About the Author
After growing up without the benefit of daily spiritual guidebooks, the author spent her youth gathering material that did little else but worry her parents. She took a break from her debauched explorations and cared for her divorced mother and siblings during her mother's 18-month bout with pancreatic cancer. Her mother died at 40, when the author was 20.
The author was left with three glorious siblings who are, to this day, her soulmates. Laughing with them has blown every bit of goodness and joy in and out of her lungs for all their lives, and hopefully for all her life to come.
Over many years, the author has cared for close family members during their illnesses and their eventual passing. So, she comes to caregiving with experience and a lot of storage space for sadness and loss. She is not a physician, a nurse, or even a trained caregiver. She is simply one of millions of carers who live with, love and care for family members and friends with dementia.
About the Book
In the early 1980's, after many shenanigans and too much mischief, the author took her life into the repair shop for a re-build. Since then, her bedstand has been festooned with daily inspirational books and other spiritual canons.
Decades later, her partner started having memory issues. They went to psychiatrist specializing in memory loss in 2018. After her partner took an oral memory test called a SLUMS test, she excused herself to go to the bathroom. When she left, the doctor darted the author a look, and said "She's going to need you." Their entire landscape shifted that day, and pretty much every day since.
After the initial spin in the vortex of the dementia diagnosis, the author sought strength through friends, family, support groups and her own writing. After writing professionally for years, the author sat down in a moment of clarity (and desperation) and wrote an entry for January 1st, and then the 2nd. The topics and entries then started drooling out of her and didn't stop. So this. A daily book.
The author wishes she had this book when she started on this un-invited path. It would've given her permission to laugh, shake her head, swear, scream and get up the next day and do it all again.