More Than Caregiving

We live in an age of Twitter, of 140 characters, of quick comebacks and pithy replies. Of looking like we know what we are doing, where we are going, where we ought to be by now. Online, we see what everyone else is doing. Comparisons follow. And so does the craving for something unbiased, thoughtful, reliable. Read More

Narcissism is easy to misunderstand. Many people believe that the narcissist is deeply in love with himself or herself—the true self, that is. If the narcissist is in love with anything, it's the image of himself. The narcissist is in love with the image of the self he or she has created. That image is an illusion (hence the term "false self"). Read More

Perhaps you are aware of trying to find a balance between the reality of disease or a particular situation and the anxious thoughts, fears and worries that can fuel feelings of resentment, inadequacy and being overwhelmed. Or maybe what is being sought is something else--an inner knowing of the difference between power and control.   Read More

Jane Gross's memoir, A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents and Ourselves (Knopf), is a smart and highly detailed book about navigating the complex eldercare system as it relates to healthcare, insurance and end of life--as those things relate to one's parent. It's also about learning not to be perfect or, rather, to accept one's imperfections. Read More

Arthur Riven's op-ed last year in the Los Angeles Times has stayed with me. It's about being both a physician and an Alzheimer's patient, and perhaps one of the best pieces I've read about living life, and living life on life's terms with grace. Dr. Read More

It seems that Alzheimer's disease is often mistaken for other dementias. We might refer to memory loss in a parent, for example, as Alzheimer's when we're not exactly sure that's what it actually is. In a way, the term acquired a somewhat pedestrian status, the ubiquitous catch phrase we choose to describe a momentary (mid-life, for example) period of forgetting something. Read More

I watched the "hoarding show" when it was still on Discovery Health (when Discovery Health still existed!), but in visiting the homes of patients as an LCSW have seen the effects of real-life hoarding. Hoarding is a disease that acts, in many ways, like an addiction. As such, it affects the family much like addiction affects the family. Read More

The notion of "surrender" is not one we cling to when it comes to illness. Rather, the words we use are more of the kind that represent battle, of winning: kick this thing, beat that one, fight this symptom, head that one off at the pass. There is nothing wrong with any of this...unless they make you feel worse that you already do. Read More

A quick trip to the ER is nerve-racking enough. But a protracted hospital stay? No one likes the sound of that.  Read More

Keeper, by Andrea Gillies, is a book that stays with you. Not only the story but the person, the writer herself. By the book's end I felt like I knew this author, that if we met over coffee (or, in her case tea; she's from the UK) we would have plenty to talk about. Even better, I felt that if we weren't talking, the silence would not be awkward. Read More

This past weekend, two articles about money in the context of the parent-child-and older parent-adult child relationship caught my eye. The first, by Beth Kobliner, Help Your Grown Children Without Going Broke was in Parade (it was short...did you see it?) was a very brief overview of the topic. The second, Should You Bail Out Spendthrift Parents? Read More

It's been 19 years since my father passed away, but I still remember what the oncologist told our family just weeks before my dad died: "His cancer is fatal, but not life threatening."

Huh? Read More