In the summer of 2009, Rebecca James Hecking's elderly father suffered a catastrophic fall that turned his life upside down and launched her into nearly six years of active caregiving for both her parents. The experience was emotionally challenging, heart opening and ultimately life changing. Written to provide emotional support and practical advice for you, the adult child caregiver, it will help you navigate the many challenges you may encounter as you care for your elderly parent. Part practical advice, part spiritual guide, The Thoughtful Caregiver is your companion on the caregiving journey. Although there are many excellent books on eldercare available, few focus primarily on the needs and experience of the adult child caregiver directly. The Thoughtful Caregiver was written to fill that gap. The Thoughtful Caregiver covers a wide range of topics including: * Handling the unique stresses of caregiving* Finding balance between caregiving and the rest of your life* Negotiating the parent/adult child relationship* Surviving the emotional nightmare of a parent with dementia* Navigating a major move * Coping with sudden, unexpected crises* Decision making at the end of life * Balancing expectations and reality* Handling the holidays and the unique challenges they pose to caregiving* Sorting out the intersection of grief and dementia* Developing creative coping rituals unique to you* Sorting out the emotional baggage of your relationship with your parent* Growing into greater compassion * Integrating your caregiving years into the bigger picture of your lifeEach chapter is labeled with several word tags such as anger, crisis, self-care, or family dynamics that are indexed in the back of the book to help you find exactly the support you need when you need it. There are also several questions at the end of each chapter that are suitable for journaling or reflection to help you gain perspective on your own unique situation. Throughout the book, Rebecca shares her own story, and offers a mix of practical physical advice and mindful reflection. The Thoughtful Caregiver is like having a conversation over a cup of tea with a friend who has walked the caregiving path a little bit ahead of you.

From the critically acclaimed author of This Burns My Heart comes a “luminous mother-daughter saga” (Entertainment Weekly) about a young woman who is forced to flee 1980s Brazil for California, and in doing so unearths the hidden life of her enigmatic mother. Mara Alencar’s mother Ana is her moon, her sun, her stars. Ana, a struggling voice-over actress, is an admirably brave and recklessly impulsive woman who does everything in her power to care for her little girl in perilous 1980s Rio de Janeiro. With no other family or friends her own age, Ana eclipses Mara’s entire world. They take turns caring for each other—in ways big and small. But who is Ana, really? As she grows older, Mara slowly begins to piece together the many facets of Ana’s complicated life—a mother, a rebel, and always, an actress. When Ana becomes involved with a civilian rebel group attempting to undermine the city’s cruel Police Chief, their fragile arrangement begins to unravel. Mara is forced to flee the only home she’s ever known, for California, where she lives as an undocumented immigrant, caregiving for a dying woman. It’s here that she begins to grapple with her turbulent past and starts to uncover vital truths—about her mother, herself, and what it means to truly take care of someone. A “lovely and heartbreaking” (People) story that is “simultaneously dreamlike and visceral” (The Atlantic), The Caregiver is “a beautiful testament to Samuel Park’s extraordinary talents as a storyteller…that reads, in some moments, like a thriller—and, in others, like a meditation on what it means to be alive…A ferocious page-turner with deep wells of compassion for the struggles of the living—and the sins of the dead” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

When Judith Henry's mother and father became ill in 2007, even her reputation as a pragmatist, a planner and a dutiful daughter (her father's term) couldn't prepare her for what lay ahead - a long list of concerns that included navigating an unfamiliar healthcare system, addressing financial and legal issues, dealing with stress and family dynamics, choosing a rehab center, and ultimately, making hospice arrangements.Doing what came naturally to her, she captured these experiences on paper - writing about what worked and what didn't; about finding humor in the oddest places; and the ways in which the past, present and future often intersect.As Judith looks back at her childhood, and reveals intimate stories about assisting both her parents years later, she also shares practical suggestions and critical information on topics every son and daughter should know as their own caregiving journey begins.

