Cindy Boynton is one of millions of people who find themselves part of the so-called “sandwich generation” – those caught between the demands of caring for young children and the demands of caring for elderly parents.

Now 44, the New Yorker has spent much of the past ten years juggling her own home life and looking after her mother, who has an advanced form of Parkinson’s, a degenerative neurological condition. Things came to a head a few years ago when her mother’s medication stopped working and it’s this period Boynton has chosen to examine in the one-woman play she brings to Brighton Fringe this week.

“Things had got extremely complicated,” she explains.

“Parkinson’s is one of those diseases that can be treated for ages and all of a sudden, the medicine doesn’t work any more. Someone will be taking a step and they’ll freeze, unable to get their left leg to follow their right, or they’ll be carrying a spoon to the table and their hand freezes and drop it and can’t bend to pick it up – it’s horrible.”

Boynton found herself constantly rushing between caring for her two young children at home (now 13 and 17) and tearing over to her parents’ house to deal with her mother’s issues.

The situation brought a lot of complicated emotions to the surface. She describes the heartbreak of watching a woman who had been extremely active reduced to sitting in a chair all day.

“My mother belonged to a thousand clubs, loved to get in the car and go places, she never sat still and now she’s pretty much been homebound for the past two years. I feel like I’ll cry just talking about it.”

The resentment Boynton felt at her mother’s constant need for care was infused with guilt at feeling that way about a loved one and in addition, a long-buried hurt at her mother’s inability to articulate her affection.

An only child who was adopted at birth, Boynton grew up knowing she was loved but had never been told as much directly. “My mother is a wonderfully giving, equally frustrating woman, but she’s just one of those people who doesn’t articulate herself very well and one of the strands of the play is about loving someone who doesn’t always give you back the love you need from them.”

While it’s an intensely personal story, Boynton believes its themes of familial love, the ageing process and the struggle of caring are universal. “I can’t tell you what a response I’ve had from people who’ve come to see – it’s been tremendous.

When you’re going through these things, you’re in that little vacuum and you don’t realise how many other people are going through it too.

“It’s not a popular topic you talk about over coffee or post about on Facebook.

This is one of those secrets but there are so many people struggling over caring for people they love.”

She hopes it will give a voice to those like her but also to people like her mother, struggling with Parkinson’s and other debilitating diseases.

“But there were other reasons, too, including the fact that I was, and still am, determined to make my midlife a time of creation, rather than a time of crisis.”

It wasn’t an easy thing to write, Boyton admits. Although she’s been working as a writer for years, editing publications and teaching communications at Yale University, telling one’s own story is a very different discipline.

“I’m very good at telling other people’s stories but I really found it hard to tell my own. I’d write one line and think, oh people will think I’m a bad daughter or a bad person. But once it started to flow, it was very cathartic.

Writing allows some kind of perspective I guess, so seeing the story on paper was helpful.

When I was caught up in it, I was constantly chastising myself for always being tired when my parents had looked after me without complaint for so long, but on paper it made me realise, OK, you had every right to be tired and frustrated.”

Her first play made its debut in New York six months ago at the prestigious United Solo Theatre Festival. Since then, she has performed it in Manhattan and Connecticut.

Playing yourself is harder than it might seem, she says with a laugh, not least when you are revisiting intense emotions. Both of her parents have played a part in its creation – her mother, she says, “covered it in notes and pointed out ALL the places where she thought I was being inaccurate or skewing the truth. She also came and saw a performance, which was wonderful. I can’t imagine what it would be like to see the frustration and pain you caused entirely unintentionally from a disease you can’t control.”

The play has also helped the family to uncork bottledup emotions. “My parents have both become better at articulating their feelings.

When I used to say, “I love you,”my dad would say, “Me too,” and now he’ll say, “I love you very much,” and that’s new, that’s been since the play, and it’s meant the world to me. I think both she and my dad have a better understanding now of how their health and need for help is impacting on me and I think I love them that much more for allowing me to tell the story. There are some people who’d say don’t tell the family business, you make us look bad! But they’ve been wonderfully supportive and I think we have a much better understanding of each other now.”

Needless to say, it’s something of a weepie. “But it’s a celebration of life more than anything else, a celebration of families and our lives together and how they change and develop. I’ve recently hit middle-age and of course my parents’ experiences have made me think about my own future, whether I too will be this way, whether my kids will feel like I have about my parents about me. The play looks at this whole cycle of life and ageing and the effect we have on our families.

“But mainly, it’s about love – love for my mom, my kids, our love for each other. Even with all its complications, it’s something worth celebrating.”

* Right Time To Say I Love You is at the Iambic Arts Theatre, Gardner Street, Brighton, tonight at 8pm tonight and tomorrow at 5pm.

For tickets, call 01273 917272 INTERVIEW Saturday,