Dear readers,

This is the 100th edition of this newsletter, and I'm writing today to tell you I'm pausing it. I don't know yet for how long.

I want to say at the top that this is a hard decision, and I'm not making it lightly. When I started writing to you, my mother had been living with Alzheimer's for a couple of years, and I needed a place to put what I was learning. Some of it was practical. Most of it was the slower work of figuring out what it means to love someone whose memory is leaving. Writing to you became part of how I made sense of it, week after week. The notes that have come back, the stories you've trusted me with, the quiet company of knowing you were out there reading: all of that has been a real thing in my life, not a small one.

What's shifted is that the work I do for a living has changed shape. I'm building two practices now. One is a consulting practice for senior living operators, focused on training and workforce leadership. The other is Eastern Ergonomics, a caregiver injury-prevention methodology I've been developing for the last year. Both of them are asking for more of me than I can give while also writing to you every week with the care this subject deserves.

So I'm stepping back, without a return date. I hope to come back. If something clarifies and the time opens up, I'll write again.

Thank you for reading. Some of you have been here a long time, and a few of you have written back in ways I'll carry far into the future. I'm grateful for the community we've built, and I hope our paths cross again. The full archive of past editions will stay up at dementianewsletter.com if you ever want to revisit something or share a piece with someone who needs it. If you ever want to reach out directly, you can find me at [email protected].

In gratitude,
Ben