Do you remember playing with your mother’s or grandmother’s button jar as a child? As small...
Category: Caring for a Grandparent
What the loss of my mum taught me about the burden of care on young women
One of the most important things that losing my mum has taught me is that the burden of care falls...
How Family Caregivers Make Career and Elder Care Work
With the number of working Americans caring for an aging parent growing, you might expect that...
10 Rules We Can Learn From Aging Parents Now
We watch elderly parents make choices we swear we would NEVER do. Yet so many of our aging loved...
Grandma’s Dementia Made Her Forget Her Homophobia
After watching the way my mom’s family had treated her [after she came out], my own coming out was...
With love, Grandma
I didn’t really realize it was issue. I mean there were signs here and there, but nobody can have...
Changing ‘the tragedy narrative’: Why a growing camp is promoting a more joyful approach to Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer's is now the diagnosis Americans fear most. Fewer than half of patients diagnosed with...
Inheritance delayed
01 Do I Know You? R.L. Gibson 16” x 20” Xerography (mixed media) 2014 02 But Now I See R.L. Gibson...
5 Simple Ways to Keep Seniors Safe at Home
Help Your Senior Stay Safe at Home Using These 5 Tips Aging in place independently can be a...
The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care
When do we owe people the full truth about their lives? What happens when people cannot understand...
Substance Abuse in Seniors: Prevention Tips and Treatment Options
The opioid epidemic has cost the government $1 trillion since 2001, but this isn’t just an issue...
You are not your meat suit
Describing seniors as "cute" is demeaning. When you're designing for a cute little old lady,...
The Boxed Generation: Caring and Coping on All Sides
Baby Boomers and Gen Xer’s had better get used to this complex reality, because their generations...
Navigating A Hospital Stay: A guide for caregivers and patients with cognitive loss
Most patients and their loved ones experience a wide range of emotions when confronted with a...
What keeps me going: Family
I'm not going to pretend that taking care of my dad is easy. It's exhausting. It's taken over my...
Rethinking My Broken Relationship with My Troubled Dad Now That He’s Dead
I knew my father abused drugs. I watched that man abuse drugs since I was five. I had memorized...
Lost Cause: On Estrangement and Chosen Family
I think I’m supposed to feel badly that my grandmother doesn't always recognize me, but I don’t....
Tiffany Haddish on the first thing she did when she got rich
The first thing she did when she made it big was to help her family, as many newly rich...
The dangerous topic of appreciation
Does the person who you caregive for appreciate what you do? It's a dangerous question to ask,...
Alcoholism and Addiction In the Elderly
Did you know that widowers over 75 have the highest rate of alcoholism in the United States? An...
What do you miss most about your “old life”?
Caregiving changes your life forever. Even when caregiving ends, we've been transformed. Here's...
Of Spanish and My Grandmother
In 2007, a few years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, my grandmother moved into my tía...
Don’t Let Me Be, Forgotten
The Art of losing isn’t hard to master, so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that...
The Condition that Shielded My Grandfather From Heartbreak
By the first week of July, a nurse called and said, Things are progressing. This seemed like...