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This is short and sweet.

I have been working with those with early to mid-stage Alzheimer’s recently. I also facilitate caregiver support groups and provide Reiki at memory cafes and memory care communities, so I work with both sides of this disease – PWA (Persons With Alzheimer’s) and Caregivers. Every week I work with and walk caregivers through their challenges, fears, hopes, losses, and griefs. Every week, I give love and support to those with Alzheimer’s, bringing some light and joy to their days. In Alzheimer’s talk the PWA is most often referred to as your loved one.

Yesterday, I met a truly Loved One.Read more »

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As I have progressed in my holistic healing approach to living since learning Reiki to support my mother through her journey with Alzheimer’s, loving and sensitive observations have come from working with these beautiful people and their care partners. In response to a recent group discussion around the challenges of sundowning, this article wrote itself from heart and experiences. May it find a place in your understanding of and working with your loved one:

There is a sense of disconnection from self, physical space, and time in Alzheimer’s

Sleep and light can emphasize this ongoing process.

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I just found this poem in an old email I had sent to myself from my workplace.  I have no idea when I wrote it, but it encompasses the heart frozen by grief, a common experience among caregivers.

Purple heart leaves
Along the shores of icy dreams
lay frozen starts
and icy hearts

Read more »

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photo by Ellen Keiter

Last night at a reading I met a woman caregiver who had left her full-time job to be able to be home with her growing children. At eight and sixteen, they are now just at the point where she does not have to worry about them being home alone for varying periods of time, the youngest being able to be home for a short period if needed and the older for longer. She, and they, have been enjoying spending these swiftly passing years of childhood together.

Enter her mother with Alzheimer’s which has progressed to the point where she needed to move in with the family to have the right level of care in her mid-stage journey, and this perfect family plan was suddenly strained by the weight of unexpected complications and the responsibilities of caregiving. Grandma cannot be left alone even for a short period of time without much worry and stress. There is a dire future to prepare for and walk through.

Read more »

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photo by Ellen Keiter

November is National Family Caregiver’s Month

It is a time to reach out to ourselves as caregivers, developing a community of support, care, respite and resources as needed.

As I continue to share my book, On Angels’ Wings, A Journey Through Alzheimer’s with My Mother, in various local venues I find part of its appeal is for those whose loved ones have completed their Alzheimer’s journeys.

Why?

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This beautiful poem came out of my heart all in one sitting during a writing group the summer following mom’s passing. Cardinals were always her birds. Shortly after she passed in January of 2015 I found five full couples of cardinals gathered round my birdfeeder out back. What could be a more poignant message from mom than sending a pair for each – my grandmother and her four daughters – who all made the Alzheimer’s Journey…

Mom – I missed you in the lilies this summer

Cardinal
by kdriscoll442

The wind slipped through the holes in the pines

whispering secrets and memories

brushing back and forth in time to some unknown beat

Never wilting in the heat of lust or day or, whatever may come.

Or not knowing what it was that made time tick away its lot

surrounded by some warm, moist spot lost among the sun-dappled

sprigs of birdsongs

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Purple Dawn

Drawn into the future of hope for a cure as I have become ever more deeply involved in advocacy, this poem uses mom’s favorite lighthouses to pave the path to a brighter dawn for us all.

This scene was custom painted for me by Patrick St. Pierre, a local artist at Fire Seed Arts.

Purple Dawn

I woke up with a song this morning – here it is:

Purple shores washed by the sunset of time

lighted by the beacon of hope for a cure

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Knotted shadows

 

As I have progressed in my journey with Alzheimer’s since mom passed, I have looked for and found ways to continue to bring hope and healing into the Alzheimer’s community. This poem is one of my first “post mom” poems written for a group of caregivers I volunteered to meet with  in a program at one of the local senior centers.

This poem was the expression my own experience of caregiving that I shared with them.  It is my hope it will speak to the heart of caregivers in their journeys everywhere. It came from mine.Read more »

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Spring Buddha

An Alzheimer’s Poem – about Mom and me,
found scratched on the back of a website workshop handout
from some time in 2013. I found it as I was throwing out old papers recently.
This one got saved to share with you here….

A Place of Peace

We seem to be
wrapped in continuity
accustomed to our journey’s steps
quickened in the now
unafraid of the next

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