Alan Jackson’s song The Older I Get combines a reminiscent melody with lyrical insights about being old that are both memorable and profound. I especially like the verse about friendships and added it to one of my painting, which proved to be an inspiring combination.
If you are caring for an older adult, these two handouts may prove invaluable in helping you manage the stress of the caregiver role and the unavoidable wounds both generations incur in the process. You can order pdf copies of both handouts below The Four-Knows Strategy Handout This strategy was created for caregivers but it … Continued
I was asked by the owner of a wellness retreat program to create a meditation for their workbook about overcoming life’s setbacks. We both agreed it was an appropriate topic given the brutal setbacks we all experienced this past year. But as I looked at the shell-shock survivors, it became clear to me that our … Continued
“Things do not always go according to plan.” David Richo from The Five Things We Cannot Change… The plan has always been for boomers to transition to smaller, one-story homes in the last phase of life. The underlying assumption of downsizing was that there would always be a sufficient inventory of these cozy senior bungalows … Continued
I’m not sure if the uneven tides of love that seep into every relationship were any differnet in theme during the pandemic that just passed through our lives, but iI am certian they felt more intense. Moon Moods is a collection of four paintings that echo some element of unbalanced love that arrived during the … Continued
Better Together Love is the answer, at least for most of the questions in my heart Like why are we here? And where do we go? And how come it’s so hard? It’s not always easy and Sometimes life can be deceiving I’ll tell you one thing, it’s always better when we’re together” Jack Johnson … Continued
It is well documented in the medical literature that the stress of caregiving poses a serious threat to caregiver health. What is not so well documented are strategies that can be implemented to mitigate this threat. One of these is The Four-Knows Strategy.
Below you will find a summary of The Four-Knows Strategy that is designed to set limits that protect the quality of care and caregiver’s health. While conversations about setting limits can at times be difficult, the effectiveness of this approach, especially when deployed early on in the caregiving journey is worth the effort to help family members understand and respect the strategy.
let me introduce to you an inspiring vision of social robots that could await us in the future. Armed with incomprehensible technology, advanced training in all facets of aging, and linguistic skills that rival humans, this new genre of social robots will serve as confidants, coordinators, coaches, researchers, historians, and medical bodyguards for seniors. In addition, they will have the capability to reduce the loneliness and isolation that haunts old age.
Valentine’s Day is an odd celebration of the forgotten. Those are remembered are lavished with recognition, gifts and status, leaving the larger cohort of the unremembered to fend for themselves. This is where art can offer solace and inclusion with a utilitarian valentine that shares its beauty and inspiration with everyone who did not receive a valentine and provides an instant remedy for the valentine you didn’t send.
This is the first work combining art and music that I’ve done where I created all the moving parts. I wrote the musical score, played it on the piano and painted all the art art.
It is an ode to the friends in our lives whose love and support keep us afloat in our most trying hours. Just thinking about them calms our heart and brings a smile to our face. And that’s why I entitled this new work “When I Think of You.” Feel free to share with your friends…
We tell ourselves that things are going to be better this year between our siblings. We’re not going to react to their provocative remarks or rude behavior. The truth is we don’t even make it through the first day of the holiday festivities before find ourselves caught up in conflicts that have haunted us since childhood. So here are my first post-holiday reminder entitled Sibling Rules:
This week I released a new notecard set that features 10 of my favorite paintings, which are shown below. The set of all 10 and sets of 10 of the individual sets are available at my online Etsy Shop (see link below). The only criticism I have so far about my notecards is that “they’re … Continued
To have courage for whatever comes in life – everything lies in that…Saint Teresa of Alviar Courage by David Solie
“I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.” Albert Camus, from The Plague
Ludovico Maria Enrico Einaudi OMRI is an Italian pianist and composer. Trained at the Conservatorio Verdi in Milan, Einaudi began his career as a classical composer, later incorporating other styles and genres such as pop, rock, folk, and world music. His most famous piece is from his 2002 album “I Giorni,” which translates as “The Days” in English. The title track, “I Giorni” is a six-minute violin, piano, and string orchestra melodic masterpiece that from its first notes will lift your spirits and restore your hope.
A painting that celebrates the energy of new beginnings…
What an honor to hear Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax with their collective maturity and stunning technical skills both play and discuss Beethoven’s soaring Cello Sonata No. 3 in A Major in an empty auditorium at the Tanglewood Music Center, in Massachusetts. The absolute beauty of the work is enhanced by the realization of the … Continued
I created this video for adult children and their aging parents. It is information that both generations need to know about the psychology of the last phase of life. It restores dignity and purpose in the lives of older adults, and it provides adult children with insights about the needs of their aging parents. My hope is that helps both generations to build a supportive partnership for what lies ahead.
Below is a blessing from the Celtic mystic, John O’Donohue that I am offering to all you who follow my spiritual wanderings on this digital footpath.
