So What is This About?

During the past twenty years, I have been privileged to serve as the Executive Director of an Alzheimer's Association Chapter. During that time, I met and worked with many committed and dedicated individuals. Those individuals were either:

(1) Actively caring for a Loved One with dementia
(2) Volunteering or working in a capacity of dealing with caregiving/geriatric issues
(3) Previously been a caregiver.

Prior to that time and early in the 1980’s, I became involved in Elder Care Issues within the community. As a result of that involvement, I worked for several years at a local Adult Day Care and Residential Retirement Facility. Also during that time, while finishing my degree at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, I focused many of my classes in the areas of Gerontology, Psychology and Sociology.

What I have learned during all these years from families involved in crisis are how fragile we are as human beings and how each of us travels on a life-journey with certain coping skills and abilities. Sometimes we caregivers give to another -- even to the detriment of our own health.

My goal in working with CaringConcepts, Inc., is to offer caregivers tools that nurture them and that recognize their abilities to make decisions that are in the best interests of all concerned. I feel that we all have certain coping skills and that we can always learn new ones.

I truly believe that there is nothing more powerful in this world than the unwavering commitment and love one human can give to another. I have been privileged to personally experience that love in my own family, within the countless individuals who volunteer or work for the Alzheimer's Association, and within those who turn to the Alzheimer's Association for guidance.