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Join Our NewsletterWhat My Dad’s Death Taught Me About Dying
Three years ago, my father and I rode horses together for miles and miles of trails at a Florida state park. Two weeks after that, the world shut down and two years later, he died. His dying was my first very close-up experience with serious illness and death. If...
4 Common Traps To Avoid in Making the Move to Assisted Living
I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself Maya Angelou About two months after my husband moved out, I noticed an awful smell coming from somewhere in the kitchen. I spent a whole week trying to locate the source. My kitchen cabinets have...
How Softball and Starbucks Taught Me a Valuable Lesson About Being a Good Parent and a Good Daughter
I’ve been noticing that when I get caught in the undertow of feeling like a failure at parenting, it makes me really angst-y and hyper-controlling with my kids, especially my 15-year-old daughter, Grace. This happened last week when, mid-stream in spring softball...
Daughterhood: The Ultimate Career Disrupter
The end of life transition from independence to dependence for a frail older adult is terrifying to experience and to observe. Our desire to preserve the dignity of our parents through this process completely and totally dwarfs any professional or personal ambition.
Your Parent’s Death: Facing Fear and Finding Meaning
In my next life, I want to come back as Dr. Kathy Selvaggi, the palliative care doctor who appears in a new Frontline documentary series about how our health-care system handles end-of-life care. I think we should all idolize clinicians who escort people to and from life — midwives, labor, and delivery nurses on the one hand, and hospice nurses, chaplains, and palliative care physicians like Dr. Selvaggi on the other.
Dr. Kathy Selvaggi and Dr. Atul Gawande (author of Being Mortal, the book on which the Frontline series is based) both say that it is really, really hard coming to the realization you or a loved one is dying. They tell us that, for most people, when it comes to dying: Fear Rules.
The Three Pillars of Parental Care: Add Up to One Impossible Job
My best friend from college and I use a term “the hard professor,” as shorthand for situations where our heroic efforts haven’t felt good enough. It comes from an analogy I created to make a point. It worked like this: If you were in a class with a professor who, in 20 years of teaching, had never given a grade higher than a “B” and you earned a “B+,” would you be mad at yourself for not getting an “A?”
I’ve learned that when you lose perspective about the value of your efforts, it’s always nice to have a friend point out that you are in the hard professor’s class.
The Reason Behind Daughterhood
I was trying to explain to a male colleague why I was naming my new (at the time) website “Daughterhood.org.” He’s an expert on aging and shares responsibility with his sister for their mother’s care. So, I wanted his advice on creating a resource that helps families...
Daughterhood in a Time of COVID: Our History and Our Future
As the first nursing home and assisted living facility residents get their COVID-19 vaccines, I feel like I’m seeing a little light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve been quiet on the blog this year because I’ve felt speechless – empty of any information, advice or even...
Caring for Aging Parents Under the Reality of COVID-19
I travel on airplanes a lot. Or at least I did before two weeks ago! Usually, my primary focus is on whether I can get a coffee refill and how much longer I can procrastinate doing work. So, basically, exactly the same as when I’m home minus the barking dog. A big...