Most of you remain unknown to me but not unfamiliar. There’s is a resonance in the postings on my digital footpath that ring true with some aspect your journey. It might be a word, a phase, an insight or sense making that qualifies as a breakthrough. And that is enough.
Pandemic-driven isolation creates a painful dilemma for families on the verge of needing a new level of care for some with Alzheimer’s disease. Do they move the person to a care facility, or do they try to bring additional resources into the home? Either way, the cost is substantial, and the stress remains overwhelming, with all options subject to the limitations of the pandemic.
Medical science can explain the chain of vulnerability that led to waves of death that COVID 19 visited in nursing homes. Wrong place. Wrong time. Luck is destiny. But our hearts know a much different story. Here’s mine. In my clinical days as a PA in family medicine, I was a frequent visitor to the … Continued
Control is the current we ride to the end. Sometimes It’s buried in a dilemma between two unsavory choices and no escape hatch. Sometimes heroic efforts to facilitate control provoke dilemmas we never saw coming.
This five-minute video on the control task is a refresher course on the context of the control game in the last phase of life
My point is that control a relative game with confusing priorities, unclear definitions of success, played in the imperfect atmosphere of the earth. What counts are the values you bring to the assignment of the caregiver. They hold the key to your emotional compass when things start to fall apart or seem impossible to manage.
At some point, driving gets away from our aging parents. It’s an insidious process that lulls older adults into a false sense of security that their driving skills are still adequate. Adult children see a different picture of “unsafe driving” that can only get worse. The question is how do adult children approach aging parents on such a sensitive and volatile topic?
Life review asks us to reconsider people that have played an important role in who we are today. We are surprised that with the passing of time there has been an unexpected shift in opinions about people we were sure would never change.
Some say it is the heart’s compassion reminding us how hard life is for everyone and the messy footprint we all leave behind. Perhaps it’s an expression of the Franciscan belief that every step of our journey is sacred and designed to enhance our spiritual growth especially in the art of forgiveness. Or it may simply be higher wisdom that comes with our last years.
And this is why I love Marge Piercy’s poem The Visible and the In with its diverse and beautifully phased inventory of people who pass through our lives and the impact of that experience on all aspects of our life.
The developmental tasks of a life stage offer important insights into the perspective, behavior, and priorities of its cohort. They help us decode the purpose and meaning of what we are experiencing with members of this life stage group and understand the unique psychological needs the tasks create.
Below is a diagram I use to explain the shift that older adults are experiencing in the last phase of life. The perspective, behavior, and priorities these new tasks create can be a point of confusion and frustration for families and people work with seniors. I emphasize that older adults are not the person they use to be. They have matured, grown, and moved on. Our job is to understand the details of this transition and explore how we can facilitate and accommodate its process.
These famous lines of poetry written in 1807 by the English poet William Wordsworth. It echoes familiar anxieties that have taken up residence in our collective subconscious and proceeded to release a dark flood of bad news that haunts our over-stimulated brains to the point where we feel we have “given our hearts away.”
Despite our grim situation, the things we treasure most are still in play in the landscape if we focus our attention on the values that make life worth living. And when we find their expression in real life, there is no doubt in our hearts that even this too shall pass. And that’s happened to me about a month ago
I want to share with you a story about How To Say It To Seniors found a new audience unbeknownst to me. A few years ago, a colleague of mine shared how he used my book with aging parents who were not my primary audience. I told him I wrote for adult children. He told me I was missing an audience that needed to read my book. How do I get them to read it? Here is what he told me
When he met older clients who had adult children, he told the older adult that he has just finished reading a book on communicating with seniors. It presented a new theory about the psychology of older adults and how this information offered new communication strategies.
Older adults see where they live as the Alamo and will make their last stand defending it. We advance with logic, manipulations, and threats, and they use any means at their disposal to repel us. Here’s why.
1. The place they call home is usually the last spot on earth they control, and for them, control is everything in a world where all authority is fading. They know that once they lose what they call home, the “endgame” begins, and there’s no going back.
2. Older adults fear the loss of independence and nursing homes more than death, a telling finding from the “Aging in Place in America” study commissioned by Clarity® and The EAR Foundation. When asked what they fear most, seniors rated loss of independence (26%) and moving out of home into a nursing home (13%) as their greatest fears. Just 3% of seniors indicated that death was their greatest fear. (Link to study)
Adult children are compelled by real or potential safety issues to get aging parents to move. They are hoping their parents will finally agree. In most cases, they never do. They may ultimately acquiesce to pressure from the family, but they are more than willing to “hold position” until events “force” a change. This strategy makes the caregivers crazy because they can see it coming and are at a loss to understand why aging parents they remain blind to the threat. What happens if they fall or have a stroke? But their parents don’t see it that way. They look at the same facts and come up with a different interpretation of the risk. Here is what they see.
Here is the link to the new order page on my art website where you can order Reason To Hope and The Last Time notecard boxes.
