Speaking With Care

Welcome to Speaking With Care Welcome. I’m glad you’re here. Speaking With Care is a quiet space for learning how to be with people living with dementia—with more confidence, more compassion, and less fear of “saying the wrong thing.” I decided to write about this after more than a decade as a registered nurse in a dementia special care unit, and as a daughter who watched my own father in his last days with dementia. I have stood at the bedside, in hallways, in community kitchens and in...

Managing Sundowning Restlessness: How to Use Shared Movement for Dementia Calm Managing Sundowning Restlessness: How to Use Shared Movement for Dementia Calm In the journey of dementia care, there comes a specific time of day that many family caregivers dread. As the sun begins to set, a wave of anxiety, confusion, and physical agitation can settle over your loved one. We often talk about how our words matter during these intense evening hours. We know that skipping the endless questions and...

Funding Dementia Safety: How to Build a Canadian Tracking System Without Breaking the Bank As family caregivers, we quickly learn that managing dementia is as much about "cognitive labor" as it is about physical care. We become the system administrators of our loved ones' lives, constantly tracking safety risks, medical appointments, and behavioral changes. But when a parent begins to wander, that mental load turns into a sudden financial and logistical scramble. You realize you need a...

Pacing, Pressure, and Peace: Navigating the Hardest Hours of Dementia Care Evenings can be the hardest part of the day. You’re tired, they’re tired, and as the light fades, the house grows quiet—except for the sound of pacing. If you’ve ever ended the day feeling discouraged because nothing you said seemed to help, you are not alone. The Sundowning Struggle: When Your Best Tools Stop Working One of the most challenging aspects of dementia care is that the communication tools we’ve used our...

Coping with Caregiver Guilt and Exhaustion: What No One Tells You No one signs up for caregiving expecting it to be easy, but few are prepared for the heavy emotional crosswinds that come with it. It is a topic that no one likes to talk about, yet it is an experience that almost every family caregiver desperately needs support with. When you are sandwiched between caring for aging parents, managing your own household, and trying to hold down a job, you quickly enter the world of the sandwich...

Holding Onto "You": Protecting Your Identity During the Long Goodbye Caregiving is often described as an act of love, but for those navigating ambiguous loss, it can also feel like a slow disappearance. When a loved one is physically present but psychologically changed in ways that feel unfamiliar, the grief doesn't follow a traditional path. It lingers in the quiet spaces of your home, changing not only the person you care for but your very understanding of who you are. When the Relationship...

I spoke to my sister today. Halfway through the call, I realized something had shifted. It wasn’t just that she was tired or overwhelmed by the logistics of moving our 91-year-old mother. It was the sound of frustration creeping into her voice—the kind that comes when logic keeps failing and no one tells you why. The Reality of the "Logic Gap" My sister is our mother’s primary support person. She coordinates, problem-solves, and absorbs the emotional fallout. After months of driving 45...

I recently introduced a family member to the Speaking with Care model, which focuses on the pillars of validation, reassurance, and redirection. Because they haven't had much experience with memory loss, they asked a vital question that gets to the heart of caregiving: “Why does correcting make things worse?” It is a question many caring people ask. If you have tried correcting a loved one because you wanted to help ground them in reality, your intention was coming from a place of love....

Have you ever felt like you were grieving someone who is still sitting right in front of you? If so, you are likely experiencing ambiguous loss—a term pioneered by Dr. Pauline Boss to describe a grief that lacks the "map" provided by traditional loss. Unlike a death marked by a funeral and community support, this type of loss has no official verification and no ritualized closure. It is often described by caregivers as "losing someone in slow motion." The Two Faces of This Invisible Grief...

If you feel like you’re grieving someone who is still alive—or someone whose fate is unknown—I want you to know something important: your grief is real. It’s called ambiguous loss, and it’s one of the most misunderstood experiences a person can go through. The Origin: A Grief Without a Map The term "ambiguous loss" was pioneered by Dr. Pauline Boss in the 1970s. She originally developed the concept while working with families of soldiers missing in action. These families were trapped in a...

If you feel like you’re grieving someone who is still alive—or someone whose fate is unknown—I want you to know something important: your grief is real. It’s called ambiguous loss, and it’s one of the most misunderstood experiences a person can go through. The Origin: A Grief Without a Map The term "ambiguous loss" was pioneered by Dr. Pauline Boss in the 1970s. She originally developed the concept while working with families of soldiers missing in action. These families were trapped in a...