WRITING ABOUT ALZHIEMER'S

Does it help to write about AD? I think it does. I think it is cathartic and healing for any caregiver.

Remember one of the most profoundly difficult things for the caregiver is the sense of isolation. With 5 million people affected, the caregiver is certainly not in a unique predicament. However on a day to day basis, there is so much to do, so little time, so many moments of pain and frustration, sometimes the caregiver feels like they are going crazy. Sometimes there is little time for a break. Sometimes there is little time to actually talk with others, to process feelings. It is so important to do, for the caregiver to take care of themselves, yet we often do not do it.

Writing about the experience gives perspective, it is a way to increase clarity, to provide reassurance form within. Reassurance is so very important, yet there is very little of it often available to the caregiver. Writing about it, gives self-reassurance.

There are so many stories that need to be told. So similar, and yet every one of them about a unique person and family.

The publishing world does not partivcularily like these stories. They are not petty or marketable always, and it is always about the bottom line in our me-first society.

One can look at all the stories and memoirs written, "self-published" through the intermediaries of entities like iuniverse, Xlibris, lulu, Booksurge, Authorhouse, and so on and so forth.

Caregivers want to be heard, they want to be understood, they want the world to know and understand this person they have loved and cared for, To speak out about the devastation.

Often the world seems at best non-caring to the caregiver, like anything else nobody seems to care or get it, till the disease affects them and their families directly. That is sad.