Elder Care Cafe

Everyone needs an outlet. Caregivers are special people but they are still people who have feelings and needs of their own. Journaling is a form of therapy to help caregivers cope with their difficult and often lonely task. Most humans are prone to keeping their feelings bottled up inside. Unfortunately doing so can lead to [...]

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Researchers have found that having a pet often helps people feel better both emotionally and physically.  While many people have never heard of pet therapy, also called animal-assisted therapy, those who work with children, seniors, and the chronically ill, know how well having a pet around helps lift the person’s spirit. Pet therapy has been [...]

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The older we are the more we realize how important family relationships are to us. Unfortunately, during our adulthood we become so busy with our career and family responsibilities that we often neglect our family of origin – our brothers and sisters and others that we grew up with. As we move into our senior [...]

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The hardest words to say are often the most needed if we want to  keep in a good relationship with others and with ourselves. In The Hardest Words, Part 1, we noted that as senior citizens we have a lot of memories of the past – some good and some not so good. However, this [...]

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Sometimes the hardest words we need to say are the most difficult to express. When many of us look back over our lives we realize we have faced many difficult moments. We’ve raised our families, dealt with work issues, and most of the times have tried to be the best person we could on our [...]

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No matter how long you have been caring for an elderly loved one your caregiver stint will someday come to an end. Whether you want to retain the memories of those days will often depend on who you are caring for and what relationship the two of you have. For example, in my case I [...]

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Caring for the elderly is difficult no matter how self-reliant they are. The emotional and physical stress of being responsible for another person tends to pull the caregiver down whether they realize it or not. Suddenly one day the caregiver realizes how exhausted he or she feels, how time seems to have slipped away, and [...]

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Improving your memory through activity isn’t as weird as it sounds. There is an old saying that we’ve used a number of times over the years that holds a lot of truth – that saying is “use it or lose it.” In fact, I’ve said that myself when I’ve felt mentally sluggish or haven’t challenged [...]

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Many of us are concerned about losing our memories as we age, and rightly so.  We notice that we don’t remember details as much as we used to or we begin to forget names of people we’ve known for a long time. Although there are a number of products available, for some of us the [...]

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For seniors, setting New Year’s resolutions should be old hat by now. After all, we’ve had enough opportunities to get it right. Personally, I think it is fun to set new goals and plans for the new year. In fact, I spent this past weekend free writing, making plans, and writing lists for what I [...]

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I was traveling around the web earlier this morning and ran across a couple of gratitude lists. Sounded like a great idea, so I put this one together. If you are interested in sharing all or part of your list, you are welcome to leave it in the comment section.  Thanksgiving is always a time [...]

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About this time every year, many people suffer a type of depression that affects them mostly during the winter. These episodes of depression may recur at the same time each year, and are sometimes known as winter depression or the winter blahs. The technical name for this type of depression is SAD Syndrome (or Seasonal [...]

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As a caregiver, we often become mired in the day-to-day activities that come with caring for a loved one. Recently, I read a comment expressed by the poet Robert Frost: In three words I can summarize everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on. ~ Robert Frost As I pondered those words, I started thinking [...]

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There is usually enough guilt to go around in most families when a parent or elderly loved one becomes unable to take care of themselves. If you are caring for a loved one, you already know what we are talking about. Since you are doing everything you can to provide appropriate care, why should you [...]

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Just when you think you have seen everything, another trend pops up and leaves many people shaking their head. I had noticed recently a growing number of younger entertainers and musicians were coloring their hair gray. Now I see an article in AARP The Magazine on that very subject. After years of fighting the gray, [...]

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