Cyber Friendship, Love and Grief
Before computers, I relied on a monthly magazine for my connection to other caregivers. I was a new mother of a baby with severe disabilities and that magazine was called…
Donna Thomson
Book Review: Memories of My Parents by Amy Madge
“Memories of My Parents” by Amy Madge is a story of love. Not romantic love, but the love of a daughter for her parents. Amy Madge never married – she…
The Idea of Personal Choice – A Tough One for Caregivers
The idea of personal choice is not something that we think of every day, but it’s a little like fresh air – try living without it. As the needs of…
Making Peace with Aging and Infirmity
On holiday in Cat Island, Bahamas recently, something happened. Regular readers of my blog might recall that I’ve blogged about Cat Island before – it’s a remarkable place in its…
Caregiver Advocacy: Part 3, The Roundup
Caregiving a job that is made up of hundreds of small tasks. Each task in itself seems perfectly doable. But taken together and over time, caregiving can be isolating and…
Building a Winning Advocacy Team for Family Caregivers
At first, advocating for care seems like a daunting, almost impossible task. But like any unwieldy job, the trick is to break it down into manageable building blocks. I’ve tried…
How to Advocate for Care: Part 1
Advocating for care is a complicated task. The job of caregiving does not discriminate on the basis of family income, race, education or employment status. Anyone, anytime can find themselves…
4 Tips on Avoiding Conflict With an Aging Parent (or anyone who needs care!)
Caring.com is a great resource for family caregivers of seniors in the US. I am so pleased to share a very wise blog post from Paula Spencer Scott, their senior…
Questions and Answers from a Best Friend
In keeping with my previous posts on the helpfulness of simple questions/answers for loved ones receiving care and their families, here is a wonderful testimony. This is the letter my…
Envisioning a Better Future for Caregivers
Arthur Kleinman understands families like mine. I know he does, because he wrote this: The chronically ill often are like those trapped at a frontier, wandering confused in a poorly…
Lessons in the Meaning of Illness, Aging and Disability
In the days, months and years since my father’s first stroke, since the birth of my two children, since the diagnosis of our son’s disabilities and more recently, since my…
Lessons in the Meaning of Caregiving
I believe that I have a crush on a man I have never met. His name is Arthur Kleinman and he’s a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist. I’ve written before about…
Awakenings: The Push-Pull of Letting Go
I suppose I never really believed that Nicholas could live apart from us – that he could feel truly safe and happy with his caregivers fussing over his tube feeds,…
Positive Self Talk = Powerful Medicine
I learned about the power of positive self-talk when my children were small. I would cross the street with Nicholas in his wheelchair, my daughter Natalie in her stroller and…
The Care Company: Cindy Laverty, A Caregiver Turned Entrepreneur
There’s an interesting trend in caregiving. Women who have had their lives and careers de-railed suddenly by ‘extreme caregiving’ are taking their lessons learned and crafting them into new careers…
Mothers and Daughters are Closest When Daughters Become Mothers
As I look out of my living room window, I think about my neighbors. I don’t know anyone in my area who has invited an aging parent to live at…
Advocating for Care: How to Win, How to Lose
I’ve been buried under a pile of blankets recently trying to keep warm – it’s been -30 degrees where I live in Canada! But I’ve also been holed up designing…
Am I An Abuser?
All this talk of torture in my last post got me wondering about the most awful times of pain and suffering in our own Nicholas’ life. When Nick was small,…
Torture, The Movies and the Politics of Caregiving
A couple of nights ago, my husband Jim and I went to the movies. We saw Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” – a film already infamous for its portrayal of…