Seniors (55+)

The story of one woman’s struggle to care for her seriously ill husband—and a revealing look at the role unpaid family caregivers play in a society that fails to provide them with structural support.

Already Toast shows how all-consuming caregiving can be, how difficult it is to find support, and how the social and literary narratives that have long locked women into providing emotional labor also keep them in unpaid caregiving roles. When Kate Washington and her husband, Brad, learned that he had cancer, they were a young couple: professionals with ascending careers, parents to two small children. Brad’s diagnosis stripped those identities away: he became a patient and she his caregiver.

Brad’s cancer quickly turned aggressive, necessitating a stem-cell transplant that triggered a massive infection, robbing him of his eyesight and nearly of his life. Kate acted as his full-time aide to keep him alive, coordinating his treatments, making doctors’ appointments, calling insurance companies, filling dozens of prescriptions, cleaning commodes, administering IV drugs. She became so burned out that, when she took an online quiz on caregiver self-care, her result cheerily declared: “You’re already toast!”

Through it all, she felt profoundly alone, but, as she later learned, she was in fact one of millions: an invisible army of family caregivers working every day in America, their unpaid labor keeping our troubled healthcare system afloat. Because our culture both romanticizes and erases the realities of care work, few caregivers have shared their stories publicly.

As the baby-boom generation ages, the number of family caregivers will continue to grow. Readable, relatable, timely, and often raw, Already Toast—with its clear call for paying and supporting family caregivers—is a crucial intervention in that conversation, bringing together personal experience with deep research to give voice to those tasked with the overlooked, vital work of caring for the seriously ill.

These “moving and often surprising” (The Wall Street Journal) case histories meld science and storytelling to show that caregivers don’t just witness cognitive decline in their loved ones with dementia—they are its invisible victims.
 
“This book will forever change the way we see people with dementia disorders—and the people who care for them.”—Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
 
Inspired by Dasha Kiper’s experience as a caregiver and counselor and informed by a breadth of cognitive and neurological research, Travelers to Unimaginable Lands dispels the myth of the perfect caregiver. In these compassionate, nonjudgmental stories of parents and children, husbands and wives, contending with dementia disorders, Kiper explores the existential dilemmas created by this disease: a man believes his wife is an impostor; a woman’s imaginary friendships with famous authors drive a wedge between her and her devoted husband; another woman’s childhood trauma emerges to torment her son; a man’s sudden, intense Catholic piety provokes his wife.
 
Kiper explains why the caregivers are maddened by these behaviors, mirroring their patients’ irrationality, even though they’ve been told it’s the disease at work. By demystifying the neurological obstacles to caregiving, Kiper illuminates the terrible pressure dementia disorders exert on our closest relationships, offering caregivers the perspective they need to be gentler with themselves.

Care for yourself while caring for a loved one with diabetes

Taking care of someone with diabetes can be tiring and emotionally draining at times. As a caregiver, you may overlook your own health and well-being because you're so focused on your loved one. This book helps empower you to be an attentive caregiver for your friend or family member with diabetes—while also taking good care of yourself.

Give your loved one the support they need with guidance for everything from medications and treatments to financial and legal decisions. You'll also find practical advice for meeting your own physical and emotional needs, and dealing with the unique challenges you face as a caregiver.

• Understanding diabetes—Learn what diabetes is and isn't, how the condition affects the body, and how your role as caregiver fits in.
• Relatable stories—Read examples of real situations you might encounter as a diabetes caregiver.
• What to do, say, and ask—Explore questions to ask your healthcare provider, and get suggestions for what to do and say in specific situations, like if your loved one is having trouble managing their blood sugar or medication side effects.

Attend to your own needs while being a supportive diabetes caregiver with help from this compassionate guide.

Care for a loved one with cancer while caring for yourself

Looking after someone with cancer can be complex, overwhelming, and emotionally draining all at once. As a caregiver, you may also overlook your own well-being while you focus on your loved one. This book empowers you to be an attentive, thoughtful, and compassionate caregiver for your friend or family member with cancer. You'll also find practical everyday advice for meeting your own physical and emotional needs while dealing with the unique challenges you face.

