Second-Half of Life Blog

Caregiver Mind Maps

Caregiver Mind Maps
In March 2013 I released my new book Caregiver Mind Maps: New Tools for Aging Parents. I elected a PDF format because the book’s mind maps are designed to be used on the front lines of caregiving, a kinetic space…

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Communicating with Older Adults: An Update

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…

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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From Pleading To Informing…

A lead caregiver of aging parents was going to extraordinary lengths to keep everything together only to find herself drowning in transactional quicksand. As her parents drifted into the land of “more and more care,” her uninvolved siblings either refused…

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Dangling Conversations…

Conversations with adult children about their aging parents eventually include the dilemma of declining health. Embedded in this emotional topic is the volatile issue of “advanced directives.” Everyone knows that you need one, but having just one version turns out…

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The Pedigree Road Map™

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” Jean de La Fontaine The inclusion of genetics into a life management strategy may appear at first to be mistake. Life management implies choices and genetics…

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Predicting The Boomer Future…

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Alan Kay It’s 2026. The future is here, 14 year later. We are taking a sneak peak into the lives of two baby boomer couples that are now well…

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The Right Words…

We are always searching for the right words when a death occurs. We mean well but our attempts to comfort may painfully produce the opposite result. This blog post by Carole Brody is a “refresher course” in how our words…

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So what’s in the world come over you…

The title of this blog is taken from John Prine’s song “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness,” which seems apropos for an article on the profound impact of loneliness on the health of aging parents. Here’s the first punch line:…

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