There is a secret club amongst caregivers. Sometimes the experience of caregiving is so extreme, painful, dangerous and exhausting that it cannot easily be described to ‘normal’ friends and family.…
The Four Walls of My Freedom: Lessons I’ve Learned From a Life of Caregiving (House of Anansi Press, 2014) is available everywhere in Canada and for pre-order in the USA.…
Do you ever have days when you feel like you are the only person who cares about kindness? When you begin to think that maybe EVERYONE else is thinking always…
Today, a Forbes blog post caught my eye. Maybe it was the title: “Informal Caregiving? Free Caregiving? Seriously?” … or maybe it was because I always enjoy reading what Howard…
Marcy White was like just about every other young mother-to-be. She was excited, nervous, happy and brimming with the anticipation of seeing her new baby boy. But when her baby…
Mother’s Day 2014 got me wondering how we learn to be good caregivers – what lessons about caring did we learn from our own mothers? I asked friends and colleagues…
How should family caregivers be supported in society? What is the role of government? What is the role of the private sector? What claim does a person needing care have…
Am I a therapist or am I a Mom? How can I rate myself well in one role without failing at the other? In my continuing conversation with Jennifer Johannesen,…
Recently, I had the privilege of sitting down for a chat with my friend and colleague in disability activism, Jennifer Johannesen. Jennifer is a blogger and the author of “No…
A couple of days ago, I was wandering around my local grocery store when I happened to notice a young man in a wheelchair. He was smiling and chatting with…
You can see in Susan Beayni’s eyes just how much she loves her daughter, Rebecca. Love, contribution, friendship and community have been the pillars upon which Susan has built her…
This morning, I was scanning caregiving news online and came across an article titled “The Grandma Effect: A Little Caregiving Sharpens the Brain – A Lot Dulls It.” It turns…
Recently, I wrote about the wisdom and knowledge of caregivers. Families giving care sometimes feel that they are operating in a vacuum – that the only compassionate place is the…
Yesterday morning, I got up really early and travelled to the studios of CanadaAM in Toronto. Here’s the interview about the new paperback edition of my book, “The Four Walls…
What exactly is the wisdom of caregivers? The Oxford Dictionary defines wisdom as the quality of having knowledge, experience and good judgement. Let’s start with knowledge. What do caregivers know?…
My Nana, Christina Mary McLeod, was a strong woman. I remember washing a grey, hooked rug with her at our family cottage on a Quebec lake. She filled the old…
When Nicholas was very young, I decided that my task was to help him live his life in a way that approximated ‘normal’. For us, that meant finding ways for…
There’s a story about Hogewey, a village in The Netherlands that’s gone viral on social media recently. It’s a closed village (ie. it’s got walls around it and there’s an…
This morning I was daydreaming about the movie “The Trip to Bountiful.” It’s a gorgeous film about an elderly woman near the end of her life who has one wish;…
You Finally Got a Vacation…Now, How to Relax? Every caregiver fantasizes about walking out the door, jumping on a plane and disappearing to a deserted island. But, ask a few…