• Understanding cancer—Learn how cancer affects the body at every stage, determine the steps that come after diagnosis, and examine cancer treatments and side effects.
• Knowledge caregivers need—Find info on navigating health care, financial and legal decisions, and much more.
• What to say and ask—Find questions to ask your loved one's care team and health providers, and discover how to be an advocate in different situations.

Support your loved one while also practicing self-care with the help of this compassionate choice in caregiving and cancer books.

The only guide to caring for those with advanced Alzheimer disease.

Winner of the IPPY Book Award Health/Medicine/Nutrition by the Independent Publisher

Caring for someone living with advanced Alzheimer disease is a challenge. It can make you feel like you're on a hamster wheel—running in circles, trying the same things over and over with no effect on your loved one. You may also find it difficult to connect with your loved one and to understand what those living with Alzheimer disease are going through. In The Busy Caregiver's Guide to Advanced Alzheimer Disease, Dr. Jennifer Stelter, a psychologist working in memory care, shares a new model designed to help caregivers understand, cope with, and handle some of the most challenging behaviors associated with the disease while encouraging and reinforcing independence and quality of life for their loved ones. Her Dementia Connection Model, which is based on current scientific research, will aid you in forging a positive bond with your loved one with less frustration. Win-win!

Follow along, step by step, as Dr. Stelter outlines the three main elements of the Dementia Connection Model and learn how to put these elements into practice to help with

• communication problems
• eating difficulties
• mobility concerns
• memory deficits
• behavioral issues
• toileting trouble
• and other common complications of Alzheimer disease.

The evidenced-based, practical interventions and strategies in The Busy Caregiver's Guide will help you stay emotionally, mentally, and physically involved in your loved one's life. Special dedicated worksheets help you practice the skills and keep track of what is working. You'll also read stories about other caregivers who face the same struggles.

Learn how to care for a loved one after a stroke, and care for yourself, too

A stroke changes the life of more than just the survivor. Becoming a caregiver for a stroke patient means increased responsibilities, hard decisions, and new emotional stresses—especially when the patient is a loved one. This stroke recovery book will help you through these challenging times with knowledge, compassionate guidance, and reaffirming stroke rehabilitation anecdotes. Topics such as medications and treatments, financial and legal decisions, and work-life balance are also covered, as well as:

• Understanding stroke—Discover the signs and symptoms of a stroke, explained in layperson's terms, as well as the steps to prevent a stroke from occurring.
• Care and recovery—Find helpful advice to restore the best health and function possible and be an advocate for a stroke patient with doctors and their support team.
• Caring for yourself—Uncover practical tips, guidance, and resources for supporting a caregiver's mental and physical health, which are just as important to patient recovery.

Ease the challenges on your shared path to healing through The Caregiver's Guide to Stroke Recovery.

An encouraging and compassionate guide for dementia caregivers.

Caring for someone with dementia means devotedly and patiently doing a hundred little things each day. But few care providers are trained to meet the challenges of dementia—despite the fact that millions of people will struggle with it as they grow older. In A Loving Approach to Dementia Care, Laura Wayman, who is known professionally as the Dementia Whisperer, offers practical, compassionate advice on overcoming caregiving obstacles and maintaining meaningful relationships with loved ones who have dementia and memory loss.

In this thoroughly revised third edition, Wayman includes

• answers to common caregiver questions, such as "What is dementia?"
• a detailed explanation of how to cope with and care for a spouse with dementia symptoms, including advice about communication
• a new chapter on caring for someone who has dementia along with other health problems
• recommendations about how to handle challenging situations and behaviors
• dementia-aware activities that work for both family caregivers and professional care staff
• fresh caregiving insights that emphasize the importance of taking time to care for oneself

Each chapter contains two sections—"Lessons Learned" and "Perceptions and Approaches"—which provide details about how readers can apply lessons from the stories Wayman tells to their own caregiving practice. Providing support for the numerous difficulties and disruptions that all caregivers face along the way, A Loving Approach to Dementia Care is an empathetic guide filled with respect, calm, and creativity. It will leave readers feeling empowered and inspired.

