Consent is extremely important and vital to all aspects of dating, relationships, sex and just about any kind of interpersonal interaction. Whether you want to cuddle, make out, or have or continue some kind of genital sex you will always need to seek and get...
New relationships - whether romantic, sexual, or both - are almost always exciting, no matter who you are. But for people with disabilities in relationships with neurotypical, nondisabled partners, new relationships can be filled with anxiety, including anxiety about...
Who cares? When picturing a caregiver, the person who comes to mind is almost invariably female. She is young (or young-ish). She looks healthy. She is usually in a uniform, the kind associated with nursing, to show that she is what she does. And she is never pictured...
That attack marked the beginning of our struggle to navigate a relationship transformed by trauma. Since then, I think I’ve read just about everything that has been written about how to support a loved one healing from post-traumatic stress. Among other things, I’ve...
A dearth of child care and elder care choices is causing many women to reorganize their working lives and prompting some to forgo jobs altogether, hurting the economy at a moment when companies are desperate to hire, and forcing trade-offs that could impair careers....
At the time, my mom was living in Bellingham, Washington, two years into providing unpaid live-in care for her father-in-law (my step-grandfather, who I reluctantly call “Grandpa,” despite not having much of a relationship with him). He was suffering from debilitating...
I began leaving voice-mail messages for my mother about a month after she died. It was February last year, during some of the darkest days of the pandemic for my family. My teenage daughters were mourning their grandmother while largely cut off from their friends and...
Although sleep is a need, it is a negotiable one. Societies have historically varied in their practices, and minorities have got by on less than is needed, sometimes for a lengthy period. Everyone weighs sleep against other priorities. This plasticity is what gives...
“I hope you’ll still laugh at my jokes when I have dementia,” I said to my husband Ryan on an evening walk not long after my thirty-fourth birthday. It was the first time I had tried out my new resolution to stop saying “if I get dementia” and to start referring to...
At first, my mother, the poet Anne Atik, had seemed just ordinarily confused. Then, very gradually, the confusion took on a pathological aspect. She awoke in the middle of the night thinking it was morning. On what turned out to be her last Eurostar journey, she...
The doctor told Ann that John had severely damaged his spinal cord and was paralyzed from his neck down. He was able to swivel his head from side to side, but because his circulatory system had been disrupted, causing his blood pressure to fluctuate wildly, he could...
His story? When Lythall was six-months-old, his mother, Irene, rushed him to CHEO where he had an emergency intubation that saved his life. He has rarely taken a breath without mechanical help since that day. He spent the next six years in CHEO’s intensive care unit,...
Millions of women in this country are caring for an aging parent or parents and for many, it’s not going so well. The career setbacks they may have experienced as a result of motherhood are compounded by the setbacks they are now experiencing as a result of...
Arbery, who grew up in Dallas with seven sisters in a conservative Catholic milieu similar to that of “Heroes,” had always wanted to write a play about his relationship with Julia, who is two years older (as she likes to remind him). But he didn’t want to write, as he...
The woman is my mother, who is 81 and losing her memory, the past dissolving each day like so many tablets dropped into water and turning to fizz. Do you know who they are? she says, speaking to me, because she realizes I’m there in the doorway. I’m visiting for a...
As a full-time working mom and a full-time medical caregiver to my 4-year-old son, I have many workspaces. My workspace is wherever my son needs me to be in that current moment, and bonus points if the space offers a sturdy seat or a dry spot of grass for my laptop....
It was early evening, and Rebekah Zammett was about to leave her north Oxfordshire home to work a nightshift looking after teenagers at a local residential institution. But then a thud came from the bedroom of her son Jack, who has cerebral palsy. For many, like...
Taylor searched desperately for help, signing Amari up for therapy and putting her on waitlists for intensive, in-home mental health services that are supposed to be available to New York kids with serious psychiatric conditions. But the programs were full, and it...
We undervalue both caregivers and care providers because we don’t value the people who need care. The voices of caregivers are getting louder across the country. They need help. To answer this call, the Azrieli Foundation has launched the Canadian Centre for...
Sabrina, who was given a diagnosis of autism coupled with a rare genetic disorder, has exhibited aggressive behavior since she was a little girl. Now she towers over her parents. When she is happy, she gives them great big hugs, knocking them slightly off balance....
In 2014, I suffered a horrendous roller derby injury hurting my coccyx and dislocating both hips over the span of nine months. I never even made the team; However, I did make numerous doctors appointments, x-rays, physical therapy appointments, and pill after pill...
Quinn empathized with her mother, who feared both a rapid and slow decline. Eva was living in a care home in Victoria when she requested medical assistance in dying (MAID). At 100, she could see the writing on the wall, and she didn’t want to be bedridden. “My brother...
Adult Protective Services agencies in every state receive reports of possible neglect, self-neglect, abuse or exploitation of older people and other vulnerable adults. But agency workers consistently face a bedeviling question: Does the adult in question have the...
How much of yourself do you have to give to your partner in support, and what is the true cost if you forget yourself in the process? The fact of the matter is this: Living with a spouse with depression isn’t impossible, but the question of how to support someone with...