a room and she'd be dusting the bookshelf while performing a full-length concert to nobody. It was one of my favorite things about her — this inability to contain joy, this instinct to make ordinary moments musical.

That morning, she was quiet.

And something shifted in me. Not dramatically. Not all at once. But I noticed I was paying attention differently. Watching her steadiness on the floor. Counting her steps. Listening for the hum.

That was the moment, I think. Not the stroke. Not the phone call. Not the flight. It was that quiet kitchen, and the absence of a song, and the weight of knowing — without anyone telling me — that I was now responsible for another person's wellbeing.

That's when I became a caregiver.

Most of us don't arrive here with a ceremony or a title. We arrive with a one-way ticket and a guest bedroom and a sister who needs to exhale. We arrive in an ER at 9pm, asking for a medication list we don't have. We arrive in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday, watching someone we love do something they've always done - but slower, quieter, smaller - and feeling something click into place.

If you're reading this and you're still not sure whether you qualify - whether what you're doing is "real" caregiving - I want to tell you: it is. The worry counts. The phone calls count. The tab you keep open about what early cognitive decline looks like. The way you've started paying more attention at the dinner table. All of it counts.

You don't have to be in crisis to be a caregiver. You just have to love someone who's getting older, and feel the quiet weight of that.

Today is National Caregivers Day. But if you're somewhere in that in-between space - not quite there yet, but already feeling it - this day is for you too.

I see you. I am you.

And we built something for us.

- Rukmini Banerjee, CEO and co-founder, CuroNow

To Every Caregiver Who Didn't Know They Already Were One

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