Breathe Deeper: Surrender, Hope, and Other Strategies on Your Journey Caring For A Loved One with Dementia

by Joanne Ellis, Teepa Snow (Foreword)

The heartache of watching a loved one slowly disappear with dementia is real. You’ve had it before your eyes for months, often years. Or you’re reeling from the finality of an official diagnosis. Either way, you’re unprepared for what’s next. You’ve been dropped into a new, frightening life with no preparation.

You need to know what to do and what not to do. This book offers plenty of examples of both to comfort you and prepare you for what’s around the corner. On these pages I share my journey, and the journeys of many everyday people who express openly, angrily, sadly, hilariously, about how they coped, failed, and succeeded as a caregiver to a loved one with dementia. Plus, they present a wide array of situations beyond what clinical teaching can cover.

You’ll come to understand the complexity of life and how a caregiver’s self-worth, family, and medical options play into how the illness unfolds for your loved one living with dementia, and the person helping them through.

Central to the book you’ll discover encouragement and reassurance that your life beyond being a caregiver still matters. Your goals and aspirations still matter. Comfort and serenity come from knowing yourself, your loved one, and your options. Here you’ll find support, strategies, and your kindred spirits.

-Joanne Ellis

Author

210 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 20, 2021

Reviews

[Debbie]

If you have significant vision challenges and seriously want to read this book, have someone read it to you. The problem with this book is that much of it is in italics and, well, italics just don't scale well if you need to enlarge text. The book format is pdf which requires enlarging the whole book, not just the text. I'm having to spend too much time trying to figure out what key words are. Letters may squish together too closely, especially if you have "i" and "l" together. Or they "sp ac e" apart funny and you aren't sure if it is two or three words or just one. When they are words key to the context of the sentence ... I'm not far enough along in the book to decide it is worth it so I'll have a friend read it to me and report back, I'm less than 20% done at this point.