This practical guide provides general caregiving tips and helps you decide when and how to transition your loved one to a dementia care community.

Caring for someone with dementia is challenging, especially when it comes time to think about other living arrangements. What do you need to know about dementia, including its different stages? What do you do if the person you're caring for seems to have trouble recognizing you? When is it time to move a person living with dementia into a senior living community? And how can you maintain your relationship with your loved one when you are living apart?

Gerontologist and dementia care consultant Rachael Wonderlin has written a compassionate book to help friends and family members of those living with dementia answer these tough questions—and more. In practical, down-to-earth language, The Caregiver's Guide to Memory Care and Dementia Communities walks the reader through key points about dementia care, including

• common terminology used by health care workers
• strategies for taking care of your loved one
• advice for when and how to transition to a dementia care community
• understanding how dementia care communities are structured and what to keep in mind when evaluating them
• how to help your loved one receive the best possible care while they're living apart
• recommendations for handling obstacles involving communication and behavioral issues
• information on technology, hospice care, programming and activities, and at-home safety

A dedicated section called "Putting It into Practice" in each chapter helps you apply the principles to your own experience, while worksheets present you with questions to consider as part of the caregiving and assessment process.

A practical guide for understanding how palliative care can improve quality of life for patients and their caregivers.

Robin Bennett Kanarek was a registered nurse working with patients suffering from chronic medical conditions when her ten-year-old son was diagnosed with leukemia. As her son endured grueling treatments, Robin realized how often medical professionals overlook critical psychological, emotional, and spiritual support for people with life-threatening illnesses. Living Well with a Serious Illness is the culmination of decades of Robin's work to advance the field of palliative care.

Although palliative care is often associated with hospice and end-of-life planning, Kanarek argues for a more expanded definition that incorporates palliative care earlier in patients' journeys. Living Well with a Serious Illness helps patients and their caregivers understand

• what palliative care entails
• how to access the support they need when going through a serious illness
• what questions to ask medical professionals
• how to navigate advanced care planning
• definitions of common terminology used with end-of-life planning
• the importance of spiritual care, coping strategies, and emotional support
• how to become an advocate for palliative care

This book illuminates the importance of seeing patients as individuals who can benefit from care for their body, mind, and spirit—the core tenet of palliative care.

For caregivers of deeply forgetful people: a book that combines new ethics guidelines with an innovative program on how to communicate and connect with people with Alzheimer's.

How do we approach a "deeply forgetful" loved one so as to notice and affirm their continuing self-identity? For three decades, Stephen G. Post has worked around the world encouraging caregivers to become more aware of—and find renewed hope in—surprising expressions of selfhood despite the challenges of cognitive decline.

In this book, Post offers new perspectives on the worth and dignity of people with Alzheimer's and related disorders despite the negative influence of "hypercognitive" values that place an ethically unacceptable emphasis on human dignity as based on linear rationality and strength of memory. This bias, Post argues, is responsible for the abusive exclusion of this population from our shared humanity. With vignettes and narratives, he argues for a deeper dignity grounded in consciousness, emotional presence, creativity, interdependence, music, and a self that is not "gone" but "differently abled." Post covers key practical topics such as:

• understanding the experience of dementia
• noticing subtle expressions of continuing selfhood, including "paradoxical lucidity"
• perspectives on ethical quandaries from diagnosis to terminal care and everything in between, as gleaned from the voices of caregivers
• how to communicate optimally and use language effectively
• the value of art, poetry, symbols, personalized music, and nature in revealing self-identity
• the value of trained "dementia companion" dogs

At a time when medical advances to cure these conditions are still out of reach and the most recent drugs have shown limited effectiveness, Post argues that focusing discussion and resources on the relational dignity of these individuals and the respite needs of their caregivers is vital. Grounding ethics on the equal worth of all conscious human beings, he provides a cautionary perspective on preemptive assisted suicide based on cases that he has witnessed. He affirms vulnerability and interdependence as the core of the human condition and celebrates caregivers as advocates seeking social and economic justice in an American system where they and their loved ones receive only leftover scraps. Racially inclusive and grounded in diversity, Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People also includes a workshop appendix focused on communication and connection, "A Caregiver Resilience Program," by Rev. Dr. Jade C. Angelica.

