This is my personal experience, but one that I hear from others is sadly all too common. Choose assisted living, particularly memory care, very carefully. If your parent is healthy and thriving and just needs help with housework or managing medications, assisted living may be appropriate. ADLs (activities of daily living , and IADLs, Instrumental acitivites…
Our culture tends to romanticize things or speak in euphemisms about the hard stuff. Nobody tells new mothers just how challenging the 24 hour presence of a newborn is. It would sound ungrateful. We soldiered on in relative silence, and unless you have the luxury and the joy of a family nearby that consists of…
The Dog Friends One never knows what the group you call family will consist of. We are all so far flung from our natural extended family that in a crisis they could not do much for us. With a distance of 100 miles away or more , they can’t wrap there arms around you, make a…
I’m getting some pushback about the term Olderhood. “Why not Elderhood” “Why or Seniorhood” I am asked. “I don’t want to be old.” they tell me. I called it Olderhood because everyone is older than someone. First graders hold sway over kindergarden kids. High school kids disdain the junior high group. Seniors are the elders…
You know it’s time, you want to want to do this , but you’re stuck. This is a big deal. It’s the outward expression of your inner acceptance that you are, well, moving on in life. Looking carefully at the quality of your daily life. No deferments, no ‘wait till later’, no ‘I’ll get around to…
For the person selling the family home in their 70s, 80s, or 90s, it represents so much more than a change of residence. And this group has a limited voice and not much say over what happens when adult children step in to be “practical” or “realistic”. It is rather like looking at the folks…
Navigating Olderhood 