Laura Dern on Caregiving, Advocacy, and Her Mother's Legacy

If you've ever sat in a doctor's office with a parent and felt your stomach drop, you know how lonely caregiving can be. It's hard. It's disorienting. And the healthcare system doesn’t exactly make it easier — even for Oscar winner Laura Dern.

Dern recently lost her mother, actress Diane Ladd, due to complications of  idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a progressive lung disease that scars the lungs and gradually makes it harder to breathe. IPF falls under the umbrella of interstitial lung disease, a group of more than 200 lung disorders  that are notoriously difficult to diagnose. Symptoms (like a cough that lingers or shortness of breath) often get brushed off as asthma, allergies, or bronchitis.

Ladd was an Oscar-nominated actress in her own right, including for Rambling Rose, where she played a maternal figure to Dern onscreen. (Fun fact: They’re still the only  mother-daughter duo ever nominated for Oscars for the same film.) The pair also wrote a memoir together, Honey, Baby, Mine, where they reflected on life, family, and Ladd’s illness.

Now, Dern wants more people to understand what families who deal with chronic illness actually go through. She watched her mother fight for answers after doctors offered little guidance, and gave her a prognosis that turned out to be wrong by seven years. ]Before her death, Ladd partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim on Beyond the Scars, an IPF awareness campaign, and asked Dern to continue to share her story. Here, she opens up about self-advocacy, caregiving, and the small things that helped her family survive an impossible season. 

On being your own advocate:

"I was raised by a forthright self-advocating mother. But [even though she] taught me how to do that, I would feel embarrassed. I'd be like, ‘I don't want to be rude.’ I started out almost apologizing to an unempathetic specialist. And my mother was like, 'No way. We're not apologizing. He didn't give us any answers. We're not leaving this office until we get answers. And if he won't give them to us…we're getting a second opinion.' 

I was like, 'Don't tell him that. He'll be upset.' She's like, 'What? I'm not dating him.'

She really taught me that fighting for your own answers, your own health, and your own livelihood is a birthright."

On the sign you need a different doctor:

"The first specialist we saw who diagnosed mom spent — I'm not exaggerating — probably at most three minutes [with us]. The second pulmonologist was with my mother while we asked questions, and he showed us X-rays, explained the disease,  and our options for about an hour. You want to find the person who's going to really take the time with you to help you understand, to give you a path forward.”

On facing a scary diagnosis:

“When you're living in the unknown because you're afraid to get a prognosis you don't want to hear, you lose time. My mother was told she had three to six months to live. She lived another seven and a half years. In that time, she made two films, worked on a television series, wrote a memoir with me, an autobiography, and a screenplay, went on a book tour, attended her granddaughter's high school graduation, and watched her grandson play music live for the first time. You just go, ‘Oh my god, the living she did.’ And she did it joyfully, with her health pretty intact.” 

On life in the sandwich generation:

"Four years ago, I had a senior graduating high school, a daughter in a school play, as well as two parents and two stepparents who were all in different hospitals in LA County at the same time. And I'm an only child. I remember laughing with my best friend, saying, 'Oh, I'm definitely going to lose it.' But you always get through it, and there's someone you love who's incredible, who shows up to say, 'Did you drink water today? Here's a turkey wrap.' Or, 'You go home and take a nap, I'm going to stay here tonight.' Find your village, your community of loved ones that care for you so you can show up as a caregiver because you definitely can't do it by yourself."

On how to actually show up for someone:

“Don’t wait to be asked. So there's too much food there. So there are too many people there taking care. So there are too many people calling to make you laugh or tell you a dumb story. Guess what? That's a great problem to have. Especially elderly patients, they deserve too much love, too much nurturing, too many fun stories, too many visits, too many people who want to spend the night in the hospital room so they’re not alone.”

On Googling symptoms:

"Part of being a caregiver is doing the research. People will say, ‘Oh my gosh, the Google searches — you can really freak yourself out. Ask questions, not to scare yourself, but just to start to say, ‘OK, wait a second, maybe we need to go not just to a general doctor, but to a pulmonologist and get some tests.’ These are the things that make the difference. There can be joy when you know how to live with a prognosis, versus waiting and losing time.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.