"Winter Stars is a gift - a modern classic of frontier literature documenting the uncertain journey into the country of caregiving." -Michael J. Fox

Dave Iverson was a busy broadcast journalist recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease when he decided to do something he'd never quite imagined: He moved in to take care of his 95-year-old mom. Winter Stars is the moving story of their ten-year caregiving journey.

"The resulting memoir is a love story you won't soon forget," writes Elizabeth Farnsworth, former chief correspondent for The PBS NewsHour and author of A Train Through Time.

By the end of this decade, 74 million Americans will be over the age of 65, including every member of the Baby Boom generation. The pandemic prompted more Americans to consider caring for their parents at home, but as Iverson learned, the gritty, life-changing reality caregiving delivers requires more than good intentions. He didn't know that his mom's dementia would pose more challenges than his Parkinson's. He didn't know he'd be capable of getting so angry. He didn't know that becoming a caregiver means experiencing love and loss, anger and insight - usually when exhausted and often on the same day. And he didn't know that moving in with his mom would challenge and change him more than any other life experience.

"A deeply moving memoir, Winter Stars is still more than that - it is a guide to finding the help we all need, in one way or another, as life poses new and different challenges," praises Ron Elving, Senior Editor and Correspondent, NPR

For the vast number of families who are confronting--or will soon confront - the journey of eldercare, Winter Stars offers an intimate, unvarnished portrait of the challenges, choices, and life lessons that lie ahead.

"Honest, comforting, and true, Winter Stars is a testament to the power of family love," says Ann Packer, best-selling author of The Dive from Clausen's Pier and Songs Without Words.

All royalties from the sale of Winter Stars go to support: The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research; Dance for PD; and Avenidas, a San Francisco Bay Area organization providing caregiver support.

Care for yourself, while caring for a loved one with dementia

When caring for someone with dementia, your own mental stability can be the single most critical factor in your loved one's quality of life. The Caregiver's Guide to Dementia brings practical and comprehensive guidance to understanding the illness, caring for someone, and caring for yourself.

From understanding common behavioral and mood changes to making financial decisions, this book contains bulleted lists of actions you can take to improve your health and your caregiving. Inspirational and compassionate, it focuses on the caregiver's underlying love and humanity that cannot be taken away by any disease.

In The Caregiver's Guide to Dementia you'll find:

• Dementia defined—Understand dementia and its many forms, with an explanation of the illness and its variations.
• Caregiver wellness—At the end of each chapter, a small section provides relaxation and mindfulness exercises and reflection for dementia caregivers.
• Practical approach—The back of the book is filled with resources, from financial planning to tips on safety, along with questions for health care professionals, lawyers, accountants, therapists, and friends.

"A gorgeous memoir about mothers, daughters, and the tenacity of the love that grows between what is said and what is left unspoken."--Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk

If our family stories shape us, what happens when we learn those stories were never true? Who do we become when we shed our illusions about the past?

Maya Shanbhag Lang grew up idolizing her brilliant mother, an accomplished physician who immigrated to the United States from India and completed her residency all while raising her children and keeping a traditional Indian home. Maya's mother had always been a source of support--until Maya became a mother herself. Then the parent who had once been so capable and attentive became suddenly and inexplicably unavailable. Struggling to understand this abrupt change while raising her own young child, Maya searches for answers and soon learns that her mother is living with Alzheimer's.

