To Be
Come sit here next to me. Somehow this sentence is always comforting. It is an invitation one expects from someone who cares – a friend, a lover, a parent or grandparent. It feels comforting, reassuring, welcoming. And non threatening. We are on the same level, and I don’t have to feel that you are looking […]
This is my goose
I received the most beautiful email response to my musings on dementia yesterday from one of my employees. (I am really touched by all the responses!) Her father-in-law lives with dementia, and she recently visited him in one of the care homes that I have been involved with for many years. It was his birthday. […]
The computer filing system
A friend of mine’s son of 14 made the remark that if we were to be immortal, our brains would eventually have to start deleting files from storage in order to make space for new files. I like the analogy, and think he has a point. We have some files that take up lots of […]
Precarity
The Aging and Social Change conference provided a lot of food for thought. One presentation that stood out was about PRECARITY and the vulnerability of older people. The social and political changes globally are exposing more and more older people to neglect and abuse. With more older people being connected to social media and the […]
An Altered State
I wonder what would have happened if we considered dementia to be an “altered state”, reframing it as not a syndrome or an illness, but a different way of being in the world. What if there had never been this obsession with the biomedical rhetoric of brain dysfunction or cognitive impairment? What if people who […]