Caring for elderly parents is challenging. It’s a season of life that requires grace and strength that can only come from God. In The Caregiving Season, Jane Daly shares personal caregiving stories, offering practical advice to help you honor your aging parents well and deepen your personal relationship with Christ along the journey.

With a foreword by Judy Woodruff, The Unexpected Journey of Caring is a practical guide to finding personal meaning in the 21st century care experience. Personal transformation is usually an experience we actively seek out—not one that hunts us down. Becoming a caregiver is one transformation that comes at us, requiring us to rethink everything we once knew. Everything changes—responsibilities, beliefs, hopes, expectations, and relationships. Caregiving is not just a role reserved for “saints”—eventually, everyone is drafted into the caregiver role. It’s not a role people medically train for; it’s a new type of relationship initiated by a loved one’s need for care. And it’s a role that cannot be quarantined to home because it infuses all aspects of our lives. Caregivers today find themselves in need of a crash course in new and unfamiliar skills. They must not only care for a loved one, but also access hidden community resources, collaborate with medical professionals, craft new narratives consistent with the changing nature of their care role, coordinate care with family, seek information and peer support using a variety of digital platforms, and negotiate social support—all while attempting to manage conflicts between work, life, and relationship roles. The moments that mark us in the transition from loved one to caregiver matter because if we don’t make sense of how we are being transformed, we risk undervaluing our care experiences, denying our evolving beliefs, becoming trapped by other’s misunderstandings, and feeling underappreciated, burned out, and overwhelmed. Informed by original caregiver research and proven advocacy strategies, this book speaks to caregiving as it unfolds, in all of its confusion, chaos, and messiness. Readers won’t find well-intentioned clichés or care stereotypes in this book. There are no promises to help caregivers return to a life they knew before caregiving. No, this book greets caregivers where they are in their journey—new or chronic—not where others expect (or want) them to be.

Aaron and Stella Alterra had been married for more than sixty years when Aaron began to notice puzzling lapses in his wife's memory. Innocuous at first, they became more severe and more alarming. After a series of appointments and tests, the Alterras were informed that Stella was one of the more than 4.5 million Americans with Alzheimer's disease. Combining medical research on the disease and often-painful anecdotes of memory loss, deteriorating motor functions, personality shifts, support-group and daycare experiences, and drug trials, Alterra chronicles his transformation from husband to caregiver after his wife's diagnosis. More than a chronology of one family's experience of Alzheimer's disease, The Caregiver is an intelligent, beautifully reflective testimony to how family members turned caregivers become the ultimate advocates for their loved ones in the face of a disease with no cure.

A moving, intimate, and compassionate book that chronicles the experiences of a group of long-term caregivers—spouses, parents, and friends of the elderly and ill—illuminating critical issues of old age, end-of-life care, medical reform, and social policy—and “providing comfort in the time-honored form of shared experience” (The Minneapolis Star-Tribune). In 2010, journalist Nell Lake began sitting in on the weekly meetings of a local hospital’s caregivers support group. Soon members invited her into their lives. For two years, she brought empathy, insight, and an eye for detail to understanding Penny, a fifty-year-old botanist caring for her aging mother; Daniel, a survivor of Nazi Germany who tends his ailing wife; William, whose wife suffers from Alzheimer’s; and others with whom all caregivers will identify. Witnessing acts of devotion and frustration, lessons in patience and in letting go, Lake illuminates the intimate exchanges of caregiving and care-receiving and considers important and timely social issues: How can we care for the aging, ill, and dying with skill and compassion, even as the costs and labors of care increase? How might the medical profession take into account the needs of caregivers as well as patients? In The Caregivers Nell Lake shares a thoughtful and tenderly reported depiction of the real-life predicaments that evoke these crucial questions. With more and more people spending their late years ill and frail, and 43 million Americans already caring for family members over age fifty, this is an important chronicle of a widely shared experience and a public concern. “The Caregivers is as elegantly constructed as a novel, but more than that, Lake writes about these people with such warmth and vividness that they feel as memorable as our favorite fictional characters. It is a beautifully written account” (The Boston Globe).