📰 Greatest Hits of The Dementia Newsletter 📰

Here are a few of our top editions over the last year:

• Penn and Teller’s Guide to Magical Dementia Care (3/4/2025)

• Family Caregivers Can Beat the Pros with this Special Advantage (6/21/2025)

• Mom’s Memory Care Move: Before and After (8/19/2025)

Caregiver’s Corner: Thoughts on the First Year

The Dementia Newsletter turned one year old this week, and I hope you’ll indulge me a little bit as I celebrate my journalistic baby’s birthday and your part in making this a great adventure for me.

The first edition of the newsletter was published on November 22, 2024—a day after my own birthday—as a little present to myself while I was deciding what to do about working in a job in health care that was financially stable but had become a drain on my joy. (The first edition was about surviving Thanksgiving, so this may be a perfect time to revisit it!)

It also served as a way for me to process my own grief by writing about my mother’s journey with Alzheimer’s disease, and my own journey as an adult child. Writing has always been a tool for me to discover my own feelings and come to terms with them, and the Newsletter has been an important outlet for me in finding my own way.

Over time, with lots of experimentation, I found my voice and my audience. I was amazed and so grateful that thousands of people signed up to share this journey with me. I appreciate each and every one of you.

Over the course of this year, I left my job and started my own company, elumenEd. My mom moved into memory care, and then I had to move her when I wasn’t satisfied with the care she was receiving. I’ve networked with amazing dementia professionals, and have had the chance to both learn and teach on this subject. I’ve had the opportunity to be a vital part of the Alzheimer’s Walk….and so much more that I won’t bore you with!

Despite the exhilaration of it all, it’s been one of the more difficult years of my life. There has been a lot of financial uncertainty, and I have been grieving the slow loss of my mother and the loss of a job that I had been in for almost 24 years—even though I left on my own terms, I was there when the company was started and it was a very sad day when I chose to move on.

Community is one of the most important things for caregivers, and the community we’ve created here has kept me going. The ritual of sitting down each week to push out a newsletter that I hope is meaningful to others has become a grounding task for me. It’s part of my personal “therapy,” a safe space where I can talk with friends about our journey.

I’m glad I started this Newsletter at Thanksgiving, because it’s the perfect time to be thankful for you and your readership. Despite the difficulties in the world and in our lives, I still get to see so much beauty every day.

You may not know it, but you encourage and inspire me every time I sit down to write this newsletter. Thank you for being here, dear reader. I appreciate you. I hope you have a wonderful holiday week. Be well, be safe, be kind, and be happy.

Help Keep the Caregiver Stories Coming

If this newsletter has helped you, would you consider supporting it?

Every week, I pour my heart into these words to make your caregiving journey a little lighter and less lonely. Many of you have shared how these stories have brought comfort, perspective, or even a smile on a hard day.

If you’ve ever found a moment of relief or recognition here, I hope you’ll consider tipping—$5, $10, or whatever feels right to you. Your support helps me keep writing, and reminds me how much this work matters.

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