Unable to remember or keep track of the stories she once told her daughter--stories about her life in India, why she immigrated, and her experience of motherhood--Maya's mother divulges secrets about her past that force Maya to reexamine their relationship. It becomes clear that Maya never really knew her mother, despite their close bond. Absorbing, moving, and raw, What We Carry is a memoir about mothers and daughters, lies and truths, receiving and giving care, and how we cannot grow up until we fully understand the people who raised us. It is a beautiful examination of the weight we shoulder as women and an exploration of how to finally set our burdens down.

Praise for What We Carry

"Part self-discovery, part family history. . . [Lang's] analysis of the shifting roles of mothers and daughters, particularly through the lens of immigration, help[s] to challenge her family's mythology. . . . Readers interested in examining their own family stories . . . will connect deeply with Lang's beautiful memoir."--Library Journal
(Starred Review)

"A stirring memoir exploring the fraught relationships between mothers and daughters . . . astutely written and intense . . . [What We Carry] will strike a chord with readers."--Publishers Weekly

"Lang is an immediately affable and honest narrator who offers an intriguing blend of revelatory personal history and touching insight."--BookPage

With a foreword by Judy Woodruff, The Unexpected Journey of Caring is a practical guide to finding personal meaning in the 21st century care experience. Personal transformation is usually an experience we actively seek out-not one that hunts us down. Becoming a caregiver is one transformation that comes at us, requiring us to rethink everything we once knew. Everything changes-responsibilities, beliefs, hopes, expectations, and relationships. Caregiving is not just a role reserved for "saints"-eventually, everyone is drafted into the caregiver role. It's not a role people medically train for; it's a new type of relationship initiated by a loved one's need for care. And it's a role that cannot be quarantined to home because it infuses all aspects of our lives. Caregivers today find themselves in need of a crash course in new and unfamiliar skills. They must not only care for a loved one, but also access hidden community resources, collaborate with medical professionals, craft new narratives consistent with the changing nature of their care role, coordinate care with family, seek information and peer support using a variety of digital platforms, and negotiate social support-all while attempting to manage conflicts between work, life, and relationship roles. The moments that mark us in the transition from loved one to caregiver matter because if we don't make sense of how we are being transformed, we risk undervaluing our care experiences, denying our evolving beliefs, becoming trapped by other's misunderstandings, and feeling underappreciated, burned out, and overwhelmed. Informed by original caregiver research and proven advocacy strategies, this book speaks to caregiving as it unfolds, in all of its confusion, chaos, and messiness. Readers won't find well-intentioned clich s or care stereotypes in this book. There are no promises to help caregivers return to a life they knew before caregiving. No, this book greets caregivers where they are in their journey-new or chronic-not where others expect (or want) them to be.

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK

"A hands-on, real talk guide for navigating the hot-button issues that so many families struggle with."--Reese Witherspoon

Tired, stressed, and in need of more help from your partner? Imagine running your household (and life!) in a new way...

It started with the Sh*t I Do List. Tired of being the "shefault" parent responsible for all aspects of her busy household, Eve Rodsky counted up all the unpaid, invisible work she was doing for her family -- and then sent that list to her husband, asking for things to change. His response was... underwhelming. Rodsky realized that simply identifying the issue of unequal labor on the home front wasn't enough: She needed a solution to this universal problem. Her sanity, identity, career, and marriage depended on it.

The result is Fair Play: a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to divvy up chores and responsibilities. Rodsky interviewed more than five hundred men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually entails and how to get it all done efficiently. With four easy-to-follow rules, 100 household tasks, and a series of conversation starters for you and your partner, Fair Play helps you prioritize what's important to your family and who should take the lead on every chore from laundry to homework to dinner.

"Winning" this game means rebalancing your home life, reigniting your relationship with your significant other, and reclaiming your Unicorn Space -- as in, the time to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting. Stop drowning in to-dos and lose some of that invisible workload that's pulling you down. Are you ready to try Fair Play? Let's deal you in.