About

How do you define yourself?

Care partner, caregiver, care receiver

These terms imply roles that may or may not apply to how you see yourself. Some people see “care partner” as a neutral term that suggests we are all both givers and receivers, and to some extent that is true. Nevertheless, the reality is that in many situations, it’s a distinctly unequal partnership where the greater giver finds it hard to call it a partnership. Other English-speaking countries use the term “carer” in place of caregiver for both professional and informal caregivers, which I like because really, it can be applied to anyone who cares for/about anyone in any of the above roles. I will use it often on this site.

While the focus of this site is caregiving, my primary website, Wiser Now, exists to help people achieve and maintain wellbeing, especially as they age. When you are finished here, I hope you will check out all that it offers.

My story

My multiple caregiving roles began in the 1980s when my mother began to show progressive signs of dementia. In response, I began taking on more and more responsibility for tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry, and my mother’s personal hygiene. After a devastating car accident in 1991, in which my father nearly died and my mother suffered 12 broken bones and further head injuries, my experience expanded to hiring fulltime home care for my father and assisted living care for my mother while her bones healed. In the years that followed, the range of my caregiving experience expanded further to:

• too many hospital stays and doctor visits to count before my father’s death two years later;
• another 3-1/2 years tending to the increasing care needs for my then non-verbal, incontinent, and eventually bedridden mother, who nevertheless continued to exude her gentle, cheerful personality;
• a full range of hired live-in aide assistants, one of whom stole money and pain pills from my father, one of whom was neglectful of my mother, and others who were life rafts for me;
• two years during which I was my bedridden mother’s full-time caregiver, performing all care tasks including feeding, bed-bathing, and changing;
• two years (yes, really) of help from hospice care aides, nurses, and doctors;
• unwelcome experience with medical paperwork, endless phone calls, unhelpful “advisors” . . .

What I’m saying is, any caregiving expertise I have comes from walking the walk, not only for my parents, but for a brother, sister-in-law, niece, and friends. Every caregiver’s journey is unique, but I have true empathy for others’ joys and sorrows on that journey.

In the midst of all the turmoil of caring for my parents, I began putting my degree in Instructional Technology (training) to work in the field of dementia care. I wrote an award-winning newsletter, eventually turned that into books, became the behind-the-scenes video expert for clients in the U.S. and Australia, and did loads of in-person training. Using my mother as my role model, I provided practical, instantly-usable guidelines always with an upbeat attitude. (Discussing continence care, I noted, “We can’t be anal about this.”) As I wrote above, my mother rarely spoke a coherent word for 5-1/2 years, but she still managed to convey joy. Finding the joy that remains is my purpose in everything I have done since.