This is my second deck of 10 front-folded note cards with envelopes. The deck is entitled Reason To Hope. These new paintings honor nature’s transformative beauty despite the dire predictions of a dark future. Granted, the long odds against turning the tide of the impending ecological disaster are slim, but I still retain an illogical … Continued
In his article, Coronavirus requires physical distance in end-of-life care. But we won’t let isolation prevail, Rev. Thomas Ryberg, a chaplain resident at Albany Med in Albany, New York, writes:
Even at patients’ time of dying, I have tearfully beheld the gentle care given by nurses who gown up and tend to the final moments of their patients with soothing words, song, and touch. Paradoxically, when we accompany one another to the point of death, life itself is affirmed. One ICU nurse put it this way: “I’m present with them. I’m in the moment with them so that they are not alone.”
Secrets are a powerful form of control, and aging parents may elect to keep secret information about the health, finances, or long term plans. Here’s a strategy adult children can use to respond to the withholding of vital caregiving information.
In the end, caregivers accept the limits of what they can control while making the best of what remains—a shift in focus to one good day at a time.
Honoring the here and now offers a nurturing space for aging parents and adult children filled with family, friends, pets, music, outings, and favorite stories.
This act of love and presence lifts everyone above the unavoidable deficits of life’s final drama, an irreplaceable inventory of special moments providing comfort and gratitude long after they’re gone.
I created the Corona Warrior insignia to honor the healthcare workers on the frontlines of the corona virus pandemic, fearless souls who represent the edict Jesus spoke of in the New Testament when he said , “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.”
We have stepped through the sociological looking glass to flatten out the pandemic curve only to discover yet another degree of digital isolation with social distancing and self-quarantine. I’m not saying texting, emails, and FaceTime doesn’t have a role in keeping us connected in our brave new world. They do, but with one significant limitation. There is an element of personal touch that is missing, even if our emails say the same thing as our more personal forms of communication. That was made clear to me when I recently got a notecard I got from a long time friend I hadn’t heard from in years.
Between the mundane and the horrific lies a divine construct trying to signal us reassurance and hope that there is a bigger game at play here, one that your heart will recognize and draw courage from as we make our way through the confusing storm that has become our life.
“ I can’t believe I’m being required to undergo a driving evaluation,” Nancy could hear how upset her father was at the idea of being retested to keep his driver’s license, “I have been a licensed driver for over 50 years and now, all of a sudden my driving skills are being questioned?” His voice a mixture of indignation, anxiety and embarrassment.
“Dad, I’m sure this just didn’t come out of nowhere,” Nancy said trying to stay calm and figure out why he got that letter from the DV in the first place. “Is there something new going on with your driving that would cause the DMV to be concerned?” Long pause. “Dad?”
The real work of families is recovery. In the volatile landscape of family systems, everything is exaggerated, both good and bad. One of the predictable “bad” events in the drama of aging parents is sibling infighting. It can be triggered by anything, but it is mostly about money, power, and affection. Once provoked, it extracts an emotional toll on the entire system that resists recovery. Here is a case in point.
Families are complex systems where minor changes can produce major consequences at any time and with out warning.
Accepting this reality as an immutable law of the world of aging parents helps prevents exhaustive efforts to prevent them from happening. They are unavoidable.
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.—Aristotle
After completing one of these Social Fabric Mind Maps you can suggest and provide more recreational activities, social outreach, and other ways to provide social support – or brainstorm with other stakeholders intent on improving your loved one’s well-being.
Often just seeing a diagram of the social connections your loved one has will help strategize ways to strengthen existing connections or expand their connections.
It’s a fact of family life: roles are cut in stone. Stop trying to change a sibling who for the most part resents your audacity to assume you need and have the right to “fix’ him or her.
Accurately assess what a sibling will or will not do for an aging parent. If their contribution is zero, then zero it is ad move on.
it was the kind of moon
that I would want to
send back to my ancestors
and gift to my descendants
so they know that I too,
have been bruised by beauty.
? Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence
This new painting, entitled Life Metaphor, depicts the polyphasic downpour of light and darkness on all our lives, a carpet bombing of lessons aimed at our spiritual growth whether we paying attention or not…
The residue of childhood carries with it complex feelings about aging parents that limit objectivity, exaggerates responsibilities and increases emotional vulnerability.
This distorted landscape makes it impossible for adult children to receive the approval the desperately seek from their aging parents as they struggle to do the right thing.
Feeling overwhelmed, aging parents may turn to magical thinking to solve problems. Like denial, it allows them a way to defer the complexity and burden of a problem.
After 30 years of public speaking, I am leaving the main stage and focusing my encore career on working with small study groups. I am deeply grateful for the amazing opportunities I have been offered tp present my material from the main stage. It has truly been a once in a lifetime experience, and I proud of my work as a public speaker. But everything has it moment and then it changes. So I’m moving to the more relaxed and collaborative environment of small study groups. Simply put, I am moving home.
It’s all about the questions that call you back
To plot points that wait for you to catch the meaning
You missed the last time you circled the story
You tell yourself that gets you from there to here
Always magically arranged to fit who you have become.
