Dealing with Grief and Fears

In the past months, I have been navigating the rough and turbulent waters of dementia, trying to cope with the changes I observe in my mother’s behavior. I was oblivious at first – or perhaps I overlooked the signs. I hoped the dementia…

Elderly people face all of the same scams as everyone else, but some scams disproportionately affect the older generations. Many of these fall under the umbrella of elder fraud – the misappropriation or abuse of financial control…

Eugenie was telling me how wonderful she felt. This was unusual and unexpected because she was in her early 70s and had several health challenges, but on this day she told me: “Something has shifted, and it’s all because I did something…

They say that time is a healer, but it is you who learns to heal, through time. You become a master of how to avoid the pain that seems to be in every cell in your body. You slowly learn that crying all day leads to constant headaches, fatigue…

I never thought about death much, other than as a concept, until my husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2010. Now, as I enter my 60th year, I’m very aware of the juxtaposition of life and death. It is simply impossible to have one without the other…

Good physical health is most often tied to a sense of good mental and emotional wellness. However, when challenging situations and circumstances happen in life, we are provided with a crossroads which can affect both mental…

“I don’t want to pay that amount of money for something I don’t want!” I screamed these words to the funeral director who sat opposite me on the sofa two days after my husband had died. Tears rolled down my cheeks, I felt beside myself with rage…

A few years ago, I would have blamed my anxiety on the unsettling situation I was experiencing. I thought anxiety just happened; it seemed so. I thought I couldn’t control it! My mind kept repeating the same scary, negative thoughts. I was miserable…

In working with 1,100 people living with dementia, I’ve found working with them is the easy part! It’s their families who are much more challenging. Typically, the whole family is pulling together to figure out how to manage day-to-day life, the ins and outs of care, and trying to plan ahead. The whole family, except for that one family member…

Rituals are actions that symbolically connect us to something that is meaningful. They can be comforting and can help us express feelings, bring about a sense of closure, or keep an important part of the past alive. Rituals mark time as well as create time…