Over the past five years, along with every one of my siblings, I took on a new and difficult role: serving as a caregiver for my father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. My caregiving experience has been brutal, formative and eye-opening.

It’s an honor and a blessing to help care for my father as he valiantly manages progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). It’s also incredibly taxing mentally, emotionally and financially for our family. My little sister, Jackie Jr., has put her teaching career on hold to take on full-time care for our father.

Like the Jacksons, there are siblings across America who are splitting nights and weekends. There are spouses, sons and daughters like my mother, brother Yusef and sister, who have become full-time nurses. There are nieces, nephews and neighbors driving loved ones to dialysis and learning how to manage meds and feeding tubes. 

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, let us pray for the unpaid caregivers across the country. The best way to give them thanks is to recognize the scale of what they do, the cost they bear and the policy fixes that could support them.

November is National Family Caregivers Month. An AARP-National Alliance for Caregiving report found that about 63 million Americans – nearly 1 in 4 U.S. adults – provided ongoing care to an adult or child with significant health or functional needs in the past year.

For........

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