Discovering Legacy

Dearest Son, Dearest Daughter…

I wrote How To Say It To Seniors for adult children of aging parents as well as professionals who work with older adults. In retrospect, that was short sighted. What I failed to appreciate was that older adults were deeply…

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Poetry and Aging Parents, Part 2

We back into life review on the path to the end. Dana Gioia moving poem The Lost Garden captures the cognitive melody of recalling who and what has come to define us as well as the wisdom of “wanting nothing…

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Grandma Knutsen

This is my wonderful Grandma Knutsen who immigrated to America in 1892 from Norway. She was “processed” through Ellis Island on her way to the “new” Norway, Minnesota. God rest her heroic soul……

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Communicating with Older Adults: An Update


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I have been studying how to unlock the communication code of older adults for the last twenty-three years. My first breakthrough came early on with developmental psychology, a model based on age-specific tasks that are easy to understand, easy to…

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Dancing with Life Review…


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Boomers are feeling their age and the pull of life review. It is poetry at its finest as is Dorianne Laux’s magical poem about our swan song. Dark Charms by Dorianne Laux Eventually the future shows up everywhere: those burly…

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The Wrong Signals: Shutting Down Change Before It Starts


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How do we help our aging parents consider making positive changes in their lives? We want to help, and feel we have good ideas that could improve their quality of life. For example, we would like for them to consider:…

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I Don’t Need Assisted Living!


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An older adult is ready to move into an independent living community and undergoes a “pre-placement” health assessment by the facility’s physician. Based on the findings, the physician indicates that the older adult “needs assisted living.” The older adult and…

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The Talk of Life: Organic Legacy, Out Loud

“What’s so important about saying it out load?” I was asked a few months ago during a Q&A session at the end of one of my presentations that talked about ?creating an organic legacy? Good question I replied. What is…

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