You may still remember the exact words the clinician used. “Dementia.” “Alzheimer’s disease.” “Probable Lewy body dementia.”   For many families, everything after that becomes a blur. The fear is real. The uncertainty is real. And so is this: there are clear, concrete steps you can take to support your loved one and yourself, starting […]

A dementia diagnosis is one of the most disorienting moments a person — or a family — can face. The fear is real. The uncertainty is real. And so is this: there are clear, concrete steps you can take right now to protect your health, build connection and community, and shape the kind of life […]

A clinician in my Mental Health + Aging Certificate program recently asked a question. He was reflecting on the opening module — the one where I lay the foundation for who we are providing therapy for, where I explore intersecting identities, share important statistics, and name the harm created by queerphobia, racism, classism, and other […]

“This is probably the last few chapters of her life. And I made it worse. I lied to her and I betrayed her and I don’t know if I can forgive myself.”   This is what a caregiver shared with me in therapy. She lamented over whether or not she made the right decision. Wondering, […]

The plan was already made. The family had toured the memory care facility twice, signed the paperwork, and arranged for movers to collect her things the following week. But when they pulled into the parking lot, her daughter told her she would just be staying for a few days while her back healed up.   […]

  “I feel like I’m doing time for a crime I never committed.”   That’s what one of my older patients said to me in our very first session after he was moved unexpectedly from his home into assisted living. He wasn’t exaggerating. He wasn’t being dramatic. He was telling me exactly how he felt. […]

I was settling in for a long travel day on an airplane — when I found myself in one of those unexpectedly meaningful conversations that remind me why I do this work.   The man sitting next to me was in his early 60s. He and his husband were heading to Burlington to explore whether […]

Imagine waking up every day not knowing whether to grieve or to hope. Whether to set a place at the table or quietly put the extra plate away. Whether to say “is” or “was.”   This is the territory of ambiguous loss — and it is, as family therapist and researcher Dr. Pauline Boss describes […]

What if I told you that nearly half of all older adults — not a small, extraordinary handful, but almost half — actually improve their cognitive and physical functioning as they age? Not maintain. Not slow the decline. Improve.   I know. That probably feels like it contradicts everything you’ve heard — from society, from […]

I want you to picture someone I’ll call Margaret.   She’s 74 years old, sharp-witted, funny, and deeply engaged in her community. But lately, she’s been misplacing her keys more than usual. She blanked on a neighbor’s name she’s known for twenty years. She missed a dentist appointment for the first time in her life. […]

Imagine sitting across from an 82-year-old woman who has survived the death of her husband, two of her children, and now — a diagnosis that threatens to reshape everything she thought her final years would look like. She has never spoken to a therapist before. She was raised to be strong, resilient, stoic. But here […]

If you spend any time on social media, you have probably seen it — a well-meaning post, shared thousands of times, warning that caregivers are so depleted, so selflessly devoted, that they often die before the very people they are caring for. It is a striking claim.   Caregiving is hard. It is exhausting, isolating, […]