Sarah Macdonald Peace love and strength

27/07/2026

Approved for funding. But the funding is months away. Families filling the gaps at home, stretched to their limits. Or the elderly person is stuck in a hospital bed with no residential beds available and no where to go.
That's the reality for hundreds of thousands of families across Australia right now. A 90-year-old parent with a SAH package approved, but no funding released. Stuck in limbo. Stuck in the queue.
Behind every figure in this crisis is a family like that. And right now, nobody has one honest count of how many are in exactly this position.
You cannot track what you cannot see. Show us the numbers - we'll show you the faces.
If there's one thing we say over and over on Club Sandwich, it's this: get in early. Start the aged care assessment before your parent even needs it. This queue does not move fast, and waiting costs families dearly.
They call it policy. We call it family.
Put your name and face to the wait: vera.guide/faces. It takes two minutes, and every face makes this number impossible to ignore.
Tag someone who needs to see this.
generation

24/07/2026

Please don't tell them Grandma went to sleep.
Our guest this week is parenting guru Maggie Dent, and she has counselled a four-year-old who refused to go to sleep again after exactly that.

After 250 funerals and years in palliative care, her advice is simple and kind: use the real words. Bodies stop working, and that's called death. Kids are already building their understanding, from the dead bug on the path to the lost blanky.
And they puddle hop through grief in a way that protects them.
Full conversation on Club Sandwich, out now. Link in comments. Support: Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800.

Free resources on this topic at maggiedent.com

24/07/2026

Hi Clubbers,
Are you in the queue? Waiting for the help your parent needs. It’s not clear how many are in the queue but we know it can take a year for help to come. And who fills in while we wait - we do!
Join the campaign to count us !
Sign up to pressure the government to release all the figures behind the families struggling with caring.

https://vera.guide/faces

A family-led campaign for one honest count of the aged care queue. Put a face to the wait. Add your name.

11/07/2026

"The first thing I knew was a letter from a lawyer."
After 26 years of marriage. Seven months after her dad died.
On this week's Club Sandwich podcast ARIA- award winning singer and songwriter Katie Noonan talks about starting again in the middle of everything, while her mum and her boys still needed her, and about the coven of girlfriends she'd built years before she needed them.

Club Sandwich is the podcast for the sandwich generation - the midlifers caring for ageing parents while still raising kids and holding down all the other layers of life.

Hosted by Sarah Macdonald, with honest conversations and something practical to take away every week.

Find us wherever you get your podcasts, on YouTube, and at clubsandwich.community.

If you've been through the blindside, what carried you through the first weeks?

Full episode link in the comments. 💛

08/07/2026

There is a man in an aged care home who believes he is a detective. He sits with his notes, working the case. The current suspect has very hairy hands. His family just go with it.
Dr Stephanie Ward loves this, and here is why.

We all need a purpose, and that need does not disappear with
We talk about the condition as a series of losses, but people keep abilities, and they keep the desire to feel useful. So give your parent something to do.
Help me fold this.
Can you give me a hand.
A lot of distress is really boredom and a loss of purpose, and this can be a gentle fix.
Let them solve the mystery. 🔍🔎
What is the one job that still lights your parent up? 👇
Part two of our dementia special with Dr Stephanie Ward is out now. Link in comments.

22/06/2026

Hello good people. Life has been busy but I am focussed on never being frantic again. Let's see how that goes!
I am looking for some life twins around the world. People born on the 4th of June 1966. Is that you? Is that a friend? Is that a friend of a friend? I'd love to hear from them for a project I am doing. Please DM message me their details.

04/06/2026

This is a house of love and memories in Bondi. My darling friends are moving out of Sydney. It is a place of such fun and good vibes, music and joy, love and care. Send it to anyone who wants to move to a place that feels like home.

29 Barracluff Avenue, Bondi Beach, NSW 2026

29 Barracluff Avenue, Bondi Beach, NSW 2026

A Bondi Beach classic, this c1910 Federation semi captures the relaxed spirit and enduring charm of one of the area's most tightly held beachside neighbourhoods. On a wide avenue where homes rarely trade, the freestanding-to-the-north residence is bathed in natural light with a warm, welcoming energ...

02/06/2026

The conversations we don't have with our parents become the ones we wish we'd had.
What matters to them. What they'd want if things changed. What they'd want us to know. Most of us keep putting them off, not because we don't care, but because we don't know where to start. And then one day it's too late to ask.

We’ve put together an evening to help you start now, while there's still time.
This Tuesday 2 June in Sydney, Sarah Macdonald sits down with Dr Kathryn Mannix, global campaigner and beloved author of With the End in Mind and Listen.

Expect an honest, warm and often funny conversation about the questions worth asking your mum or dad, and why starting imperfectly, at the kitchen table, is far better than finding yourself in a hospital corridor.

You'll leave with the courage to begin. And so you're not carrying it all in your head, every guest takes home a copy of Put The Kettle On, Vera's guide to the five questions worth asking the people we love.

There'll be club sandwiches, bubbles (of both varieties) and a chance to have Kathryn sign one of her books.

A few seats left. Be quick!

Tuesday 2 June, 6pm to 8.30pm Flex by ISPT, The Collider, 477 Pitt St, Haymarket Tickets $35 at clubsandwich.community or humanitix.com
A Club Sandwich night. With love x

31/05/2026

"I'm useless now. I can't drive."
That's the voice in their head of your elderly mum or dad the day the keys come out.
Once they stop driving, they're twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression. Their anxiety spikes. And it can last four, five, six years.
We talk about taking the keys like it's a logistics problem. It's not. It's the loss of agency. It's the spiral into "I'm useless now." And it's the mental-health story we rarely tell at the kitchen table.
This week on Club Sandwich, Sarah Macdonald sits down with Dr Joanne Bennett — researcher at Australian Catholic University and designer of the Thriving Without Driving program — to walk through what's really happening on the other side of this conversation, and what families can do about it.
The loss is real. Naming it is where the help starts.
Episode 16: Driving Me Crazy: Taking the Keys. Out Now 🥪
Jo Bennett Australian Unity Australian Catholic University (ACU)

28/05/2026

I apologise for the their/there mixup in last reel I can’t get in to change it! Shocking !