caregiver support Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Aging, caregiving and the journey through the second half of life

The Wrong Future

April 23, 2015

Caregivers experience a wide range of stressful situations that require a singularity of focus. While hyper-focus works in the short term, in the long term it takes an insidious toll. Health, activities, friends and finally the future all fall by…

The Art of Holding Space…

March 30, 2015

Heather Plett’s insightful and moving article on holding space, What is means to “hold space” for people, plus eight tips on how to do it well, is a primer on the dance of compassion for those who are leaving as…

No Longer Safe To Drive

February 18, 2015

At some point it becomes painfully obvious. Maybe it’s the near misses, another fender bender, traffic tickets, getting lost on errands, poor night vision, or increasing confusion. Whatever the mix of warning signs, the message is clear and deeply concerning.…

The Medical Journey of Aging Parents

March 9, 2014

We are not bystanders to the medical journey of our aging parents. No matter how daunting the language or specter of healthcare, we are obligated, to the best of our ability, to try and understand what we are being told…

Caregiver Support Lessons…

February 12, 2014

Last fall, I started a caregiver’s support group. The goal was to offer a non-judgmental setting for adult children to share their stories. While being the facilitator, my real job was arranging chairs and making sure everyone had a turn…

Dancing with Negative Feedback: Redirection and Resolution

November 21, 2013

I wrote this article for an assisted living magazine but the technique of “Redirection and Resolution” works in a wide range of situations where negative feedback needs to be managed in a calm, professional manner. Asking the daughter of a…

Communicating with Older Adults: An Update

March 16, 2013

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…

David Solie on Communicating with Senior Housing Clients

January 18, 2013

This is an interview I did for the Senior Real Estate Institute on January 17, 2013. The topic was communicating with senior housing clients, older adults and adult children. The focus was the two psychological hurdles that have to be…

The Caregiver Dance: Compassion and Equanimity

April 1, 2012

Last year I went to a conference on accepting the limits of being a caregiver. It was attended by mostly hospital-based healthcare professionals who have to deal with suffering and loss on a daily basis. The focus of the program…

Navigating Caregiver Dilemmas

May 25, 2011

As the drama of aging parents unfolds, it reveals itself as layers of interconnected dilemmas that resist heroic attempts to keep everything together. Like an unruly Rubik’s Cube, alignment in one caregiver area seems to trigger chaos in another. Just…