Much is needed besides these two, but they provide the foundation. — When my mother started her slow descent into dementia, most of us just thought she repeated herself quite a bit. She was diagnosed with age-related dementia. Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia. Then, the drop became a bit steeper and even she knew something was wrong. …

We can follow the example set by women in Iceland and affect the Economy, to instigate change — Women in the U.S. still make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes. This gap in pay has persisted for 20 years, despite recent trends towards salary transparency and laws supporting it in a number of different states. This is the country where women got the right to vote…

Real answers from a woman who is doing it — Although women account for nearly 50% of the workforce, only 1/3 of manufacturing employees are female. Why? you might wonder. Why don’t more women go into manufacturing? Manufacturing offers an income unrivaled by retail and other opportunities with only a high school degree. My starting pay was $18 an hour…

A poem about senilicide —

In a time of desperation, I learned I could depend on a Power Greater than Myself. I always could. #Lessons Learned — I was desperate. DESPERATE. It was the holiday season of 2017, near Christmas, and I had made my way back to Connecticut, where I had lived for 28 years. I was in the midst of a brutal divorce. My ex had moved to Texas as a means of forum-shopping, finding…

That is what dementia does, leaving a body that looks like your Loved One, but with a totally different personality. — Dementia is a term used to cover a range of disorders with symptoms that affect memory, thinking and social abilities. Alzheimer’s is the most common. What is it that causes my mother to act like a 6-year-old in her 87-year-old body? There is no way to know for sure; Alzheimer’s…

Poetry — You won’t know the kindness of strangers until you find yourself in a foreign land, With your demented Loved One struggling to make it to the gate before your flight Then a dark man in a fluorescent vest offers her a seat in a wheelchair, and holds her arm walking her…

True Confessions: I was 55 years old before I lived by myself for the first time. — Go ahead. Laugh. I graduated college and got married two weeks later at the ripe old age of 22. I spent the next 35 years in a marriage raising four children. I was never alone. Tiny toddler fingers would wiggle under the bathroom door if I closed it. Kids and…

I had this conversation with a Master of Divinity graduate from Harvard and it came back to me, 30 years later. #Surprise — We are a group of four — M, C, R and I have been together for close to 40 years, sharing everything — raising kids, infertility, divorce, job loss, widowhood, addictions, mental illness, cancer…I think we have shared it all. I have written about these friendships previously: